Macbeth

by: William Shakespeare

Act 5 Scene 5

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Original Text	Modern Text
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. 5Were 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. 10The 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 15Cannot 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.

Read the Summary of Act 5, scenes 1–11

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