Macbeth by William Shakespeare (top ten books of all time .TXT) 📕

am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know. Exeunt. Act II Scene I

Court of Macbeth’s castle.

Enter Banquo, and Fleance bearing a torch before him. Banquo How goes the night, boy? Fleance The moon is down; I have not heard the clock. Banquo And she goes down at twelve. Fleance I take’t, ’tis later, sir. Banquo

Hold, take my sword. There’s husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!

Enter Macbeth, and a Servant with a torch.

Give me my sword.
Who’s there?

Macbeth A friend. Banquo

What, sir, not yet at rest? The king’s a-bed:
He hath been in unusual pleasure, and
Sent forth great largess to your offices.
This diamond he greets your wife withal,
By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up
In measureless content.

Macbeth

Being unprepared,
Our will became the servant to defect;
Which else should free have wrought.

Banquo

All’s well.
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
To you they have show’d some truth.

Macbeth

I think not of them:
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.

Banquo At your kind’st leisure. Macbeth

If you shall cleave to my consent, when ’tis,
It shall make honour for you.

Banquo

So I lose none
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,
I shall be counsell’d.

Macbeth Good repose the while! Banquo Thanks, sir: the like to you! Exeunt Banquo and Fleance. Macbeth

Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. Exit Servant.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. A bell rings.
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. Exit.

Scene II

The same.

Enter Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;
What hath quench’d them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern’st good-night. He is about it:
The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg’d their possets,
That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live or die.

Macbeth Within. Who’s there? what, ho! Lady Macbeth

Alack, I am afraid they have awaked,
And ’tis not done. The attempt and not the deed
Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;
He could not miss ’em. Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done’t.

Enter Macbeth. My husband! Macbeth I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise? Lady Macbeth

I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?

Macbeth When? Lady Macbeth Now. Macbeth As I descended? Lady Macbeth Ay. Macbeth

Hark!
Who lies i’ the second chamber?

Lady Macbeth Donalbain. Macbeth This is a sorry sight. Looking on his hands. Lady Macbeth A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. Macbeth

There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried “Murder!”
That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them:
But they did say their prayers, and address’d them
Again to sleep.

Lady Macbeth There are two lodged together. Macbeth

One cried “God bless us!” and “Amen” the other;
As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.
Listening their fear, I could not say “Amen,”
When they did say “God bless us!”

Lady Macbeth Consider it not so deeply. Macbeth

But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”?
I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”
Stuck in my throat.

Lady Macbeth

These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

Macbeth

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast⁠—

Lady Macbeth What do you mean? Macbeth

Still it cried “Sleep no more!” to all the house:
“Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”

Lady Macbeth

Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.

Macbeth

I’ll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on’t again I dare not.

Lady Macbeth

Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the