What we shall say we have and what we owe.
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate-20
Towards which advance the war.
Exeunt, marching.21
V.5Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with Drum and Colors.
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.4
Were they not forced with those that should be ours,5
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,6
And beat them backward home.
A cry within of women. What is that noise?
SEYTON
It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[Exit.]
MACBETH
I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cooled10
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair11
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir12
As life were in't. I have supped full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,14
Cannot once start me.15
[Enter Seyton.] Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter: