Oil on canvas, 29.5 x 39.5 inches. The collection of Mr. and Mrs. Sandor Korein.
Simple prose rendering of the sergeant’s speech
Text
Sergeant: 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
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him—from the western isles
Of kerns and gallow glasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Showed like a rebel’s whore: but all’s too weak
For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carv’d out of his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which 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.
Prose rendering
The outcome of the battle was indecisive as the opposing armies fought together in a terrible encounter to the point of exhaustion like two drowning swimmers who hinder each other’s efforts to save themselves while clinging to each other. MacDonwald, the cruel chief with the true spirit of a rebel, and brimful with vices, gets strength as a company of foot soldiers and peasants from the islands on the west coast join him in the attack. That fortune is fickle is proved by her favouring his unworthy cause as if she is the mistress of the rebel. However, the valiant Macbeth was not discouraged, well did he deserve the title, challenged fortune, and, brandishing the reddened sword dripping the blood of the slain, made a passage through the enemy. He seemed to be the very darling of valour and presently came face to face with the rebel himself. Then neither greeting him nor bidding farewell to him, he ripped the man through his stomach to the cheeks, cut off his head fixing the same on our castle walls.
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