MALCOLM      Merciful heaven!

What, man, ne’er pull your hat upon your brows.

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak

Whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.

MACDUFF      My children too?

ROSS               Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

MACDUFF                  And I must be from thence?

My wife killed too?

ROSS                           I have said.

MALCOLM                  Be comforted.

Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.                  (4.3.208-216)

 

Macduff’s lost for words, perhaps turning away, covering his face, whether with hat or hood or hands. He knew it was coming, probably, but the shock’s unbearable, to hear those words. Malcolm speaks first, a test for the future king, and he does—ok? Merciful heaven! it can be a heartfelt prayer, a cry of dismay and shared pain. Curiously modern, telling Macduff to say something, don’t bottle it up: give sorrow words. If you don’t, if you don’t speak your grief, it’ll destroy you. Your heart will break under this this burden, over-laden with sorrow. A sense of the body imploding upon itself, under the weight of such anguish.

 

Macduff’s in shock: it’s a depiction of the first disbelieving seconds of trauma which could be written and be recognisable in any century. He can’t quite take it in. My children too? (Say there’s been some mistake. Surely they wouldn’t kill the children? this is too much.) Ross has to restate, bluntly: wife, children, servants, all that could be found. Savage slaughter indeed, far more than might have been suggested in the previous scene. A general massacre of all Macduff’s household, all the people for whom he should be responsible. All that could be found, implicitly hunted down, unable to hide themselves, dragged out, killed in cold blood, like animals. And I must be from thence, Macduff asks? Of course I had to be away, not there to protect them. My wife killed too? It strikes him afresh, he has to check again; so many dead, it seems, and his lovely, tough, sparky wife among them—even her? Yes. I have said, says Ross. And there’s nothing more that can be said, nothing that will alter or ameliorate this horror, this pain.

 

Malcolm tries to take charge, urging a kind of consolation in action, perhaps partly because he doesn’t know what to say, and because he, much more than Ross, has some idea of what Macduff’s experiencing, the shock, the imagined horror of the violence: be comforted. This might go some way to making you feel better: let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, to cure this deadly grief. Let’s be spurred on by this pain, this deadly grief, to seek revenge on Macbeth. Vengeance itself will be a kind of mourning; it’ll take away the sting, be a kind of cure.