BANQUO
How goes the night, boy?
FLEANCE
The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
BANQUO
And she goes down at twelve.
FLEANCE
I take’t, later, sir.
BANQUO
Hold, take my sword.—There’s husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out. Take that too.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!
BANQUO
Give me my sword.—Who’s there?
MACBETH
A friend.
BANQUO
What, sir, not yet at rest? The King’s abed:
He been in unusual pleasure and
Sent forth great largess to your offices.
This diamond he greets your wife ,
By the name of most kind hostess, and shut up
In measureless content.
MACBETH
Being unprepar’d,
Our will became the servant to defect,
Which else should free have wrought.
BANQUO
All’s well.
I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters:
To you they have show’d some truth.
MACBETH
I think not of them:
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.
BANQUO
At your kind’st leisure.
MACBETH
If you shall cleave to my consent, when ,
It shall make honour for you.
BANQUO
So I lose none
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchis’d, and allegiance clear,
I shall be counsell’d.
MACBETH
Good repose the while!
BANQUO
Thanks, sir: the like to you.
MACBETH
Go bid mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get to bed.
MACBETH
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch :—
I have not, and yet I see still.
Art not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
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 still;
And on 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 the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep. Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s off’rings; and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.—Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it.—Whiles I threat, he lives.
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
MACBETH
I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons to heaven or to hell.