ACT V.

SCENE I. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

Enter a Doctor of Physick, and a waiting
Gentlewoman.

Doctor.

HAVE two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?

Gent. Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

Doct. A great perturbation in nature! to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching. In this slumbry agitation, besides her walking, and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say?

Gent. That, sir, which I will not report after her. Doct. You may, to me; and 'tis most meet you should.

Gent. Neither to you, nor any one; having no witness to confirm my speech.

Enter LADY MACBETH, with a Taper.

Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close. Doct. How came she by that light?

Gent. Why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually; 'tis her command.

Doct. You see her eyes are open.

Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut1.

Doct. What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands.

Gent. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands; I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.

Lady M. Yet here's a spot.

Doct. Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. Lady M. Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One : Two: Why, then 'tis time to do't:- Hell is murky 2! -Fye, my lord, fye! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?-Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Doct. Do you mark that?

Lady M. The thane of Fife had a wife: Where is she now?- -What, will these hands ne'er be clean? -No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.

Doct. Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.

Gent. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: Heaven knows what she has known.

1 Ay, but their sense is shut. The old copy reads, “Ay, but their sense are shut." Malone has quoted other instances of the same inaccurate grammar, according to modern notions, from Julius Cæsar :

"The posture of his blows are yet unknown." And from the hundred and twelfth Sonnet of Shakespeare: "In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critick and to flatterer stopped are."

Vide note on Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 1.

2 Hell is murky. Lady Macbeth, in her dream, imagines herself talking to her husband, who, she supposes, had just said Hell is murky, i. e. hell is a dismal place to go to in consequence of such a deed, and repeats his words in contempt of his cowardice. --"Hell is murky!-Fye, my lord, fye! a soldier, and afeard?" This explanation is by Steevens, and appears to me very judicious.

Lady M. Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand3. Oh! oh! oh!

Doct. What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.

Gent. I would not have such a heart in my bosom, for the dignity of the whole body.

Doct. Well, well, well.

Gent. 'Pray God, it be, sir.

Doct. This disease is beyond my practice: Yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds.

Lady M. Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale :-I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave.

Doct. Even so.

Lady M. To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand; What's done, cannot be undone : To bed, to bed, to bed. [Exit LADY MACBETH.

Doct. Will she go now to bed?
Gent. Directly.

3 Mrs. Siddons, whose personation of Lady Macbeth will not easily be equalled, remarks, "How beautifully contrasted is the exclamation 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' with the bolder image of Macbeth in expressing the same feeling: Will all great Neptune's ocean wash the blood clean from this hand?' And how appropriately either sex illustrates the same idea!" Fuseli observes that "Taste and smell, as sources of tragic emotion, in consequence of their power commanding gesture, seem scarcely admissible in art or on the theatre, because their extremes are more nearly allied to disgust, and loathsome or risible ideas, than to terror. The prophetic trance of Cassandra, who scents the prepared murder of Agamemnon at the threshold of the ominous hall, the desperate moan of Macbeth's queen, on seeing the visionary spot still uneffaced on her hand, are images snatched from the lap of terrors-but soon would cease to be so, were the artist or the actress to enforce the dreadful hint with indiscreet expression or gesture."

Doct. Foul whisp'rings are abroad: Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: Infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine, than the physician.God, God, forgive us all! Look after her; Remove from her the means of all annoyance, And still keep eyes upon her :-So, good night: My mind she has mated*, and amaz'd my sight: I think, but dare not speak.

Gent.

Good night, good doctor.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. The Country near Dunsinane.

Enter with Drum and Colours, Menteth, CatHNESS, ANGUS, LENOX, and Soldiers.

Ment. The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,

His uncle Siward1, and the good Macduff.

Revenges burn in them: for their dear causes
Would, to the bleeding, and the grim alarm,
Excite the mortified man?.

Ang.
Near Birnam wood
Shall we well meet them; that way are they coming.
Cath. Who knows, if Donalbain be with his brother?

My mind she has mated. Mated, or amated, from matté, old French, signified to overcome, confound, dismay, or make afraid. The word is said to be obsolete in Phillips's World of Words, 1670. See Vol. vi. p. 181, note 16.

"Duncan had two sons by his wife, who was the daughter of Siward, Earl of Northumberland."-Holinshed.

2 By the mortified man is meant a religious man; one who has mortified his passions, is dead to the world, has abandoned it, and all the affairs of it; an ascetic. So in Monsieur D'Olive, 1606:"He like a mortified hermit sits." And in Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. 1:

My loving lord, Dumain is mortified;

The grosser manner of this world's delights

He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves"

Len. For certain, sir, he is not: I have a file
Of all the gentry; there is Siward's son,
And many unrough youths, that even now
Protest their first of manhood.

Ment.

What does the tyrant?

Cath. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies:
Some say, he's mad; others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,

He cannot buckle his distemper'd coursea
Within the belt of rule.

Ang.

Now does he feel

His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands, move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Ment.

Who then shall blame

His pester'd senses to recoil, and start,
When all that is within him does condemn

Itself, for being there?

Cath.

Well, march we on,

To give obedience where 'tis truly ow'd:

Meet we the med'cine of the sickly weal;
And with him pour we, in our country's purge,
Each drop of us.

Len.

Or so much as it needs,

To dew the sovereign flower, and drown the weeds. Make we our march towards Birnam.

[Exeunt, marching.

And many unrough youths. This expression means smoothfaced, unbearded. See the Tempest:

"Till new born chins

Be rough and razorable.”

The old copies have distemper'd cause."

The correction is

by the late Mr. Sidney Walker. It also occurs in Mr. Collier's folio.

The medicine, i. e. the physician. In The Winter's Tale, Ca

millo is called by Perdita "the medecin of our house."