Act 5 sc.3 is laid in a room in the castle of Dunsinane. Macbeth is seen with the Doctor and Attendants. Macbeth sounds quite bold and desperate as he doesn't seem to bother about the reported desertions of his men. He still banks upon the assurances of the apparitions that he must be invincible and proof against all mortal attacks:
.................................let them fly all.
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounc'd me thus........
As a servant enters to report that the English force approaches, Macbeth remonstrates him in harsh, abusive terms. But the servant disappearing, Macbeth sounds a different man, full of self-reflexive melancholy:
I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not lod but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
This is another person--regretful, self-crtical, futuristic.
Further on, when Seyton confirms the servant's report, Macbeth again reverts to his hard and bold exterior:
I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
Give me my armour.
Macbeth then asks the Doctor about Lady Macbeth's state of sickness, and ventilates his desperation in the matter of her treatment:
Cure her of that:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
At the close of the scene, Macbeth sounds rather aggressively cynical, doubting the credentials of the system of medcal cure, and himself suggesting alternative treatment. He goes out for the battle defying the fear and destructiveness of impending death.
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