Lucky’s Reviews > Macbeth > Status Update

’Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

MACBETH
There is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and under him
My genius is rebuked,
He chid the sisters
When first they put the name of king upon me
And bade them speak to him. Then, prophet-like,
They hailed him father to a line of kings.
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.

DONALBAIN What is amiss?
MACBETH You are, and do not know ’t.

LADY MACBETH
My hands are of your color, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.

LADY MACBETH
That which hath made them drunk hath made me
bold.
What hath quenched them hath given me fire.
Hark!—Peace.

LADY MACBETH
Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”
Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?

LADY MACBETH
Come, you spirits
That tend od thota houghts unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty.

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promised; yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o'th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.

Stars hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires,
The eye wink at the hand—yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

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.—