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ACT V, Scene 8
Macbush, solus.
MACBUSH: It is now dead midnight.
How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!
O sleep, o gentle sleep,
How have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
The last hour of my long weary life
Is come upon me.
I have touched the highest point
Of all my greatness
And from that full meridian of my glory,
I haste now to my setting.
I shall fall like a bright exhalation in the evening.
Yet I well remember
The favours of these men: were they not mine?
Did they not sometime cry "all hail" to me?
Witness these trenches made by grief and care:
(picks up a mirror):
What, no deeper wrinkles yet?
Hath sorrow struck so many blows upon this face
And made no deeper wounds?
(smashes glass)
What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall be contented: Must he lose
The name o'king? O God, let it go!
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My scepter for a palmer's walking staff,
And my kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave, an obscure grave!
To die and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
To bathe in fiery floods, or
To reside in thick-ribbed ice,
Blown with restless violence round about.
The weariest and most loathed life
Is a paradise to what we fear of death.
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