Jonathan O'Neill’s Reviews > Macbeth > Status Update

Lady M gives Macbeth a dressing down for his cold feet. This and all that precedes it is about as stone cold as it gets:

… 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 plucked the nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.

LADY M
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 th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’effect and it... [cont..]

Hamlet's, 'One may smile and smile and be a villain, finds companionable thought, here, in King Duncan's, 'There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.'

Banquo to the witches:

... You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.

I'm disappointed I didn't start a catalogue of Shakespearean insults with Hamlet and Midsummer; they're an absolute treasure trove. Better late than never, I guess. No one roasts like the bard.

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 th' chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.