Hautboys and torches. Enter King, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus, and attendants KING   This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. BANQUO        This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heavens’ breath Smells wooingly here. No jutty, […]

LADY   Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time Look like the time: bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue. Look like th’innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t. He that’s coming Must be provided for; and you shall put This night’s great […]

Enter Macbeth LADY              Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter! Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant. MACBETH                  My dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight. LADY                          And when goes hence? MACBETH      Tomorrow, as he purposes. LADY                                                  O, never Shall […]

LADY                          Come to my woman’s breasts And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the […]

LADY MACBETH               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, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up th’accèss […]

LADY                          Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round Which fate and metaphysic aid doth seem To have thee crowned withal. Enter Messenger What is your tidings? MESSENGER              The King comes here tonight. LADY              […]

LADY              Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou […]

Enter Macbeth’s Wife, alone, with a letter LADY  [reading] ‘They met me in the day of success, and I have learned by the perfect’st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burnt in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of […]

MACBETH      [aside] The Prince of Cumberland: that is a step On which I must fall down or else o’er-leap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, […]

KING                           Sons, kinsmen, thanes, And you whose places are the nearest, know We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must Not unaccompanied invest him only, But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine On all deservers. [To Macbeth] From hence to Inverness, And bind us […]