No Fear Shakespeare: Macbeth: Act 5, scene v

	Preferences Shopping Cart Checkout Help

Read the Study Guide: Macbeth
Get the book: Buy it online at Barnes & Noble
Tell a friend: Email this page

Enter MACBETH, SEYTON, and SOLDIERS, with drum and colors

MACBETH, SEYTON, and SOLDIERS enter with a drummer and flag.

	MACBETH
	Hang out our banners on the outward walls.
	The cry is still “They come!” Our castle's strength
	Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie
	Till famine and the ague eat them up.
5	Were they not forced with those that should be ours,
	We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
	And beat them backward home.

MACBETH

Hang our flags on the outer walls. Everyone keeps yelling, “Here they come!” Our castle is strong enough to laugh off their seige. They can sit out there until they die of hunger and disease. If it weren't for the fact that so many of our soldiers revolted and joined them, we could have met them out in front of the castle, man to man, and beaten them back to England.

A cry within of women

A sound of women crying offstage.

What is that noise?

What's that noise?

	SEYTON
	It is the cry of women, my good lord.

SEYTON

It's women crying, my good lord.

Exit

SEYTON exits.

	MACBETH
	I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
10	The time has been my senses would have cooled
	To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
	Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
	As life were in 't. I have supped full with horrors.
	Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
15	Cannot once start me.

MACBETH

I've almost forgotten what fear feels like. There was a time when I would have been terrified by a shriek in the night, and the hair on my skin would have stood up when I heard a ghost story. But now I've had my fill of real horrors. Horrible things are so familiar that they can't startle me.

Enter SEYTON

SEYTON comes back in.

Wherefore was that cry?

What was that cry for?

	SEYTON
	The queen, my lord, is dead.

SEYTON

The queen is dead, my lord.


IPOD SPARKNOTES Read SparkNotes on your iPod. More...	Study Guides Learn more about the subject you're studying with these related SparkNotes. Macbeth	Message Boards Ask a question on the SparkNotes community boards. Macbeth Shakespeare Staging Shakespeare's Plays	SparkCharts Printable, portable charts on this subject. Shakespeare

Help | Feedback | Make a request | Report an error | Send to a friend

You'll flip over our English Grammar Study Cards—writing out flashcards is now a thing of the past
More...

No Fear English Grammar is a step-by-step guide to English grammar presented in a fresh, lively tutorial.
More...