Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

My noble partner You greet with present grace, and great prediction Of noble having and of royal hope,

If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate.

Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the ínsane root That takes the reason prisoner?

He labour’d in his country’s wreck, I know not; But treasons capital, confess’d and proved, Have overthrown him.

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill; cannot be good:—if ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success,

Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

There’s no art To find the mind’s construction in the face: 15 He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust.

The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself. Your highness’ part Is to receive our duties: and our duties Are to your throne and state, children and servants;

DUNCAN Welcome hither: I have begun to plant thee, and will labour To make thee full of growing.—Noble Banquo, That hast no less deserv’d, nor must be known 35 No less to have done so; let me infold thee And hold thee to my heart. BANQUO There if I grow, The harvest is your own.

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires:

“They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which 5 they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me, ‘Thane of Cawdor’; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, king that shalt be!’ This have I thought

“Thus thou must do, if thou have it: And that which rather thou dost fear to do Than wishest should be undone.”

The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here; 45 And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,

Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 55 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t.

This night’s great business into my dispatch; Which shall to all our nights and days to come Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

Only look up clear; 80 To alter favour ever is to fear:

I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, And falls on th’ other.

I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; 140 For it must seem their guilt.

What three things does drink especially provoke? PORTER Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much 190 drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:

it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon:—do not bid me speak;

Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv’d a blessèd time; for, from this instant, There’s nothing serious in mortality: 265 All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

And when we have our naked frailties hid, That suffer in exposure, let us meet, And question this most bloody piece of work, To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us: In the great hand of God I stand; and thence

a thing most strange and certain,— Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, 20 Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would make War with mankind.

Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well, 10 And set me up in hope? But hush; no more.

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. There is none but he Whose being I do fear: and, under him, 60 My Genius is rebuk’d; as, it is said, Mark Antony’s was by Caesar’s.

And not i’ the worst rank of manhood, say’t; And I will put that business in your bosoms, Whose execution takes your enemy off; Grapples you to the heart and love of us,

And I another, So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance, To mend it, or be rid on’t.

That I to your assistance do make love; Masking the business from the common eye For sundry weighty reasons.

It is concluded:—Banquo, thy soul’s flight, If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.

‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy, Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.

We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it; She’ll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice Remains in danger of her former tooth. But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly: better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to lie 25 In restless ecstasy.

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed.—Come,

[They assault BANQUO.] BANQUO 25 O, treachery!—Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! Thou mayst revenge.—O slave! [Dies. FLEANCE escapes.]

I had else been perfect; Whole as the marble, founded as the rock; 25 As broad and general as the casing air: But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.

Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn The power of man, for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.

He loves us not: He wants the natural touch: for the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.

All is the fear, and nothing is the love; 15 As little is the wisdom, where the flight So runs against all reason.

But cruel are the times, when we are traitors, And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,

Let not my jealousies be your dishonours, But mine own safeties:—you

Be comforted: 250 Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief.

Come, go we to the king; our power is ready; Our lack is nothing but our leave: Macbeth Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may; The night is long that never finds the day.

Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds 65 Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets: More needs she the divine than the physician.—