Macbeth (AQA GCSE English Literature)

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.

BANQUO

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. –

Cousins, a word, I pray you.

MACBETH [Aside]

Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme. – I thank you, gentlemen. –

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.

CAPTAIN

                                              Doubtful it stood,
As two spent swimmers that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonald –
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

The multiplying villainies of nature

Do swarm upon him – from the Western Isles

Of kerns and galloglasses is supplied,

And Fortune on his damnèd 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 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’chaps

And fixed his head upon our battlements.

LADY MACBETH Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why

then, 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier,

and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can 

call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old Man to have had so much blood in him.

DOCTOR Do you mark that?

LADY MACBETH The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean? No more o' that,  my lord, no more o' that. You mar all with this starting.

DOCTOR Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.

GENTLEWOMAN She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of That. Heaven knows what she has known.

LADY MACBETH Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O. 

DOCTOR What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.

GENTLEWOMAN I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.

DOCTOR Well, well, well,--

GENTLEWOMAN Pray God it be, sir.

DOCTOR This disease is beyond my practise: yet I have known

those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in 

their beds.

LADY MACBETH Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so Pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave.

DOCTOR Even so?

LADY MACBETH To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand; what's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed. 

MACBETH Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more:

Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

LADY MACBETH What do you mean?

MACBETH Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more’ to all the house;

‘Glamis hath murdered sleep’, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more.

LADY MACBETH Who was it, that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,

You do unbend your noble strength to think

So brain-sickly of things. Go get some water

And wash this filthy witness from your hand.

Why did you bring these daggers from the place?

They must lie there. Go carry them and smear

The sleepy grooms with blood.

MACBETH I’ll go no more.

I am afraid to think what I have done;

Look on’t again, I dare not.

LADY MACBETH 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. If he do bleed,

I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,

For it must seem their guilt.

MACBETH 

                                    To be thus is nothing,

But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo

Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature

Reigns that which would be feared. ‘Tis much he dares,

And to that dauntless temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

To act in safety. There is none but he,

Whose being I do fear; and under him,

My Genius is rebuked; as it is said,

Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters

When first they put the name of king upon me

And bade them speak to him. Then prophet-like,

They hail'd him father to a line of kings. 

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,

Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,

No son of mine succeeding. If 't be so,

For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind;

For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered, 

Put rancours in the vessel of my peace

Only for them, and mine eternal jewel

Given to the common enemy of man,

To make them kings, the seeds of Banquo kings. 

Rather than so, come fate into the list.

And champion me to the utterance! Who’s there? 

MACBETH Seyton! – I am sick at heart, 

When I behold – Seyton, I say! – this push 

Will cheer me ever or disseat me now. 

I have lived long enough. My way of life 

Is fall’n into the sere, 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. 

Seyton! 

Enter SEYTON 

SEYTON What’s your gracious pleasure? 

MACBETH                                                What news more? 

SEYTON All is confirmed, my lord, which was reported. 

MACBETH I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. 

Give me my armour. 

SEYTON ’Tis not needed yet. 

MACBETH I’ll put it on; 

Send out more horses; skirr the country round. 

Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour. 

How does your patient, doctor? 

DOCTOR                                  Not so sick, my lord, 

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies 

That keep her from her rest. 

MACBETH                          Cure her of that. 

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 

Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 

And with some sweet oblivious antidote 

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff 

Which weighs upon the heart?