MACDUFF      What concern they:

The general cause, or is it a fee-grief

Due to some single breast?

ROSS   No mind that’s honest

But in it shares some woe, though the main part

Pertains to you alone.

MACDUFF      If it be mine,

Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.

ROSS               Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound

That ever yet they heard.

MACDUFF      H’m—I guess at it.

ROSS               Your castle is surprised, your wife and babes

Savagely slaughtered. To relate the manner

Were on the quarry of these murdered deer

To add the death of you.       (4.3.196-208)

 

Macduff’s more than suspicious, but Ross has still got to speak the words; it’s as if he’s both unable to bring himself to say it, but also putting himself in the position where he has to, giving himself no choice. The tension’s unbearable, and the audience shares the burden of this unsayable, unspeakable news. Macduff’s edging closer, as if he’s preparing himself, but also hoping that there might be some way out: these terrible tidings, what concern they: the general cause, or is it a fee-grief due to some single breast? Is this yet another horror concerning everyone, or does it pertain most acutely to an individual, is it payable (as it were) to them alone? Ross prevaricates, a little, a helpless gesture: no mind that’s honest but in it shares some woe. Every good person is grieved and appalled by what’s happened. But I have to admit: the main part pertains to you alone. And Macduff has to know at that point, has to do more than guess. So say it, then, he says, steeling himself, keep it not from me, quickly let me have it. He’s picked up on the idea of the fee-grief: this news is his, it belongs to him, no matter how terrible it is. So rip off the plaster. Let me know the worst, because once I do, that’s it, nothing can be worse than that. Just do it. Ross tries one last time to delay the moment of having to say it; he can only apologise, knowing the pain that he’s about to cause. Don’t hold it against me, he says: let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, which shall possess them with the heaviest sound that ever yet they heard. The sense of an unbearable burden, about to be passed on, yet not relinquished, a grief which, although it will finally be shared, will be in no way diminished. The heaviness of words.

 

Macduff knows: hmmm, I guess at it. A sound already shading into anguish? A sound of perverse impatience, braced, flinching away. I think I know what’s coming but I have to hear it, have to hear the words, and you have to speak them. So Ross speaks the words, orderly phrases that, surely, he’s had prepared, stark, economical, factual. Your castle is surprised, attacked out of the blue (and surprised sometimes has a suggestion of rape; this is a violation). Your wife and babes savagely slaughtered. Babes a cue to call to mind that little boy, perhaps to think of him as even younger than he appeared, and also to affirm that there were other children in the scene, a cradle, a bundle in a shawl. Savagely slaughtered, just two words, but they (alliteratively) make it worse without specifying how. Macduff’s family have become animals, prey, slaughtered rather than murdered or killed, helpless victims; it makes their killers animals too, out of control, savage, wild and cruel. And Ross can’t say any more, and his refusal to say more, to give further details—although he clearly knows them, he’s seeing them in his mind’s eye even as he speaks—it amplifies the horror. Macduff’s family, his wife and children, have become murdered deer (the ear supplies, at some level, dear: they were so beloved) and, more than that, quarry, not just the animals being hunted, but the term used for all the deer killed in a hunt, a heap of corpses, dumped in a heap. It’s a hideous enough image, and Ross could make it even worse, but if he did, he says, it would be the death of you too. Macduff—you couldn’t bear it. I can’t bear it either, implies Ross; the line breaks, the mid-line pause after slaughtered (as, perhaps, he havers about going into more detail; he could, but chooses not to)—they speak to the difficulty of saying these words, and of hearing them. But it’s done, and it’s said, and it can’t be undone or unsaid.