TEXT:
SCENE II. A camp near Forres.
Alarum within. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENNOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant
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!
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil
As thou didst leave it.
Sergeant
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
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him - from the western isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Showed like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name -
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.
DUNCAN
O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!
Sergean
As whence the sun 'gins his reflection
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring whence comfort seemed to come
Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark:
No sooner justice had with valour armed
Compelled these skipping kerns to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord surveying vantage,
With furbished arms and new supplies of men
Began a fresh assault.
DUNCAN
Dismayed not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
NOTES:
The Tragedy of Cleopatra
Samuel Daniel’s play The Tragedy of Cleopatra was published in 1594, over a decade before Macbeth. The passage describing Antony and Cleopatra as swimmers clinging to each other in mutually-assured desctuction is as follows:
And since we took of either such firm hold
In th' overwhelming seas of fortune cast,
What power should be of power to reunfold
The arms of our affections locked so fast,
For grapling in the Ocean of our pride,
We suncke each others greatnesse both together;
And both made shipwracke of our fame beside,
Both wrought a like destruction unto either…
Kerns
The word kern is an adaptation of the Middle Irish word ceithern, which means a collection of people, more specifically fighting men. An individual member is a ceithernach. Kerns were called “uncivil” in Shakespeare’s own Henry IV Part 2, and in Macbeth we get a sense that they aren’t terribly reliable - they fight for money rather than for country, and our last image is of them “skipping” away.. Have a look for “The Image of Irelande” - an engraving from 1581 - and you’ll see a very famous depiction of them.
Gallowglasses
Another kind of mercenary - this word can apply to Irish and Scottish fighters. (It was originally Scottish, but fast came to apply to Irish fighters too.
Western Isles
Most likely the Hebrides, but of course Ireland is also to the west of Scotland.
MacDonald / Makdonwald
In Holinshed’s Chronicles, there’s considerably more detail about the skirmishes in Scotland during Duncan’s reign. MacDonald’s rebellion is separate to the attack from the Norwegians - and Shakespeare chooses to ignore further aggressions from the Danes. (King James’ wife was Danish, as discussed during our trek through Hamlet, and so perhaps he opted to leave them out of this ghastly bloodbath…) It is true to Holinshed (and history) that Macbeth defeated MacDonald.
Banquo
*shocker* Banquo - Thane of Lochabar - was not a historical figure. He appears in Holinshed as if he were one, but apparently this is a fiction cooked up by another ‘historian’ Hector Boece. Boece wrote A History of Scotland in 1526, and fabricated Banquo’s importance as a means of legitimising the claim of his patron, King James the Fifth (grandfather of James the Sixth, the First of England.) The more you know…!