MALCOLM                  This tune goes manly.

Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;

Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth

Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above

Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may:

The night is long that never finds the day.

Exeunt              (4.3.237-242)

You’ve changed your tune, in effect, says Malcolm; you sound manly now, rather than lamenting in despair. (There’s a crux here; it’s time in the folio text, not tune, a very easy misreading of letter forms by a printer. Most editors emend to tune and I think that it makes sense. I like the musical idiom, the sense of the slow drum of the funeral march changed to a brisk military pace.) He’s not entirely closing down Macduff’s grief, but he recognises the need to push the action forward; this is partly about establishing Malcolm as a decisive leader. Come, go we to the King. We can’t do anything without his blessing and permission—and of course Malcolm has been King Edward’s guest, in exile—but our power is ready. We have an army which waits only for the order to act. Our lack, the only thing we don’t have, is our leave, both our departure and our leave-taking, that permission from the King, to go and undertake this mission against Macbeth. Macbeth is ripe for shaking: it’s time, and his time’s up, like an apple that must be dislodged from a branch, which must, now, fall. The powers above put on their instruments: everything has aligned in our favour, now is the moment, and we have the backing of heaven; by doing this, we’re doing God’s work, armed by Him and the righteousness of our cause; we are the instruments, the agents of the divine will. Receive what cheer you may, Malcolm says, acknowledging that this call to arms, this action against Macbeth, doing something to end this reign of terror, finally, can only be cold comfort to Macduff. But it’s something. It’s the end of the beginning, the beginning of the end: the night is long that never finds the day. The light will return, the sun will rise, and this terrible nightmare can and will end.

Malcolm’s last two lines are arguably the only true rhyming couplet in this long, intense scene; he can sound a little glib in his sententiousness, but there’s a real sense of a drawing together, a moment of closure, grim determination and strength-gathering as the fourth act ends. An astonishing, gut-wrenching scene, in which three hitherto minor characters interrogate and explore leadership, political pragmaticism, and (above all) grief, what it might mean to be a king, a father, and a man.