Macbeth Act 5 Scene 5 - Macbeth finds out Lady Macbeth is dead

Macbeth

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

ACT V SCENE V	Dunsinane. Within the castle.
[ 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.
[A cry of women within]
	What is that noise?
SEYTON	It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[Exit]
MACBETH	I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
	The time has been, my senses would have cool'd	10
	To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
	Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
	As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
	Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
	Cannot once start me.
[Re-enter SEYTON]
	Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON	The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH	She should have died hereafter;
	There would have been a time for such a word.
	To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
	Creeps in this petty pace from day to day	20
	To the last syllable of recorded time,
	And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
	The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
	Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
	That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
	And then is heard no more: it is a tale
	Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
	Signifying nothing.
[Enter a Messenger]
	Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
Messenger	Gracious my lord,	30
	I should report that which I say I saw,
	But know not how to do it.
MACBETH	Well, say, sir.
Messenger	As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
	I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
	The wood began to move.
MACBETH	Liar and slave!
Messenger	Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:
	Within this three mile may you see it coming;
	I say, a moving grove.
MACBETH	If thou speak'st false,
	Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
	Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,	40
	I care not if thou dost for me as much.
	I pull in resolution, and begin
	To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
	That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
	Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
	Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
	If this which he avouches does appear,
	There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
	I gin to be aweary of the sun,
	And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.	50
	Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
	At least we'll die with harness on our back.
[Exeunt]

Next: Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 6
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Explanatory Notes for Act 5, Scene 5
From Macbeth. Ed. Thomas Marc Parrott. New York: American Book Co.
(Line numbers have been altered.)
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In this scene more perhaps than in any other of the play the poet arouses our sympathy for Macbeth. Deserted by his followers, forced to await the attack of his enemies instead of meeting them "dareful, beard to beard," he is plunged into still greater misery by the news of his wife's sudden death. He even seems to contemplate suicide, when the shock of the messenger's report brings him back to himself. He begins at last to realize that the powers of evil have been deceiving him, and with a sudden resolution to trust henceforth to the- strength of his own arm and to die, if needs be, with harness on his back, he sallies out to meet the foe.

It is worth noting how little is said of Lady Macbeth. We hear the cry of her women and the brief report of her death, — nothing more. Shakespeare wishes at this point to concentrate all our interest and sympathy on the hero of the drama. It is not the manner of Lady Macbeth's death, but the way in which it affects her husband that he wishes us to notice.

14. slaughterous thoughts, thoughts of bloodshed.

Please click here for full soliloquy annotations and analysis.

17, 18. She should ... word, she must have died sometime; there must have come a time for such an announcement. This speech of Macbeth's does not show callous indifference to his wife's death, as some critics have supposed. It rather shows him so sunk in misery that he thinks life not worth living. He can hardly grieve for his wife's death; sooner or later she must have died, and what does it matter whether early or late? The following lines continue the same train of thought.

22. lighted, guided, as a servant with a torch guides his master.

23. Out ... brief candle. Dr. Liddell suggests that these words show that Macbeth is on the point of killing himself.

24. a walking shadow, a flitting unreality.

31. should report, am bound to report to you.

42. pull in resolution, check my courage. Such, at least, is the meaning of the words as they stand. Various emendations have, however, been proposed, of which "pall" i.e. "languish," "grow weak" is the most plausible.

43. To doubt ... fiend, to fear that the devil (who inspired the witches when they uttered their predictions) has been equivocating with me.

46. arm, and out. In his rage at having been deceived by the "fiend," Macbeth abandons his prudent plan of permitting the enemy to waste their strength in a vain siege, and sallies out to meet them. This act throws away his last chance, for it gives his men a chance to desert him (see v. 7. 25) and brings him face to face with the man who is destined to slay him.

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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_5.html >.

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The queen, my lord, is dead ... "It is one of the finest thoughts in the whole drama, that Lady Macbeth should die before her husband; for not only does this exhibit him in a new light, equally interesting morally and psychologically, but it prepares a gradual softening of the horror of the catastrophe. Macbeth, left alone, resumes much of that connection with humanity which he has so long abandoned; his thoughtfulness becomes pathetic, -- his sickness of heart awakens sympathy; and when at last he dies the death of a soldier, the stern satisfaction with which we contemplate the act of justice that destroys him is unalloyed by feelings of personal wrath or hatred. His fall is a sacrifice, not a butchery." Anon. (Edin. Rev. as quoted in Furness' Variorum Macbeth)

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