The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (moboreader .TXT) 📕

MACBETH. Sweet remembrancer!

Now good digestion wait on appetite,

And health on both!

LENNOX. May’t please your Highness sit.

The Ghost of Banquo enters and sits in Macbeth’s place.

MACBETH. Here had we now our country’s honor roof’d, Were the graced person of our Banquo present, Who may I rather challenge for unkindness Than pity for mischance!

ROSS. His absence, sir,

Lays blame upon his promise. Please’t your Highness To grace us with your royal company?

MACBETH. The table’s full.

LENNOX. Here is a place reserved, sir.

MACBETH. Where?

LENNOX. Here, my good lord. What is’t that moves your Highness?

MACBETH. Which of you have done this?

LORDS. What, my good lord?

MACBETH. Thou canst not say I did it; never shake Thy gory locks at me.

ROSS. Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is well.

LADY MACBETH. Sit, worthy friends; my lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep seat.

The fit is momentary; upon a thought

He will again be well. If much you note him, You shall offend him and extend his passion.

Feed, and regard him not-Are you a man?

MACBETH. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appal the devil.

LADY MACBETH. O proper stuff!

This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which you said Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, Impostors to true fear, would well become A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,

Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!

Why do you make such faces? When all’s done, You look but on a stool.

MACBETH. Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?

Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.

If charnel houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites. Exit Ghost.

LADY MACBETH. What, quite unmann’d in folly?

MACBETH. If I stand here, I saw him.

LADY MACBETH. Fie, for shame!

MACBETH. Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ the olden time, Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform’d 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 mortal murthers on their crowns, And push us from our stools. This is more strange Than such a murther is.

LADY MACBETH. 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. Give me some wine, fill full.

I drink to the general joy o’ the whole table, And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss.

Would he were here! To all and him we thirst, And all to all.

LORDS. Our duties and the pledge.

Re-enter Ghost.

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 MACBETH. Think of this, good peers, But as a thing of custom. ‘Tis no other, Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

MACBETH. What man dare, I dare.

Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm’d rhinoceros, or the 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 of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!

Unreal mockery, hence! Exit Ghost.

Why, so, being gone,

I am a man again. Pray you sit still.

LADY MACBETH. 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 owe

When now I think you can behold such sights And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks When mine is blanch’d with fear.

ROSS. What sights, my lord?

LADY MACBETH. 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 MACBETH. A kind good night to all!

Exeunt all but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

MACBETH. will have blood; they say blood will have blood.

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak; Augures and understood relations have By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth The secret’st man of blood. What is the night?

LADY MACBETH. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

MACBETH. How say’st thou, that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding?

LADY MACBETH. 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 feed. I will tomorrow, And betimes I will, to the weird sisters.

More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know, By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good All causes shall give way. I am in blood Stepp’d 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 scann’d.

LADY MACBETH. You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

MACBETH. Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.

We are yet but young in deed. Exeunt.

SCENE V.

A heath. Thunder.

Enter the three Witches, meeting Hecate.

FIRST WITCH. Why, how now, Hecate? You look angerly.

HECATE. Have I not reason, beldams as you are, Saucy and overbold? 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 harms,

Was never call’d to bear my part,

Or show the glory of our art?

And, which is worse, all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son,

Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you.

But make amends now. Get you gone,

And at the pit of Acheron

Meet me i’ the morning. Thither he

Will come to know his destiny.

Your vessels and your spells provide, Your charms and everything beside.

I am for the air; this night I’ll spend Unto a dismal and a fatal end.

Great business must be wrought ere noon: Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound; I’ll catch it ere it come to ground.

And that distill’d by magic sleights

Shall raise such artificial sprites

As by the strength of their illusion

Shall draw him on to his confusion.

He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear.

And you all know security

Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

Music and a song within, “Come away, come away.”

Hark! I am call’d; my little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me. Exit.

FIRST WITCH. Come, let’s make haste; she’ll soon be back again.

Exeunt.

SCENE VI.

Forres. The palace.

Enter Lennox and another Lord.

LENNOX. My former speeches have but hit your thoughts, Which can interpret farther; only I say Thing’s have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan Was pitied of Macbeth; marry, he was dead.

And the right valiant Banquo walk’d too late, Whom, you may say, if’t please you, Fleance kill’d, For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.

Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain

To kill their gracious father? Damned fact!

How it did grieve Macbeth! Did he not straight, In pious rage, the two delinquents tear That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?

Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too, For ‘twould have anger’d any heart alive To hear the men deny’t. So that, I say, He has borne all things well; and I do think That, had he Duncan’s sons under his key-As, an’t please heaven, he shall not -they should find What ‘twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

But, peace! For from broad words, and ‘cause he fail’d His presence at the tyrant’s feast, I hear, Macduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell Where he bestows himself?

LORD. The son of Duncan,

From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth, Lives in the English court and is received Of the most pious Edward with such grace That the malevolence of fortune nothing Takes from his high respect. Thither Macduff Is gone to pray the holy King, upon his aid To wake Northumberland and warlike Siward; That by the help of these, with Him above To ratify the work, we may again

Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights, Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives, Do faithful homage, and receive free honors-All which we pine for now. And this report Hath so exasperate the King that he

Prepares for some attempt of war.

LENNOX. Sent he to Macduff?

LORD. He did, and with an absolute “Sir, not I,”

The cloudy messenger turns me his back, And hums, as who should say, “You’ll rue the time That clogs me with this answer.”

LENNOX. And that well might

Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel Fly to the court of England and unfold His message ere he come, that a swift blessing May soon return to this our suffering country Under a hand accursed!

LORD. I’ll send my prayers with him.

Exeunt.

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ACT IV. SCENE I.

A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder.

Enter the three Witches.

FIRST WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

SECOND WITCH. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

THIRD WITCH. Harpier cries, “‘Tis time, ‘tis time.”

FIRST WITCH. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

THIRD WITCH. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat and slips of yew

Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,

Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab.

Add thereto a tiger’s chawdron,

For the ingredients of our cawdron.

ALL. Double, double, toil