O Scotland, Scotland!MALCOLM.
If such a one be fit to govern, speak:
I am as I have spoken.
MACDUFF.
Fit to govern!
No, not to live!—O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
Since that the truest issue of thy throne
By his own interdiction stands accurs’d
And does blaspheme his breed?—Thy royal father
Was a most sainted king; the queen that bore thee,
Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
Died every day she lived. Fare-thee-well!
These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself
Have banish’d me from Scotland.—O my breast,
Thy hope ends here!
MALCOLM.
Macduff, this noble passion,
Child of integrity, hath from my soul
Wiped the black scruples, reconcil’d 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 me! for even now
I put myself to thy direction, and
Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure
The taints and blames I laid upon myself,
For strangers to my nature. 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 poor country’s to command:
Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach,
Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men
Already at a point, was setting forth:
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 cure: their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but, at his touch,
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
They presently amend.
MALCOLM.
I thank you, doctor.
[Exit Doctor.]
MACDUFF.
What’s the disease he means?
MALCOLM.
‘Tis call’d 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 swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers: and ‘tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace.
MACDUFF.
See, who comes here?
MALCOLM.
My countryman; but yet I know him not.
[Enter Ross.]
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! It cannot
Be call’d our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks, that rent the air,
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead man’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers
