Macbeth

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?

Macbeth (c.1605) is a play by William Shakespeare. It is often seen as an archetypal tale of the desire for power and the betrayal of loyalty.

Act I

• First Witch: When shall we three meet again
  In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
  Second Witch: When the hurly-burly's done,
  When the battle's lost and won.
  Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
  First Witch: Where's the place?
  Second Witch: Upon the heath
  Third Witch:There to meet with Macbeth.
  
  First Witch: I come, Graymalkin!
  Second Witch: Paddock calls.
  Third Witch: Anon.
  
  • Scene I

• Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
  Hover through the fog and filthy air.
  • Witches, Scene I

• The merciless Macdonwald
  (Worthy to be a rebel, — for, to that,
  The multiplying villainies of nature
  Do swarm upon him) 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 brandish'd steel,
  Which smoked with bloody execution,
  Like valour's minion,
  Carv'd out his passage.
  • Captain, Scene II

• A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
  And munched, and munched, and munched:
  Give me, quoth I:
  Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon cries.
  • First Witch, Scene III

• Sleep shall neither night nor day
  Hang upon his pent-house lid.
  • First Witch, Scene III

• So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• First Witch: All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
  Second Witch: All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
  Third Witch: All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter.
  • Scene III

• If you can look into the seeds of time,
  And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
  Speak.
  • Banquo, Scene III

• The earth hath bubbles, as water has,
  And these are of them.
  • Banquo, Scene III

• Or have we eaten on the insane root
  That takes the reason prisoner?
  • Banquo, Scene III

• 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.
  • Banquo, Scene III

• If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
  without my stir.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• Come what come may,
  Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• Nothing in his life
  Became him like the leaving it; he died
  As one that had been studied in his death,
  To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,
  As 'twere a careless trifle.
  • Malcolm, Scene IV

• There's no art
  To find the mind's construction in the face:
  He was a gentleman on whom I built
  An absolute trust.
  • Duncan, Scene IV

• Stars, hide your fires!
  Let not light see my black and deep desires.
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
  What thou art promised. Yet do I 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.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene V

• The raven himself is hoarse
  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
  Under my battlements. 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; make thick my blood,
  Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
  That no compunctious visitings of nature
  Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
  The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
  And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
  Wherever in your sightless substances
  You wait on nature's mischief!
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene V

• Look like the innocent flower,
  But be the serpent under it.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene V

• 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 the end-all here,
  But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
  We'd jump the life to come.
  • Macbeth, Scene VII

• I have no spur
  To prick the sides of my intent, but only
  Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
  And falls on the other.
  • Macbeth, Scene VII

• I dare do all that may become a man;
  Who dares do more, is none.
  • Macbeth, Scene VII

• I have given suck, and know
  How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
  I would, while it was smiling in my face,
  Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
  And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn
  As you have done to this.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene VII

• Macbeth: If we should fail —
  Lady Macbeth: We fail!
  But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
  And we'll not fail.
  • Scene VII

• Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
  False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
  • Macbeth, Scene VII
• What a haste looks through his eyes!
  • Lennox

Act II

• The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
  • Fleance, Scene I

• There's [husbandry]] in heaven;
  Their candles are all out.
  • Macbeth Banquo, Scene I

• Merciful powers!
  Restrain in me the cursèd thoughts that nature
  Gives way to in repose.
  • Banquo, Scene I

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?

• 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, sensible
  To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
  A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
  Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
  I see thee yet, in form as palpable
  As this which now I draw.
  • Macbeth, Scene I

• Now o'er the one-half world
  Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
  The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
  Pale Hecate's offerings.
  • Macbeth, Scene I

• Thou sure and firm-set earth,
  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
  The very stones prate of my where-about.
  • Macbeth, Scene I

• I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
  Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
  That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.
  • Macbeth, Scene I

• Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
  Macbeth does murder sleep, — the innocent sleep;
  Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
  The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
  Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
  Chief nourisher in life's feast.
  • Macbeth, Scene II

• Infirm of purpose!
  Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
  Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood
  That fears a painted devil.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene II

• What hands are here, ha? They pluck out mine eyes.
  Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
  Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
  The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
  Making the green one red.
  • Macbeth, Scene II

• Porter: Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
  Macduff: What three things does drink especially provoke?
  Porter: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
  • Scene III

• Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
  Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
  The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence
  The life o' the building!
  • Macduff, Scene III

• Ring the alarum-bell. Murder and treason!
  Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake!
  Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
  And look on death itself! up, up, and see
  The great doom's image!
  • Macduff, Scene III

• Had I but died an hour before this chance
  I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
  There's nothing serious in mortality:
  All is but toys; renown and grace is dead;
  The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
  Is left this vault to brag of.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate and furious,
  Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
  The expedition of my violent love
  Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,
  His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood,
  And his gash'd stabs looked like a breach in nature,
  for Ruin's wasteful entrance. There, the murderers;
  Steeped in the colors of their trade, their very daggers
  unmannerly breached with gore. Who could refrain,
  That had a heart to love, and in that heart,
  Courage to make's love known?
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• In the great hand of God I stand; and thence
  Against the undivulg'd pretence I fight
  Of treasonous malice!
  • Banquo, Scene III

• To show an unfelt sorrow is an office
  Which the false man does easy.
  • Malcolm, Scene III

• A falcon, touring in her pride of place,
  Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
  • Old Man, Scene IV

• Here comes the good Macduff. —
  How goes the world, sir, now?
  • Ross, Scene IV

• God's benison go with you; and with those
  That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!
  • Old Man, Scene IV

Act III

• I must become a borrower of the night
  For a dark hour or twain.
  • Banquo, Scene I

• To be thus is nothing,
  But to be safely thus.
  • Macbeth, Scene I

• Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
  And put a barren sceptre in my grip,
  Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
  No son of mine proceeding.
  • Macbeth, Scene I

• First Murderer: We are men, my liege.
  Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.
  • Scene I

• Second Murderer: I am one, my liege,
  Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
  Have so incens'd, that I am reckless what I do
  To spite the world.
  First Murderer: And I another,
  So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune,
  That I would set my life on any chance,
  To mend it, or be rid on't.
  • Scene I

• Naught's had, all's spent
  Where our desire is got without content.
  'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
  Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene II

• Things without all remedy
  Should be without regard: what's done is done.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene II

• We have scotch'd the snake, not killed it.
  • Macbeth, Scene II
  • Variant: We have scorch'd the snake, not killed it.

• 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.
  • Macbeth, Scene II

• Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown
  His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons
  The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
  Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
  A deed of dreadful note.
  • Macbeth, Scene II

• Come, seeling night,
  Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
  And with thy bloody and invisible hand,
  Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
  Which keeps me pale! — Light thickens; and the crow
  Makes wing to the rooky wood.
  Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
  While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
  • Macbeth, Scene II

• Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
  • Macbeth, Scene II

• Banquo: It will be rain to-night.
  First Murderer: Let it come down.
  Banquo: O, treachery! — Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!
  Thou mayst revenge. — O, slave!
  • Scene III

• Now spurs the lated traveller apace
  To gain the timely inn; and near approaches
  The subject of our watch.
  • First Murderer, Scene III

• But now, I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in
  To saucy doubts and fears.
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
  And health on both!
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
  Thy gory locks at me.
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• Lady Macbeth: Are you a man?
  Macbeth: Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
  Which might appall the devil.
  • Scene IV

• I drink to the general joy o' the whole table,
  And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;
  Would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst,
  And all to all.
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• 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!
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• Stand not upon the order of your going,
  But go at once.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene IV

• It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
  Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

• I am in blood
  Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,
  Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
  • Macbeth, Scene IV

Act IV

• Double, double toil and trouble;
  Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
  • Witches, Scene I
  • See also List of misquotations

• By the pricking of my thumbs,
  Something wicked this way comes: —
  Open, locks,
  Whoever knocks!
  • Second Witch, Scene I

• Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff;
  Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.
  • First Apparition, Scene I

• Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
  The power of man, for none of woman born
  Shall harm Macbeth.
  • Second Apparition, Scene I

• Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until
  Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
  Shall come against him.
  Macbeth: That will never be.
  Who can impress the forest, bid the tree,
  Unfix his earthbound root?
  • Third Apparition, Scene I

• When our actions do not,
  Our fears do make us traitors.
  • Lady Macduff, Scene II

• Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward
  To what they were before.
  • Ross, Scene II

• First Murderer: Where is your husband?
  Lady Macduff: I hope, in no place so unsanctified,
  Where such as thou mayst find him.
  First Murderer: He's a traitor.
  Son: Thou liest, thou shag-hair'd villain!
  First Murderer: What, you egg!
  • Scene II

• Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
  Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
  Yet grace must still look so.
  • Malcolm, Scene III

• Fare thee well, lord:
  I would not be the villian that thou think'st
  For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp,
  And the rich East to boot.
  • Macduff, Scene III

• Nay, had I power, I should
  Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
  Uproar the universal peace, confound
  All unity on earth.
  • Malcolm, Scene III

• Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air,
  Are made, not markt; where violent sorrow seems
  A modern ecstasy: the dead man's knell
  Is there scarce askt for who; and good men's lives
  Expire before the flowers in their caps,
  Dying or e'er they sicken.
  • Ross, Scene III

• Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
  Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
  • Malcolm, Scene III

• All my pretty ones?
  Did you say all? — O, hell-kite! All?
  What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
  At one fell swoop?
  • Macduff, Scene III

• Malcolm: Dispute it like a man.
  Macduff: I shall do so;
  But I must also feel it as a man:
  I cannot but remember such things were,
  That were most precious to me.
  • Scene III

Act V

• Out, damned spot! out, I say!
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene I

• Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene I

• Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene I

• What's done cannot be undone.
  • Lady Macbeth, Scene I

• Those he commands move only in command,
  Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
  Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
  Upon a dwarfish thief.
  • Angus, Scene II

• The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
  Where gott'st thou that goose look?
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• Go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,
  Thou lily-liver'd boy.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
  Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf;
  And that which should accompany old age,
  As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
  I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
  Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
  Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd;
  Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
  Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
  And with some sweet oblivious antidote,
  Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
  Which weighs upon the heart?
  Doctor: Therein the patient
  Must minister to himself.
  Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; — I'll none of it.
  • Scene III

• I would applaud thee to the very echo,
  That should applaud again.
  • Macbeth, Scene III

• Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
  The cry is still, They come. Our castle's strength
  Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie
  Till famine and the ague eat them up.
  Were they not forc'd with those that should be ours,
  We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
  And beat them backward home.
  • Macbeth, Scene V

• I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
  The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
  To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
  Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
  As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
  Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
  Cannot once start me.
  • Macbeth, Scene V

• She should have died hereafter;
  There would have been time for such a word.
  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
  To the last syllable of recorded time;
  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
  Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more. It is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.
  • Macbeth, Scene V

• I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,
  And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
  • Macbeth, Scene V

• Blow, wind! come, wrack!
  At least we'll die with harness on our back.
  • Macbeth, Scene V

• Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
  Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.
  • Macduff, Scene VI

• Why should I play the Roman fool, and die
  On mine own sword?
  • Macbeth, Scene VIII

• Macduff: Turn, hell-hound, turn!
  Macbeth:Of all men else I have avoided thee.
  But get thee back. My soul is too much charged
  With blood of thine already.
  Macduff: I have no words.
  My voice is in my sword. Thou bloodier villain
  Than terms can give thee out!
  • Macduff, Scene VIII

• Macbeth: I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
  To one of woman born.
  Macduff: Despair thy charm;
  And let the angel whom thou still hast served
  Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
  Untimely ripp'd.
  Macbeth: Accursed be the tongue that tells me so,
  For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
  And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd,
  That palter with us in a double sense;
  That keep the word of promise to our ear,
  And break it to our hope.
  • Scene VIII

• Then yield thee, coward,
  And live to be the show and gaze o' the time.
  • Macduff, Scene VIII

• Lay on, Macduff,
  And damn'd be him that first cries, Hold, enough!
  • Macbeth, Scene VIII

External links

• Macbeth eText from Project Gutenberg
• Macbeth quotes translated into modern English
• Shakespeare Library: Macbeth
• Macbeth quotes and analysis; study guide and teacher guide