Macbeth Act 5 Scene 3 - Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane

Macbeth

Please see the bottom of the page for full explanatory notes and helpful resources.

ACT V SCENE III	Dunsinane. A room in the castle.
[Enter MACBETH, Doctor, and Attendants]
MACBETH	Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
	Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
	I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
	Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
	All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
	'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman
	Shall e'er have power upon thee.' Then fly,
	false thanes,
	And mingle with the English epicures:
	The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
	Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.	10
[Enter a Servant]
	The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
	Where got'st thou that goose look?
Servant	There is ten thousand--
MACBETH	Geese, villain!
Servant	Soldiers, sir.
MACBETH	Go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,
	Thou lily-liver'd boy. What soldiers, patch?
	Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine
	Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?
Servant	The English force, so please you.
MACBETH	Take thy face hence.
[Exit Servant]
	Seyton!--I am sick at heart,
	When I behold--Seyton, I say!--This push	20
	Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
	I have lived long enough: my way of life
	Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf,
	And that which should accompany old age,
	As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
	I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
	Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
	Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. Seyton!
[Enter SEYTON]
SEYTON	What is your gracious pleasure?
MACBETH	What news more?	30
SEYTON	All is confirm'd, my lord, which was reported.
MACBETH	I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
	Give me my armour.
SEYTON	'Tis not needed yet.
MACBETH	I'll put it on.
	Send out more horses; skirr the country round;
	Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.
	How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor	Not so sick, my lord,
	As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
	That keep her from her rest.
MACBETH	Cure her of that.
	Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,	40
	Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
	Raze out the written troubles of the brain
	And with some sweet oblivious antidote
	Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
	Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor	Therein the patient
	Must minister to himself.
MACBETH	Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
	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,	50
	And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
	I would applaud thee to the very echo,
	That should applaud again.--Pull't off, I say.--
	What rhubarb, cyme, or what purgative drug,
	Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?
Doctor	Ay, my good lord; your royal preparation
	Makes us hear something.
MACBETH	Bring it after me.
	I will not be afraid of death and bane,
	Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.	60
Doctor	[Aside] Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,
	Profit again should hardly draw me here.
[Exeunt]

Next: Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 4
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Explanatory Notes for Act 5, Scene 3
From Macbeth. Ed. Thomas Marc Parrott. New York: American Book Co.
(Line numbers have been altered.)
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Macbeth, who has been absent from the stage for some time, reappears in this scene. The student will note at once that he is in a different mood from that which characterized him in the earlier acts. He is no longer disturbed by "terrible dreams" and seeking to lull them by the perpetration of acts of violence. On the contrary, he relies so fully on the witches' prediction that not even the revolt of his thanes and the approach of the English army alarm him. Nevertheless he is restless, imperious, and gloomy. He has obtained all that he sought to win and is confident of the future, and yet he knows all happiness has gone out of his life.

1. reports, of the revolt of his subjects.

3. taint, be infected.

5. all mortal consequences, the future of all men.

5. me, the indirect object of "pronounced." The line contains a feminine ending before the caesura and a trisyllabic fourth foot.

8. English epicures. The hardy Scotch despised the luxurious manners of their English neighbours.

11. loon, fool, a characteristically Scottish term of abuse.

12. goose look, look of foolish fear.

15. lily-liver'd, cowardly.

15. patch, fool.

20. behold, Macbeth interrupts his speech here to call Seyton again. Perhaps he would have added some such phrase as "these cowards around me."

20, 21. This push ... now, this struggle, i.e. the approaching battle, will give me peace forever, or will at once push me from my throne.

21. disseat, dethrone.

22. way of life, course of life, or simply, life.

27. breath, flattery.

30. The unaccented syllable is wanting in the first foot of this line.

43. oblivious, causing forgetfulness.

47. Throw physic, etc. Macbeth turns impatiently from the doctor. If "physic" can do nothing, if the cure for such a sickness as Lady Macbeth's lies in the power of the patient only, Macbeth scorns the medical art. He, too, has been troubled by "thick-coming fancies," but he means to seek relief from them in action, not in a doctor's prescription.

48. staff, baton.

50. Come, sir. Probably addressed to the servant who is buckling on Macbeth's armour.

50. dispatch, be quick.

50, 51. cast The water, inspect the urine. This was an Elizabethan method of diagnosis.

52. purge ... health, cure it so that the land would be as healthy as before.

54. Pull't off. Another phrase addressed to the attendant. Macbeth's restlessness is shown in the way he orders his armour to be put on in haste, although there is no need of it, and then has it, or part of it, perhaps the helmet, taken off again. The phrase, "Bring it after me," in line 58, refers to the same piece of armour.

55. rhubard, senna. Plants from which purgative medicines are obtained.

61, 62. Were I ... here. The doctor is thoroughly frightened. Between his discovery of Lady Macbeth's terrible secrets and the rough contempt with which Macbeth has treated him, his one desire is to get out of this dangerous neighbourhood as quickly as possible.

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How to cite the explanatory notes:
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Thomas Marc Parrott. New York: American Book Co., 1904. Shakespeare Online. 10 Aug. 2010. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth_5_3.html >.

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Fall'n into the sear ... Macbeth's metaphor bears a striking resemblance to Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:

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When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang...

Sonnets 71-74 are typically analyzed as a group, linked by the poet's thoughts of his own mortality. However, Sonnet 73 contains many of the themes common throughout the entire body of sonnets, including the ravages of time on one's physical well-being and the mental anguish associated with moving further from youth and closer to death. Time's destruction of great monuments juxtaposed with the effects of age on human beings is a convention seen before, most notably in Sonnet 55. Read on...

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