LADY MACBETH
Is Banquo gone from court?
SERVANT
Ay, madam, but returns again tonight.
LADY MACBETH
Say to the King, I would attend his leisure
For a few words.
SERVANT
Madam, I will.
LADY MACBETH
Naught’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
safer to be that which we destroy,
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
LADY MACBETH
How now, my lord, why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done.
MACBETH
We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d 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,
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 further.
LADY MACBETH
Come on,
Gently my lord, sleek your rugged looks;
Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.
MACBETH
So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be you.
Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;
Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:
Unsafe the while, that we
Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,
And make our faces vizards to our hearts,
Disguising what they are.
LADY MACBETH
You must leave this.
MACBETH
O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.
LADY MACBETH
But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.
MACBETH
There’s comfort yet; they are assailable.
Then be jocund. the bat flown
His cloister’d flight, to black Hecate’s summons
The shard-born beetle, with his drowsy hums,
rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.
LADY MACBETH
What’s to be done?
MACBETH
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale!—Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to th’ rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
marvell’st at my words: but hold still;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
So, , go with me.