With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here.
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust :
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Dun-
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Your heart, old man!-- forgive-ha! on your Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'efleaps itself,
And falls on the other.
We will proceed no farther in this business: He hath honored me of late; and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon.
LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk, Wherein you dressed yourself? hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely? From this time, Art thou afeard
Such I account thy love.
To be the same in thine own act and valor,
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would,"
Like the poor cat i' the adage?
MACB.
I dare do all that may become a man ;
Who dares do more is none.
LADY M.
What beast was 't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place,
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both :
They have made themselves, and that their fit-
МАСВЕТН. If it were done, when 't is done, Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
It were done quickly if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
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-oppresséd 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 curtained sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
MACB. [Looking on his hands.] This is a sorry sight.
LADY M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. MACB. 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 addressed
them
Again to sleep.
LADY M. There are two lodged together.
MACB. One cried, "God bless us !" and,
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands.
"Amen,"
Listening their fear, I could not say,
"God bless us."
When they did say,
Consider it not so deeply.
MACB. But wherefore could not I pronounce
Macbeth does murder sleep," - the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy Chief nourisher in life's feast,
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.
What do you mean?
LADY M.
MACB. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all
the house :
"Glamis hath murdered sleep; and therefore
Cawdor
LADY M. 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.
MACB.
I have done the deed. -Didst thou not hear a I am afraid to think what I have done;
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal; For it must seem their guilt.
And make our faces vizards to our hearts, Disguising what they are.
With them they think on? Things without remedy,
Should be without regard: what's done, is done.
MACB. We have scotched the snake, not killed 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
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him farther!
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Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond
Which keeps me pale!- Light thickens; and
the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood :
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night's black agents to their prey do rouse.
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,
Ere human statute purged the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been performed
Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now, they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.
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 owe, When now I think you can behold such sights, And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, When mine are blanched with fear.
Seyton! I am sick at heart, When I behold-Seyton, I say! This push Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now. I have lived long enough my way of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not.
[A cry within of women. | You all can witness when that she went forth
It was a holiday in Rome; old age
Forgot its crutch, labor its task, — all ran,
And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried,
"There, there's Lucretia!" Now look ye where
she lies!
SEYTON. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
MACB, I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek: and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir,
As life were in't: I have supped full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me. Wherefore was that cry?
SEY. The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACE. She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
LUCIUS JUNIUS BRUTUS'S ORATION
OVER THE BODY OF LUCRETIA.
That beauteous flower, that innocent sweet rose,
Torn up by ruthless violence, gone! gone! gone!
Say, would you seek instruction? would ye ask
What ye should do? Ask ye yon conscious walls,
Which saw his poisoned brother,
Ask yon deserted street, where Tullia drove
O'er her dead father's corse, 't will cry, Revenge!
Ask yonder senate-house, whose stones are purple
With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge!
Go to the tomb where lies his murdered wife,
And the poor queen, who loved him as her son,
Their unappeased ghosts will shriek, Revenge!
The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heavens,
The gods themselves, shall justify the cry,
And swell the general sound, Revenge! Revenge!
And we will be revenged, my countrymen !
Brutus shall lead you on; Brutus, a name
Which will, when you 're revenged, be dearer to
him
Than all the noblest titles earth can boast.
Brutus your king! No, fellow-citizens ! If mad ambition in this guilty frame
WOULD you know why I summoned you to- Had strung one kingly fibre, yea, but one,
Ask ye what brings me here? Behold this dagger,
Clotted with gore! Behold that frozen corse !
See where the lost Lucretia sleeps in death!
She was the mark and model of the time,
The mould in which each female face was formed,
The very shrine and sacristy of virtue !
Fairer than ever was a form created
By youthful fancy when the blood strays wild,
And never-resting thought is all on fire!
The worthiest of the worthy! Not the nymph
Who met old Numa in his hallowed walks,
And whispered in his ear her strains divine,
Can I conceive beyond her; the young choir
Of vestal virgins bent to her. 'Tis wonderful
Amid the darnel, hemlock, and base weeds,
Which now spring rife from the luxurious com-
post
Gentlemen all, alas! what shall I say?
My credit now stands on such slippery ground,
That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,
Either a coward or a flatterer.
That I did love thee, Cæsar, O, 't is true:
If, then, thy spirit look upon us now,
Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death,
To see thy Antony making his peace,
Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,
Most noble in the presence of thy corse?
Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,
Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,
It would become me better, than to close
In terms of friendship with thine enemies.
Pardon me, Julius!- Here wast thou bayed, brave
hart;
Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,
Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy lethe.
O world, thou wast the forest to this hart;
And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee.
How like a deer, stricken by many princes,
Dost thou here lie?
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious :
If it was so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,)
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me :
But Brutus says he was ambitious ;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept :
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!- Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might Have stood against the world: now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters! if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honorable men : I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you, Than I will wrong such honorable men. But here's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar, I found it in his closet, - 't is his will: Let but the commons hear this testament, (Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,) And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood; Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy,
4 CITIZEN. We 'll hear the will: read it, Mark Antony.
CITIZENS. The will, the will! we will hear Cæsar's will.
ANT. Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men ;
And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad:
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs,
For if you should, O, what would come of it!
4 CIT. Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony; You shall read us the will, - Cæsar's will.
ANT. Will you be patient? Will you stay a while?
I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it.
I fear I wrong the honorable men
Whose daggers have stabbed Cæsar; I do fear it.
4 CIT. They were traitors: honorable men!
CIT. The will! the testament !
2 CIT. They were villains, murderers: the will! read the will!
ANT. You will compel me, then, to read the will?
Then make a ring about the corse of Cæsar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave? CITIZENS. Come down.
ANT. Nay, press not so upon me; stand far off. CITIZENS. Stand back; room; bear back. ANT. If you have tears, prepare to shed them
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