MACBETH      Come, put mine armour on, give me my staff.—

Seyton, send out—Doctor, the thanes fly from me.

Come, sir, dispatch.—If thou couldst, doctor, cast

The water of my land, find her disease,

And purge it to a sound and pristine health,

I would applaud thee to the very echo

That should applaud again. [To attendant] Pull’t off, I say!           (5.3.51-7)

Macbeth’s attention is fragmented, he can’t concentrate. Another order to an attendant, who has perhaps arrived with armour: Come, put mine armour on, give me my staff. The staff could be a spear or, more likely, a staff of office, a baton, to show that he’s the commander. (There are such interesting choices here. What are the thanes wearing? If they’re not armed, or even in military dress, then Macbeth’s going to look incongruous, out of place—which, of course, he is, and has been throughout. Everywhere except on the battle field. Are the attendants soldiers or palace servants? What about Seyton? Is he batman, sergeant, squaddie? What are all of them wearing?) Seyton, send out—repeating the instruction to send out horses, or perhaps to send for reinforcements, arms. If Seyton doesn’t move, doesn’t bustle, jump to it, then that’s a good indication that really no one is minding Macbeth any longer; they’re humouring him at best. So a switch of attention back to the Doctor, an appeal for help: Doctor, the thanes fly from me. My friends, my peers are deserting me (and fly suggests at speed, in fear). But no time to answer; he interrupts himself again, to address—Seyton? Get on with it! or another attendant, who might even be arming him, telling him to hurry. Come, sir, dispatch. Then a desperate, bitterly ironic appeal, to the Doctor whom he’s just rejected as useless. Partly it’s sarcastically reinforcing his opinion of the Doctor, but also his own despair: if thou couldst, doctor, cast the water of my land, examine the urine of Scotland (a standard diagnostic tool), find her disease, and purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo that should applaud again. If you could diagnose the problem and cure it, well, then I’d really give you a round of applause. Does Macbeth really not grasp what’s wrong, why his people are in revolt and his thanes are deserting him? Does he really not know that he is the disease and that it is he who—in a conceit already established by Malcolm and Macduff—must be purged? Is all this just mocking the Doctor? What matters most, really, is that Macbeth is incoherent, confused, out of control. The flashes of insight, as here, in his evocation of the diseased and polluted land that must be purged and purified, are more by accident or, as in the prophecies to which he is clinging, his insights are true but ironic. And now he’s decided he doesn’t want his armour on at all: pull’t off, I say! he commands whichever hapless servant has managed to buckle something on him.