HECATE         But make amends now. Get you gone, And at the pit of Acheron Meet me i’th’ morning. Thither he Will come to know his destiny. Your vessels and your spells provide, Your charms, and everything beside. I am for th’air. This night I’ll spend Unto a dismal and a fatal end. Great business must […]

Thunder. Enter the three Witches, meeting Hecate FIRST WITCHWhy, how now, Hecate? You look angrily. HECATE         Have I not reason, beldams as you are? Saucy and over-bold, how did you dare To trade and traffic with Macbeth In riddles and affairs of death, And I, the mistress of your charms, The close contriver of all […]

MACBETH                  I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er. Strange things I have in head that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scanned. LADY              You lack the season of all natures, sleep. MACBETH      Come, we’ll to sleep. […]

MACBETH      How say’st thou that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding? LADY                          Did you send to him, sir? MACBETH      I hear it by the way; but I will send. There’s not a one of them but in his house I keep a servant fee’d. I will tomorrow, And betimes I will, to the […]

ROSS               What sights, my lord? LADY              I pray you, speak not. He grows worse and worse. Question enrages him. At once, good night. Stand not upon the order of your going, But go at once. LENNOX         Good night, and better health Attend his majesty. LADY                          A kind good-night to all. Exeunt Lords [and attendants] MACBETH      […]

LADY              You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, With most admired disorder. MACBETH                  Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder? You make me strange Even to the disposition that I own, When now I think you can behold such sights And keep the natural ruby […]

MACBETH    [to the Ghost] What man dare, I dare. Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The armed rhinoceros, or th’Hyrcan tiger. Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble. Or be alive again, And dare me to the desert with thy sword; If trembling I inhabit, then protest me The baby […]

MACBETH      Avaunt and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with. LADY                          Think of this, good peers, But as a thing of custom; ’tis no other; Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.        (3.4.91-96) […]

LADY              My worthy lord, Your noble friends do lack you. MACBETH                  I do forget. Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends. I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know me. Come, love and health to all, Then I’ll sit down. [To an attendant] Give me some wine; fill full. Enter Ghost […]

MACBETH      Blood hath been shed ere now, i’th’ olden time Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal— Ay, and since, too, murders have been performed Too terrible for the ear. The time has been That when the brains were out the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again With twenty […]