Shakespeare - Macbeth

About Shakespeare:
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 died 23 April1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as thegreatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminentdramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bardof Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several otherpoems. His plays have been translated into every major livinglanguage, and are performed more often than those of any otherplaywright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon.At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him threechildren: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer,and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men,later known as the King's Men.

He appears to have retired toStratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few recordsof Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has beenconsiderable speculation about such matters as his sexuality,religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him werewritten by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known workbetween 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies andhistories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication andartistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainlytragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, andMacbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the Englishlanguage. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known asromances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of hisplays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracyduring his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatricalcolleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of hisdramatic works that included all but two of the plays nowrecognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet andplaywright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to itspresent heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, inparticular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorianshero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George BernardShaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work wasrepeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarshipand performance. His plays remain highly popular today and areconsistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural andpolitical contexts throughout the world. Source: Wikipedia

Alarum within. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENNOX,with Attendants, meeting a bleeding SergeantDUNCAN What bloody man is that? He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.
MALCOLM This is the sergeant
Who like a good and hardy soldier fought
'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil
As thou didst leave it.
Sergeant Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon himfrom the western isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbethwell he deserves that name
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.
DUNCAN O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!
Sergeant As whence the sun 'gins his reflection
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come
Discomfort swells.

Mark, king of Scotland, mark:
No sooner justice had with valour arm'd
Compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men
Began a fresh assault.
DUNCAN Dismay'd not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
Sergeant Yes;
As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.
If I say sooth, I must report they were
As cannons overcharged with double cracks, so they
Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorise another Golgotha,
I cannot tell.
But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.
DUNCAN So well thy words become thee as thy wounds;
They smack of honour both. Go get him surgeons.
Exit Sergeant, attended Who comes here?
Enter ROSSMALCOLM The worthy thane of Ross.
LENNOX What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look
That seems to speak things strange.
ROSS God save the king!
DUNCAN Whence camest thou, worthy thane?
ROSS From Fife, great king;
Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky
And fan our people cold. Norway himself,
With terrible numbers,
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor
The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons,
Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm.
Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude,
The victory fell on us.
DUNCAN Great happiness!
ROSS That now
Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition:
Nor would we deign him burial of his men
Till he disbursed at Saint Colme's inch
Ten thousand dollars to our general use.