Enter with drum and colours, Macbeth, Seyton and Soldiers.

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 forc’d 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 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.

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. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 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 com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

MESSENGER. Gracious my lord, I should report that which I say I saw, But know not how to do’t.

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, I care not if thou dost for me as much.— I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th’ 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 th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone.— Ring the alarum bell!—Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

[Exeunt.]