By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
MACBETH (to the Witches)
Speak, if you can. What are you?
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!
BANQUO
Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair? (To the Witches) I’th’
name of truth,
Are ye fantastical or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction
Of noble having and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not.
If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
FIRST WITCH Hail!
SECOND WITCH Hail!
THIRD WITCH Hail!
FIRST WITCH
Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.
SECOND WITCH
Not so happy, yet much happier.
THIRD WITCH
Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!
FIRST WITCH
Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!
MACBETH
Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more.
By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis,
But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman, and to be king
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence
You owe this strange intelligence, or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting. Speak, I charge you.
The Witches vanish
BANQUO
The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them. Whither are they vanished?
MACBETH
Into the air, and what seemed corporal
Melted as breath into the wind. Would they had stayed.
BANQUO
Were such things here as we do speak about,
Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?
MACBETH
Your children shall be kings.
BANQUO
You shall be king.
MACBETH
And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?
BANQUO
To th’ self-same tune and words. Who’s here?
Enter Ross and Angus
ROSS
The King hath happily received, Macbeth,
The news of thy success, and when he reads
Thy personal venture in the rebels’ sight
His wonders and his praises do contend
Which should be thine or his; silenced with that,
In viewing o‘er the rest o’th’ self-same day
He finds thee in the stout Norwegian ranks,
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,
Strange images of death. As thick as hail
Came post with post, and every one did bear
Thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence,
And poured them down before him.
ANGUS (to Macbeth)
We are sent
To give thee from our royal master thanks;
Only to herald thee into his sight,
Not pay thee.
ROSS
And, for an earnest of a greater honour,
He bade me from him call thee Thane of Cawdor,
In which addition, hail, most worthy thane,
For it is thine.
BANQUO
What, can the devil speak true?
MACBETH
The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
ANGUS
Who was the thane lives yet,
But under heavy judgement bears that life
Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combined
With those of Norway, or did line the rebel
With hidden help and vantage, or that with both
He laboured in his country’s wrack, I know not;
But treasons capital, confessed, and proved
Have overthrown him.
MACBETH (aside)
Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor.
The greatest is behind. (To Ross and Angus) Thanks for
your pains.
(To Banquo) Do you not hope your children shall be kings
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?
BANQUO
That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the thane of Cawdor. 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.
(To Ross and Angus) Cousins, a word, I pray you.
MACBETH (aside) Two truths are told
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme. (To Ross and Angus) I thank
you, gentlemen.
(Aside) This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
BANQUO (to Ross and Angus)
Look how our partner’s rapt.
MACBETH(aside)
If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown
me
Without my stir.
BANQUO (to Ross and Angus)
New honours come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
But with the aid of use.
MACBETH (aside)
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
BANQUO
Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.
MACBETH
Give me your favour. My dull brain was wrought
With things forgotten. (To Ross and Angus) Kind
gentlemen, your pains
Are registered where every day I turn
The leaf to read them. Let us toward the King.
(Aside to Banquo) Think upon what hath chanced, and
at more time,
The interim having weighed it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other.
BANQUO Very gladly.
MACBETH
Till then, enough. (To Ross and Angus) Come, friends.
Exeunt
1.4 Flourish. Enter King Duncan, Lennox, Malcolm, Donalbain, and attendants
KING DUNCAN
Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not
Those in commission yet returned?
MALCOLM
My liege,
They are not yet come back. But I have spoke
With one that saw him die, who did report
That very fr
ankly he confessed his treasons,
Implored your highness’ pardon, and set forth
A deep repentance. 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 owed
As ’twere a careless trifle.
KING DUNCAN
There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.
Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus
(To Macbeth) O worthiest cousin,
The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me! Thou art so far before
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,
That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine. Only I have left to say,
‘More is thy due than more than all can pay’.
MACBETH
The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness’ part
Is to receive our duties, and our duties
Are to your throne and state children and servants
Which do but what they should by doing everything
Safe toward your love and honour.
KING DUNCAN
Welcome hither.
I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing.—NoHe Banquo,
That hast no less deserved, nor must be known
No less to have done so, let me enfold thee
And hold thee to my heart.
BANQUO
There if I grow
The harvest is your own.
KING DUNCAN
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know
We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter
The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must
Not unaccompanied invest him only,
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers. (To Macbeth) From hence to Inverness,
And bind us further to you.
MACBETH
The rest is labour which is not used for you.
I’ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful
The hearing of my wife with your approach;
So humbly take my leave.
KING DUNCAN
My worthy Cawdor.
MACBETH (aside)
The Prince of Cumberland—that is a step
On which I must fall down or else o’erleap,
For in my way it lies. 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. Exit
KING DUNCAN
True, worthy Banquo, he is full so valiant,
And in his commendations I am fed.
It is a banquet to me. Let’s after him,
Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome.
It is a peerless kinsman. Flourish. Exeunt
1.5 Enter Lady Macbeth, with a letter
LADY MACBETH (reading) ‘They met me in the day of success, and I have learned by the perfect’st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it came missives from the King, who all-hailed me “Thane of Cawdor”, by which title before these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time with “Hail, King that shalt be!” This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.’
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. What thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou’dst have, great
Glamis,
That which cries ‘Thus thou must do’ if thou have it,
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
Enter a Servant
What is your tidings?
SERVANT
The King comes here tonight.
LADY MACBETH
Thou’t mad to say it.
Is not thy master with him, who, were’t so,
Would have informed for preparation?
SERVANT
So please you, it is true. Our thane is coming,
One of my fellows had the speed of him,
Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more
Than would make up his message.
LADY MACBETH
Give him tending;
He brings great news. Exit Servant
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. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd‘ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry ’Hold, hold!’
Enter Macbeth
Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor,
Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter,
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.
MACBETH
My dearest love,
Duncan comes here tonight.
LADY MACBETH
And when goes hence?
MACBETH
Tomorrow, as he purposes.
LADY MACBETH O never
Shall sun that morrow see.
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t. He that’s coming
Must be provided for; and you shall put
This night’s great business into my dispatch,
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.
MACBETH
We will speak further.
LADY MACBETH
Only look up clear.
To alter favour ever is to fear.
Leave all the rest to me. Exeunt
1.6 ⌈Hautboys and torches.⌉ Enter King Duncan, Mal
colm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus, and attendants
KING DUNCAN
This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
BANQUO
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry that the heavens’ breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle;
Where they most breed and haunt I have observed
The air is delicate.
Enter Lady Macbeth
KING DUNCAN See, see, our honoured hostess!
The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,
Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you
How you shall bid God ’ield us for your pains,
And thank us for your trouble.
LADY MACBETH
All our service
In every point twice done, and then done double,
Were poor and single business to contend
Against those honours deep and broad wherewith
Your majesty loads our house. For those of old,
And the late dignities heaped up to them,
We rest your hermits.
KING DUNCAN
Where’s the Thane of Cawdor?
We coursed him at the heels, and had a purpose
To be his purveyor; but he rides well,
And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him
To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,
We are your guest tonight.
LADY MACBETH
Your servants ever
Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs in count
To make their audit at your highness’ pleasure,
Still to return your own.
KING DUNCAN
Give me your hand.
Conduct me to mine host. We love him highly,
And shall continue our graces towards him.
By your leave, hostess. Exeunt
1.7 Hautboys. Torches. Enter a sewer and divers servants with dishes and service over the stage. Then enter Macbeth
MACBETH
If it were done when ‘tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly. If th‘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. But in these cases
We still have judgement here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions which, being taught, return
To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th‘ingredience of our poisoned chalice
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 313