Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and soldiers, with drum and colours
MACBETH Hang out our banners on the outward walls.
The cry is still ‘They come’. Our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up.
Were they not forced with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. What is that noise?
A cry within of women
SEYTON It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[Exit] (5.5.1-8)
I don’t usually speculate about exactly where scenes are set, but the suggestion here is perhaps that this is within the castle walls, but outside, in a court, perhaps, because drum and colours and indeed soldiers would be unlikely inside a presence chamber, and the conjunction of outward walls and within suggests an inbetween space. (In most theatrical performances, it won’t matter.) Seyton’s the only named character with Macbeth, and he’s not a thane; he might be acting as an officer, but there could well be a contrast with the ordered, marching troops and the numerous named and familiar characters in the previous scene and a more ragtag, hangdog group here, despite the drum and colours. Macbeth’s defiant, though: hang out our banners on the outward walls, in a show of strength, honour, and defiance. The cry is still ‘They come’, that is, the reports from sentries or watchmen is that the forces massing against Dunsinane keep coming, more and more of them. But Macbeth’s confident that they can withstand anything: our castle’s strength will laugh a siege to scorn—hence the emphasis on the walls, that they’re safe inside, for the moment. They’re well prepared, they can stick it out. Here let them lie, those troops, let them set up their camp—they can stay there until famine and the ague eat them up, until they run out of food and get sick. Ague perhaps suggests the sort of fever associated with marshland, with damp. Then just the hint of an excuse: were they not forced with those that should be ours, we might have met them dareful, beard to beard, and beat them backward home. It’s not a fair fight; they’re forced, reinforced, with men who should be ours, on my side, who’ve turned traitor. (Farced, stuffed, is another possibility that some editors adopt; it’s a word that would be used of food, and therefore picks up the eating conceit in the previous line, a grim echo and reversal of the joke made about Polonius’s body in Hamlet; they will be eaten up by famine because they have eaten up the meat, the men that should be ours. And indeed the acknowledgement that ordinary soldiers, fighting men are expendable, cannon fodder, food for worms.) Yes, if the odds were a bit more in our favour, numbers wise, we’d be out there, dareful, brave and defiant, ready to fight them face to face, beard to beard, man to man. A bit of macho self-assertion and bravado, the beard as the sign of masculine maturity and authority, in direct comparison, perhaps, with Malcolm, young and boyish, and hence beardless. We’d send them packing, tails between their legs, beat them backward home.
A cry within of women, usually more than one voice, screaming. (The placement of the stage direction is as in the Folio; it would logically come before Macbeth’s enquiry.) What is that noise? One possibility that an actor might consider is Macbeth’s immediate terror that this is the witches, come into his castle, on the inside, having broken in—and the actors making the sound will presumably be the boys who’ve played the women’s parts. That they’re within, offstage, back in the tiring house (at the Globe at least) suggests (in the play’s spatial economy) that they’re within the castle itself, not outside the walls. And it’s grimly appropriate that this is the last occasion on which women appear, or rather don’t, in the play, to make a sound of suffering and fear, sorrow and anger. Seyton glosses it, not very helpfully, perhaps with a sneering note (it is the cry of women, my good lord, do you really need someone to tell you what it was?) and goes off to investigate (probably; exit is editorial). He could exit at a run, panicked, genuinely concerned and keen to find out what’s happened, or else slowly, doesn’t give a damn, what’s one more thing, king’s losing it, but got to humour him. Or else someone else, an underling, could be sent off (with a gesture, a nod, a silent order) to investigate, returning to whisper the news to Seyton to tell Macbeth. But not quite yet….
