Then, if I have much love, I’ll give you some.
DUMAINE I’ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.
KATHERINE Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.
[They converse apart.]
LONGAVILLE What says Maria?
MARIA At the twelvemonth’s end
I’ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
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LONGAVILLE
I’ll stay with patience, but the time is long.
MARIA The liker you; few taller are so young.
[They converse apart.]
BEROWNE Studies, my lady? Mistress, look on me.
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble suit attends thy answer there.
830
Impose some service on me for thy love.
ROSALINE Oft have I heard of you, my lord Berowne,
Before I saw you, and the world’s large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,
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Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit.
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain
And therewithal to win me, if you please –
Without the which I am not to be won –
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You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.
BEROWNE
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To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be, it is impossible.
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
ROSALINE Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
850
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears,
Deafed with the clamours of their own dear groans,
855
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.
BEROWNE A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,
860
I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
PRINCESS [to the King]
Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take my leave.
KING No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
BEROWNE Our wooing doth not end like an old play:
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Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
KING Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day,
And then ’twill end.
BEROWNE That’s too long for a play.
Enter ARMADO, the Braggart.
ARMADO Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me –
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PRINCESS Was not that Hector?
DUMAINE The worthy knight of Troy.
ARMADO I will kiss thy royal finger and take leave. I am
a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the
plough for her sweet love three year. But, most
875
esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the
two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl
and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of
our show.
KING Call them forth quickly; we will do so.
880
ARMADO Holla! Approach.
Enter all.
This side is Hiems, winter; this Ver, the spring: the
one maintained by the owl, th’other by the cuckoo.
Ver, begin.
The Song.
VER When daisies pied and violets blue
885
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men; for thus sings he:
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‘Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws
And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,
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When turtles tread and rooks and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he:
‘Cuckoo!
900
Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
HIEMS When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
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And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
‘Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!’
A merry note,
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While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
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When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
‘Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!’
A merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
920
ARMADO The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way. Exeunt.
Macbeth
Macbeth was first published as the sixth of the tragedies in the First Folio in 1623, but it is generally thought to have been written around 1606, quite early in the reign of James VI of Scotland, who succeeded to the English throne in 1603, becoming James I of England. Also in 1603, James became the patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, who changed their name from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the King’s Men. In addition to its Scottish setting, the play has further links with the King, who traced his ancestry to Macbeth’s fellow-thane Banquo, prided himself on his ability to cure the King’s evil (as the English King is said to do in 4.3), and took an interest in witchcraft, having published a book on the topic, the Daemonology, in 1599. Macbeth seems to have been written after Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, but before Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Its concern with the murder of a king links it with history plays like Richard II as well as with Hamlet.
The text that was printed in the Folio is unusually short compared with the other tragedies and may have been cut for performance at some point between 1606 and 1623. It also contains some passages which have long been held to be interpolations from another hand: the passages in question are 3.5 and parts of 4.1. These passages involve Hecate, Queen of the Witches, who does not appear elsewhere, and they are written mainly in octosyllabic couplets rather than in iambic pentameter. They call for the performance of two songs: just the opening words are cited but the songs appear in full in a play called The Witch by Thomas Middleton, who is thought by many scholars to have been responsible for the interpolations. Some scholars today credit him as the ’adapter’ of Macbeth.
Shakespeare’s principal source was the Scottish section of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), which he had used for his English history plays. In this case the accounts of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (covering the years 1034 to 1057) were used, together with an account of an earlier king, Duff, who w
as killed at Forres by his thane Donwald and his wife. Shakespeare compresses the time-scale of events and somewhat idealizes Duncan as a king. He also idealizes Banquo, who is Macbeth’s co-conspirator in Holinshed; this is not surprising, since James I traced his ancestry to Banquo and Fleance. He follows up his experiment with the introduction of a comic character - the Fool - in King Lear by inventing the Porter, whose role derives ultimately from the medieval mystery plays which dramatized Christ’s descent into Hell and featured comic devils as gatekeepers. The jokes about ’equivocation’ in the Porter’s monologue in 2.3 may be a topical reference to the post- Gunpowder Plot trial of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, who famously equivocated under interrogation.
The play has always been popular on the stage, though at the same time it has been regarded as unlucky in the theatre, where it is never named but always referred to superstitiously as ’the Scottish play’. William Davenant rewrote it in quasi-operatic mode in 1666 but David Garrick restored much of Shakespeare’s text (though not the Porter) in 1744. Lady Macbeth is one of the best roles in Shakespearean tragedy for a mature actress, and many have triumphed in the part, from Sarah Siddons to Ellen Terry and Judi Dench. Nineteenthcentury productions were often burdened with elaborately ’authentic’ scenery and costumes, while simpler styles of staging in the twentieth century often served to emphasize the claustrophobic intensity of the play and substituted psychological for pictorial realism. Modern productions and films use special effects and lighting (or rather darkness) to create the atmosphere that must have been evoked by the language and sound effects alone in early daylight performances at the Globe.
The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
DUNCAN
King of Scotland
his sons
generals of the King’s army
noblemen of Scotland
FLEANCE
son to Banquo
SIWARD
Earl of Northumberland, general of the English forces
YOUNG SIWARD
his son
SEYTON
an officer attending on Macbeth
BOY
son to Macduff
English DOCTOR
Scottish DOCTOR
SOLDIER
PORTER
OLD MAN
LADY MACBETH
LADY MACDUFF
GENTLEWOMAN
attending on Lady Macbeth
HECATE
THREE WITCHES
Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Witches, Attendants and Messengers
The Ghost of Banquo and other Apparitions
1.1 Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.
1 WITCH When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
2 WITCH When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
3 WITCH That will be ere the set of sun.
5
1 WITCH Where the place?
2 WITCH Upon the heath.
3 WITCH There to meet with Macbeth.
1 WITCH I come, Graymalkin!
2 WITCH Paddock calls.
3 WITCH Anon!
10
ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air. Exeunt.
1.2 Alarum within. Enter KING DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with attendants, meeting a bleeding Captain.
DUNCAN What bloody man is that? He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.
MALCOLM This is the Sergeant,
Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought
‘Gainst my captivity. – Hail, brave friend!
5
Say to the King the knowledge of the broil,
As thou didst leave it.
CAPTAIN Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald
(Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
10
The multiplying villainies of nature
Do swarm upon him) from the western isles
Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied;
And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show’d like a rebel’s whore: but all’s too weak;
15
For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smok’d with bloody execution,
Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage,
Till he fac’d the slave;
20
Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements.
DUNCAN O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!
CAPTAIN As whence the sun ‘gins his reflection,
25
Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring, whence comfort seem’d to come,
Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark:
No sooner justice had, with valour arm’d,
Compell’d these skipping Kernes to trust their heels,
30
But the Norweyan Lord, surveying vantage,
With furbish’d arms, and new supplies of men,
Began a fresh assault.
DUNCAN Dismay’d not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
CAPTAIN Yes;
As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.
35
If I say sooth, I must report they were
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 337
