Sergeant monologue from Macbeth

Sergeant’s monologue

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

5The multiplying villanies of nature

Do swarm upon him.from 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:

10For brave Macbeth--well 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;

15Which 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. As whence the sun 'gins his reflection

Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,

So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come

20Discomfort 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

25Began a fresh assault. 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,

30Or memorise another Golgotha,

I cannot tell.

But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

Public domain text.