Page 2097 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

MACBETH

Good repose the while.

BANQUO
Thanks, sir; the like to you. [30]
Exit Banquo and Fleance.

MACBETH
Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
Exit Servant.
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-oppressèd brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable [40]
As 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 dudgeon, gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse [50]
The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecat’s offerings; and withered Murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout
And take the present horror from the time