Faculty of English

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 […]

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 […]

ROSS               [To Malcolm] Your eye in Scotland Would create soldiers, make our women fight To doff their dire distresses. MALCOLM      Be’t their comfort We are coming thither. Gracious England hath Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men— An older and a better soldier none That Christendom gives out. ROSS               Would I could answer This comfort […]

MALCOLM      What’s the newest grief? ROSS   That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker; Each minute teems a new one. MACDUFF      How does my wife? ROSS                           Why, well. MACDUFF      And all my children? ROSS                           Well too. MACDUFF      The tyrant has not battered at their peace? ROSS   No, they were well at peace when I […]

ROSS                                       It cannot Be called our mother, but our grave; where nothing But who knows nothing is once seen to smile; Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell Is there scarce asked ‘For who?’, and good men’s […]

Enter Ross MACDUFF      See who comes here. MALCOLM      My countryman, but yet I know him not. MACDUFF      My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither. MALCOLM      I know him now. Good God, betimes remove The means that makes us strangers! ROSS               Sir, amen. MACDUFF      Stands Scotland where it did? ROSS               Alas, poor country, Almost afraid to know itself.            […]

MACDUFF      What’s the disease he means? MALCOLM      ’Tis called the Evil. A most miraculous work in this good king, Which often since my here-remain in England I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven Himself best knows; but strangely visited people, All swoll’n and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, […]

MALCOLM      Now we’ll together, and the chance of goodness Be like our warranted quarrel. Why are you silent? MACDUFF      Such welcome and unwelcome things at once ’Tis hard to reconcile. Enter a Doctor MALCOLM      Well, more anon.—Comes the King forth, I pray you? DOCTOR         Ay, sir. There are a crew of wretched souls That stay his […]

MALCOLM                  I am yet Unknown to woman, never was forsworn, Scarcely have coveted what was mine own, At no time broke my faith, would not betray The devil to his fellow, and delight No less in truth than life. My first false speaking Was this upon myself. What I am truly Is thine and my […]

MALCOLM      Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth By many of these trains hath sought to win me Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me From over-credulous haste; but God above Deal between thee and […]