Macbeth weighs Duncan's virtues and the consequences of murder, then decides not to proceed. Lady Macbeth attacks his courage and questions his love and resolve. Macbeth recommits after she outlines a plan to drug Duncan's guards and blame them for his death.
SCENE I. Inverness. Court within the Castle.
Enter Banquo and Fleance with a torch before him.
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, ’tis later, sir.
BANQUO
Hold, take my sword.—There’s husbandry in heaven;Their candles are all out. Take thee 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 natureGives way to in repose!
Enter Macbeth and a Servant with a torch.
BANQUO
Give me my sword.—Who’s there?
MACBETH
A friend.
BANQUO
What, sir, not yet at rest? The King’s abed:He hath been in unusual pleasure andSent forth great largess to your offices.This diamond he greets your wife withal,By the name of most kind hostess, and shut upIn 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 ’tis,It shall make honour for you.
BANQUO
So I lose noneIn seeking to augment it, but still keepMy bosom franchis’d, and allegiance clear,I shall be counsell’d.
MACBETH
Good repose the while!
BANQUO
Thanks, sir: the like to you.
Exeunta stage direction indicating that two or more characters leave the stage. Banquo and Fleance.
MACBETH
Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
Exit Servant.
MACBETH
Is this a dagger which I see before me,The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:—I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.Art thou not, fatal vision, sensibleTo feeling as to sight? or art thou butA dagger of the mind, a false creation,Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?I see thee yet, in form as palpableAs this which now I draw.Thou 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 thee still;And on thy blade and dudgeonthe hilt or handle of a dagger., gouts of blood,Which was not so before.—There’s no such thing.It is the bloody business which informsThus to mine eyes.—Now o’er the one half-worldNature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuseThe curtain’d sleep. Witchcraft celebratesPale 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’sSextus Tarquinius, the Roman prince who stealthily entered Lucretia’s chamber and raped her. ravishing strides, towards his designMoves like a ghost.—Thou sure and firm-set earth,Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fearThy 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.
A bell rings.
MACBETH
I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knellThat summons thee to heaven or to hell.