Macbeth Act 5 Scene 4
Country near Birnam Wood.
The Original
Plain Modern English
Drum and colours. Enter Malcolm, Siward and Young Siward, Macduff, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers, marching.
Malcolm
Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.
Malcolm
Cousins, I hope the day is coming soon
when a person can sleep safely in their own bedroom again.
Menteith
We doubt it nothing.
Menteith
We don't doubt it for a second.
Siward
What wood is this before us?
Siward
What forest is this ahead of us?
Menteith
The wood of Birnam.
Menteith
Birnam Wood.
Malcolm
Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear't before him: thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host and make discovery
Err in report of us.
Malcolm
Have every soldier cut himself a branch
and carry it in front of him. That way we'll disguise
the size of our army, and their scouts
will get the count wrong.
Soldiers
It shall be done.
Soldiers
Consider it done.
Siward
We learn no other but the confident tyrant
Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure
Our setting down before 't.
Siward
All our intelligence says the overconfident tyrant
is holed up in Dunsinane, prepared to sit out
our siege.
Malcolm
'Tis his main hope:
For where there is advantage to be given,
Both more and less have given him the revolt,
And none serve with him but constrained things
Whose hearts are absent too.
Malcolm
It's his only real option:
wherever his people get half a chance,
high-ranking and low, they defect.
Nobody serves him now except conscripts
whose hearts deserted long ago.
Macduff
Let our just censures
Attend the true event, and put we on
Industrious soldiership.
Macduff
Let's save our verdicts
for the actual outcome — and until then,
be nothing but hardworking soldiers.
Siward
The time approaches
That will with due decision make us know
What we shall say we have and what we owe.
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate:
Towards which advance the war.
Siward
The hour is coming
that will settle, once and for all,
what we truly have and what we owe.
Speculation trades in shaky hopes;
only sword-strokes deliver verdicts.
So: forward, to war.
Exeunt, marching.