Macbeth (Including The Biography of the Infamous Author). William Shakespeare

Whole as the marble, founded as the rock;

       As broad and general as the casing air:

       But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in

       To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo’s safe?

       MURDERER.

       Ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides,

       With twenty trenched gashes on his head;

       The least a death to nature.

       MACBETH.

       Thanks for that:

       There the grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled

       Hath nature that in time will venom breed,

       No teeth for the present.—Get thee gone; tomorrow

       We’ll hear, ourselves, again.

       [Exit Murderer.]

       LADY MACBETH.

       My royal lord,

       You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold

       That is not often vouch’d, while ‘tis a-making,

       ‘Tis given with welcome; to feed were best at home;

       From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;

       Meeting were bare without it.

       MACBETH.

       Sweet remembrancer!—

       Now, good digestion wait on appetite,

       And health on both!

       LENNOX.

       May’t please your highness sit.

       [The Ghost of Banquo rises, and sits in Macbeth’s place.]

       MACBETH.

       Here had we now our country’s honor roof’d,

       Were the grac’d 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 reserv’d, 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 not 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,

       Authoriz’d by her grandam. Shame itself!

       Why do you make such faces? When all’s done,

       You look but on a stool.

       MACBETH.

       Pr’ythee, 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.

       [Ghost disappears.]

       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 purg’d the gentle weal;

       Ay, and since too, murders 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 murders on their crowns,

       And push us from our stools: this is more strange

       Than such a murder 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.

       [Ghost rises again.]

       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,