What is your rant on Malcolm's "I fuck too much" speech?

I could kiss your whole face, thank you so much for this opening... okay, so...

Act Four, Scene Three.  Palace of King Edward of England, where Malcolm has been hiding and rallying the English army to take back Scotland from Macbeth.  Macduff has just shown up, and from Malcolm’s perspective this is extremely suspicious.  The last he checked, Macduff had no problem supporting Macbeth and his treachery implicitly, and he’s got a wife and son back home... why would he all of a sudden come to England?  For all Malcolm knows, he could be a spy sent to assassinate him.  So he has to test Macduff to make sure he can trust him.  And he wants to make sure Macduff actually wants a good king who’s a good person, not just Anyone Who Isn’t Macbeth.

So Malcolm’s first point is that he’s a pervert willing to invoke prima nocta (i.e. the king’s right to sleep with a bride before her husband on her wedding night) on all the women in Scotland.  “Your wives, your daughters / Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up / The cistern of my lust, and my desire / All continent impediments would o'erbear / That did oppose my will...”  He’s not saying he’s horny--he’s basically asking Macduff, “What if I was a rapist?  Would you want me as a king then?”

And Macduff’s response?

“But fear not yet To take upon you what is yours: you may Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty, And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink. We have willing dames enough: there cannot be That vulture in you, to devour so many As will to greatness dedicate themselves, Finding it so inclined.”

Needless to say, Malcolm is horrified.  So he tries a different tack, this time claiming to be a greedy land-hoarder who would “cut off the nobles for their lands / Desire his jewels and this other's house: / And my more-having would be as a sauce / To make me hunger more...”

And Macduff’s response this time?

“This avarice Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear; Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will. Of your mere own: all these are portable, With other graces weigh'd.”

Now Malcolm’s really starting to panic.  Macduff’s just admitted that he’d be totally okay, if grudgingly so, with a king who’s willing to rape and steal his way through his homeland, and our poor prince is starting to freak right the hell out.  So his last point of attack is to basically claim to have no redeeming virtues whatsoever--”the king-becoming graces / As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, / Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, / Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, / I have no relish of them, but abound / In the division of each several crime, / Acting it many ways.”  The way I remember playing this line was as a protracted panic attack, like I’m realizing that there are probably a lot of people like Macduff in Scotland and that nothing I do will make anything better.

That’s what finally gets Macduff to crack, and he comes right out and says, “Fit to govern!  No, not to live.”  He chides Malcolm for being a disgrace to his noble parents--his father was “a most sainted king” and his mother a pious and selfless woman who “died every day she lived”--and if he really is everything he claims he is, he should never come back to Scotland.  Now it’s popular to play Duncan as an abusive Stage Dad--that’s the way our production played the character--but in the absence of Malcolm’s mother as a physical presence, we can only assume that what Macduff says about her is true.

After that reminder of his true virtue, Malcolm comes clean about the ruse--he admits that Macbeth has left him with no one to trust and that he had to make absolutely sure that Macduff’s heart was in the right place.  And he admits to Macduff the kind of person he really is:

“I am yet Unknown to woman, never was forsworn, Scarcely have coveted what was mine own, At no time broke my faith, would not betray The devil to his fellow and delight No less in truth than life: my first false speaking Was this upon myself: what I am truly, Is thine and my poor country's to command..”

Those last few lines, moreso than the “yet unknown to woman” bit (insert virgin joke here), are what really speak to Malcolm’s character.  He’s an honest person who values integrity and truly wants to help people.  In a play full of characters mostly out for their own gain (Banquo wants his children to be kings to secure his legacy, Macduff wants to avenge his family, Lady Macbeth wants to share her husband’s power), that’s what makes him stand out--my director referred to him as a “Steve Rogers surrounded by Tony Starks”.  We even saw this in earlier scenes with Malcolm showing empathy and care toward the sergeant who saved his life and even the enemy commander before he was executed.  And while I understand why directors are so often tempted to cut the scene, I get frustrated when they do because you lose this huge chunk of Malcolm’s character.  Why should we root for this rando to take the throne away from Macbeth?

This is why.  Because he’s Macbeth’s polar opposite.