The Death of Lady Macbeth

 

Enter Lady Macbeth with knife.

Location: Macbeth’s castle, the kitchen.

 

                L. Macb.  This chamber that reeks of unadorned death

Will never reek of mine.  Here the fond goose

Feels the distance tween beak and tail lengthened

Across the bloody block, ere its quick life

Be shorten, e’en to a stop. My crime

Will be safe here; a companion to crimes

Upon a thousand dumb beasts and for which

No soul stands forfeit.  None shall distinguish

My blood from other blood.  I would not leave

Half digested memories as did those

Insatiable dogs that preceded me.

I would take God’s judgment straight on to Hell

Where three hags dwell.  Curse midnight’s oracles,

Hell’s own stales, had they bespoken me and

Not Macbeth, I’d have ta’en a needle

Made them cackle like chickens though it burned

Their blackened maws to speak thus.  Yet will I

Meet them and make them answer unto me

For felonies that they have incited;

Aye, and that I have incited,

And for that most foul felony which now

I commit.  And in committing I would

Laughingly leap into the boiling kettle,

The cook, with black and obscene corruption,

So to amaze, that long would he puzzle

The bones of my soup.  O’ That my fancy didst command my limbs.  Macbeth, that didst ever

Lack the courage that so becomes the man,

Now walks unafraid though all England rise

Against him.  And I, of my charms, have born

Objects of dreams that touch and hell shivers

Give unto me.  By confusion’s vild reign,

Semblance carries this day no honesty

And every whorish thought attends me now,

Mocks me in idle fashion, then “noyance”

Cries.  My lonely murther was but a thought,

And all thoughts hence have, in their sisters blood,

Been steeped.  I couldst not kill the pale image

My mother.  This is a laughing matter

Most marvell’s.  But laughter illumines life,

And I have been to long i the darkness;

Light hath become corruption to me now.

Shadows are they that recruit this hand to

Execute midnight’s judgment.  This carnal

Hand that threatens my tetchy heart makes bond

Of a ditch born bastards most cursed act;

For is not this heart the wretched mother

To this, hell’s crimson talon?  O, to be

Done with it, to pass beyond the terror.

This is my villainy, that I do fright

Myself with specters of my dying when

By a movement of this, my hand, I could

Command the darkness down.  Macbeth!  I call

To thee.  Come thou, king and night’s own harlot

Both.  Like the well skilled stale, let my darkling

Thought be your deed.  Murtherer, murther me!

O, my damnble puppet, why, thou doth

Not answer when I pull upon thy strings.

Courage! Courage! Courage!  Idle servants

Of this sepulcher harmonize their chant

To the hard flung echoes formed of the squawks

And squeals of the blameless.  Medea,

Who butchered all her pretty babes, knew no

Such slaughter.  These stones and bloody pavers

Are witness to more foul murthers than my

Poisonous dreams.  O dreams, o dreams, o foul,

Foul remembrances!  In each nights repose

To walk with figures so black as to blot

Out all light, and anon I wake to long

For sleep’s recompense.  O most cursed Dreams,

I do embrace you now and with this hand

Eclipse the sun.  All my red ambition

Doth mingle with the drained out lives of fowls

And swine,  Come night, thou cruel sister mine,

And swallow up the day.

                                                                                                                     She dies.

 

Enter two servants singing, with bottles

 

Back and side go bare, go bare,

                Both foot and hand go cold;

But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,

                Whether it be new or old

 

I cannot eat but little meat,

                My stomach is not good;

But sure I think that I can drink

                With him that wears a hood.

Though I go bare, take ye no care,

                I am nothing a-cold;

I stuff my skin so full within

                Of jolly good ale and old.

 

Back and side go bare, go bare, etc.

 

1.       Serv.  Whence came you upon this goodly wine?

2.       Serv.  Twas  given me for safe keeping by Duncan’s serving men whom our noble king hath slain. They had it of the Lady of this very castle.

1.       Serv.  No!  ‘Tis a tastier wine for the knowing.  ‘Tis a tastier mystery as well

2.         I say ‘tis best to know little and let fancy supply the rest.  Nature is a drab.  Ugly and mean is she.  ‘Tis betwixt the head piece and the cod piece lies the source of all pleasure.

1.       Serv.  ‘Tis true and for my part the latter would do.  Though methinks that peace of all sorts is t this castle as a beeve unto the tumbling billows.

2.       Serv.  Didst thou note Meggan and her beeves this day upon noon?

1.        Serv.  Though this wine weighs down my eye stops and blows a fog o’er my faculties, I would that I know no beeve named Meggan.

2.        Serv.  I prithee hear me.  No beeve say I, but Meggan, our present embassy of Ardennes.  She did bring two cows to slaughter upon command of our lord the king.  But she would not enter the yard.  Shrike, she did,  “There is evil in this castle!” and ran she from here as if from demons.  “Blood, blood!” she didst yowl as she didst run whilst her beasts stamped oafishly about at the gate that they might discover their end.

1.        Serv.  These villainous wenches are full to running over with strange thoughts.  They believe much and know little.

2.       Serv.  Me thinks they know more than their animals

1.       Serv.   ‘Tis true.  But the contest were enough to discourage a betting man.

2.       Serv.  What wench is it sleeps here, sprawled about like the vine upon which her blood did grow?

1.       Serv.  If I were not an honest man I might give her a touch to pleasure her dreams.

2.       Serv.  Me thinks she’d not mind the theft.  She sleeps like a sepulchered wench.

1.       Serv.  Even so, I do fear my conscience.  They say that to die in ones dream is never to wake.

2.       Serv.  Then let me die and at that instant cross eternities preserving border.  For her sake, me thinks it is too late.

1.       Serv.  How so?

2.       Serv.  By the blood that trickles twixt the stones, me thinks the wench is dead beforehand.

1.        Serv.  Then ‘t would be too cold for comfort.

2.       Serv.  ‘T were better we were not found i this place.  Illicit wine and murther make poor companions.

1.       Serv.  Let’s off to chambers and presently, for sleep would steal up and slay me where I would stand.

2.       Serv.  Thou art a fool.  Here lies our accuser. Though we be innocent of her end, we will be suspect if she remain where our employment daily finds us.

1.       Serv.  Very well, though thou art mad.  Where to?

2.       Serv.  To the garden

1.       Serv.  ‘Tis far.  Me thinks the nearest shadowed closet would do.

2.       Serv.  ‘Tis the garden for her or the closet for us.

1.        Serv.  E’en as thou art a cur, so am I.  I’ll aid thee with this bone.

Exuant omnes

[Cry within]