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, horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!
[Ghost disappears.]
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 admir’d 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 are 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, goodnight:—
Stand not upon the order of your going,
But go at once.
LENNOX.
Goodnight; and better health
Attend his majesty!
LADY MACBETH.
A kind goodnight to all!
[Exeunt all Lords and Atendants.]
MACBETH.
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
Augurs, and understood relations, have
By magot-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 fee’d. 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
Step’t 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. The 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
