Macbeth
Act V, Scene 8
Another part of the field.
Lay on, Macduff, and damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”
George Alexander as Macduff and Henry Irving as Macbeth
circa 1875
- Enter Macbeth.
Macbeth
1 - 3- Why should I play the Roman fool, and die
- On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes
- Do better upon them.
- Enter Macduff.
Macduff
4- Turn, hell-hound, turn!
Macbeth
5 - 7- Of all men else I have avoided thee.
- But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d
- With blood of thine already.
Macduff
8 - 10- I have no words,
- My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain
- Than terms can give thee out!
- Fight. Alarum.
Macbeth
11 - 16- Thou losest labor.
- As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
- With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
- Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests,
- I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
- To one of woman born.
Macduff
17 - 20- Despair thy charm,
- And let the angel whom thou still hast serv’d
- Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
- Untimely ripp’d.
Macbeth
21 - 26- Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
- For it hath cow’d my better part of man!
- And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,
- That palter with us in a double sense,
- That keep the word of promise to our ear,
- And break it to our hope. I’ll not fight with thee.
Macduff
27 - 31- Then yield thee, coward,
- And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time!
- We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
- Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,
- “Here may you see the tyrant.”
Macbeth
32 - 39- I will not yield,
- To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,
- And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
- Though Birnan wood be come to Dunsinane,
- And thou oppos’d, being of no woman born,
- Yet I will try the last. Before my body
- I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
- And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”
- Exeunt fighting. Alarums.
- Enter fighting, and Macbeth slain. Macduff carries off
- Macbeth’s body.
Before my body I throw my warlike shield.
Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre, London
John Jellicoe, Herbert Railton, circa 1889