TEXT:
MALCOLM
Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.
Why in that rawness left you wife and child,
Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,
Without leave-taking? I pray you,
Let not my jealousies be your dishonours,
But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just,
Whatever I shall think.
MACDUFF
Bleed, bleed, poor country!
Great tyranny! lay thou thy basis sure,
For goodness dare not cheque thee: wear thou thy wrongs;
The title is affeered! Fare thee well, Lord:
I would not be the villain that thou think'st
For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp,
And the rich East to boot.
MALCOLM
Be not offended:
I speak not as in absolute fear of you.
I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds: I think withal
There would be hands uplifted in my right;
And here from gracious England have I offer
Of goodly thousands: but, for all this,
When I shall tread upon the tyrant's head,
Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country
Shall have more vices than it had before,
More suffer and more sundry ways than ever,
By him that shall succeed.
MACDUFF
What should he be?
MALCOLM
It is myself I mean: in whom I know
All the particulars of vice so grafted
That, when they shall be opened, black Macbeth
Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state
Esteem him as a lamb, being compared
With my confineless harms.
MACDUFF
Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned
In evils to top Macbeth.
NOTES:
Great Tyrrany
Macbeth is increasingly synonymous with tyranny - although it won’t be until Act Five that anyone calls him a tyrant to his face.
To Boot
This weird little phrase exists in English as a qualifier meaning something like “furthermore” or “as well”. It’s very old, coming to us from Middle English. Occasionally Shakespeare uses the verb ‘to boot’ with the meaning ‘to profit’ - “it boots thee not” to do something. But as an addition at the end of a line or as a qualifier, as Macduff uses it here, is fairly rare. I love hearing phrases like this - not least since it’s something I hear quite often here in Ireland.
A Lamb
Again we have the image of a lamb - Malcolm is suggesting that Macbeth will appear like a lamb when measured against his own evils. In this instance it’s probably not Isaac or Christ, so much as that most innocent and sheepish (!) of farmyard animals.