TEXT:
Enter ROSS
MACDUFF
See, who comes here?
MALCOLM
My countryman; but yet I know him not.
MACDUFF
My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
MALCOLM
I know him now. Good God, betimes remove
The means that makes us strangers!
ROSS
Sir, amen.
MACDUFF
Stands Scotland where it did?
ROSS
Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell
Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.
MACDUFF
O, relation
Too nice, and yet too true!
MALCOLM
What's the newest grief?
ROSS
That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker:
Each minute teems a new one.
MACDUFF
How does my wife?
ROSS
Why, well.
MACDUFF
And all my children?
ROSS
Well too.
MACDUFF
The tyrant has not battered at their peace?
ROSS
No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.
MACDUFF
But not a niggard of your speech: how goes't?
ROSS
When I came hither to transport the tidings,
Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour
Of many worthy fellows that were out;
Which was to my belief witnessed the rather,
For that I saw the tyrant's power a-foot:
Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
To doff their dire distresses.
MALCOLM
Be't their comfort
We are coming thither: gracious England hath
Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;
An older and a better soldier none
That Christendom gives out.
ROSS
Would I could answer
This comfort with the like! But I have words
That would be howled out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not latch them.
NOTES:
John Donne
I mentioned John Donne within this episode, hoping that perhaps there was an echo of Donne’s famous line “for whom the bell tolls” - but, as mentioned, the line, and the poem it comes from, were written at least a decade after Macbeth. The wonderful biography of Donne, also mentioned within the episode, is called Super Infinite and is by Katherine Rundell.
Niggard
This is one of the most troublesome words, even though it has no connection to the extremely abusive n-word that sounds like it. This word means a stingy or un-generous person. It comes from Middle English, and is probably of Scandinavian origin. There’s an Old Norse word hnøggr , translated as niggardly; also the Old English word hnēaw has the same meaning. NOT a word to use out of context, and one certainly that needs to be pronounced with great care in performance. It’s probably simpler and wiser to cut the word in performance, since the one it sounds like is so completely unacceptable.