Macbeth

When shall we three meet again?

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurly-burly's done.

When the battle's lost and won.

Where the place?

Upon the battlefield, there to meet with Macbeth.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

Doubtful it stood, as two spent swimmers that do cling together

and choke their art.

'The merciless Macdonwald from the Western Isles

'of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied.'

And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

showed like a rebel's whore.

But all's too weak, for brave Macbeth...

well he deserves that name...

disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel

which smoked with bloody execution,

like valour's minion

carved out his passage till he faced the slave

which ne'er shook hands

nor bade farewell to him

till he unseamed him from the nave to the chops

and fixed his head upon our battlements.

And, to conclude,

victory fell on us.

Valiant Macbeth.

Worthy gentleman.

Great happiness.

Whence cam'st thou, noble Prince?

From Fife, great King,

where Norwegian banners flout the sky and fan our people cold,

assisted by that most disloyal traitor,

the Thane of Cawdor.

God save the King!

No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive our bosom interest.

Go pronounce his present death

and with his former title greet Macbeth.

I'll see it done.

What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

What are these?

Live you or are you aught that man may question?

Speak, if you can. What are you?

Macbeth. Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis.

Macbeth. Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor.

All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter.

Good sir,

why do you start and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?

My noble partner you greet with present grace

and great prediction of noble having and of royal hope

that he seems rapt withal.

To me you speak not.

Hail, lesser than Macbeth and greater.

Not so happy yet much happier.

Thou shalt get kings though thou be none.

So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo.

'Banquo and Macbeth,

'all hail.'

Stay, you imperfect speakers. Tell me more.

Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence

and why, upon this blasted heath,

you stop our way with such prophetic greeting.

Speak, I charge you.

The earth hath bubbles as the water has, and these are of them.

Whither are they vanished?

Into the air,

and what seemed corporal melted as breath into the wind.

Would they had stayed.

Were such things here as we do speak about?

Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?

Your children shall be kings.

You shall be king.

And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?

To the selfsame tune and words.

The King hath happily received, Macbeth,

the news of thy success.

As thick as hail came post from post

and every one did bear thy praises, in his kingdom's great defence,

and poured them down before him.

And we are sent to give thee from our royal master thanks.

And, for an earnest of a greater honour,

he bade me from him call thee Thane of Cawdor.

The Thane of Cawdor lives.

Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?

Treasons capital, confessed and proved, have overthrown him.

Do you not hope your children shall be kings

when those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me

promised no less to them?

That trusted home might yet enkindle you unto the crown

besides the Thane of Cawdor.

But 'tis strange,

and oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

the instruments of darkness tell us truths,

win us with honest trifles

to betray's in deepest consequence.

This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill,

cannot be good.

If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success,

commencing in a truth?

I am Thane of Cawdor.

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

and make my seated heart knock at my ribs

against the use of nature?

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.

If chance will have me king,

why, chance may crown me without my stir.

Hail, Macbeth.

O worthiest cousin.

More is thy due than more than all can pay.

The service and the loyalty I owe in doing it pays itself.

From hence to Inverness, and bind us further to you.

I'll be myself the harbinger

and make joyful the hearing of my wife with your approach,

so humbly take my leave.

My worthy Cawdor.

"They met me in the day of success

"and I have learned by the perfect'st report

"they have more in them than mortal knowledge.

"When I burned in desire to question them further,

"they made themselves air into which they vanished.

"Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it came missives from the King

"who all-hailed me

"Thane of Cawdor,

"by which title before these Weird Sisters saluted me

"and referred me to the coming on of time with,

"'Hail, king that shalt be."'

Come,

you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,

unsex me here

and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty.

Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall,

you murthering ministers,

wherever, in your sightless substances, you wait on nature's mischief.

Come, thick night,

and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

that my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

to cry, "Hold, hold!"

Hie thee hither that I may pour my spirits in thine ear

and chastise with the valour of my tongue

all that impedes thee from the golden round.

Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present

and I feel now the future in the instant.

My dearest love,

Duncan comes here tonight.

And when goes hence?

Tomorrow, as he purposes.

O never shall sun that morrow see!

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor,

and shalt be what thou art promised.

Yet I do fear thy nature.

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness

to catch the nearest way.

Thou wouldst be great.

Art not without ambition but without the illness should attend it.

To beguile the time, look like the time.

Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.

Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under't.

He that's coming must be provided for

and you shall put this night's great business into my dispatch

which shall, to all our nights and days to come,

give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

We will speak further.

All our service, in every point twice done and then done double.

Give me your hand. Conduct me to mine host.

We love him highly and shall continue our graces towards him.

By your leave, hostess.

My plenteous...

Up!

Up!

My plenteous joys,

wanton in fulness,

seek to hide themselves in drops of sorrow.

Sons,

kinsmen,

thanes,

and you whose places are the nearest,

know that we will establish our estate upon our eldest, Malcolm,

whom we name hereafter the Prince of Cumberland.

'The Prince of Cumberland.

'That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,

'for in my way it lies.'

If it were done when 'tis done,

then 'twere well it were done quickly.

If the assassination could trammel up the consequence

and catch with his surcease success,

that but this blow might be the be-all and end-all here.

But here upon this bank and shoal of time

we'd jump the life to come.

Does anybody know what this is?

But in these cases we still have judgement here.

That we but teach bloody instructions which return to plague the inventor.

This even-handed justice commends

the ingredience of our poisoned chalice to our own lips.

He's here in double trust.

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

strong both against the deed.

Then, as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door,