You must be crazy to say that! Isn't Macbeth with the
king, and wouldn't Macbeth have told me in advance so I
could prepare, if the king were really coming?
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
25
Than would make up his message.
SERVANT
I'm sorry, but it's the truth. Macbeth is
coming. He sent a messenger ahead of him who arrived here so out of
breath that he could barely speak his message.
LADY MACBETH
Give him tending.
He brings great news.
LADY MACBETH
Take good care of him. He brings great news.
Exit SERVANT
The SERVANT
exits.
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
30
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 the access and passage to remorse,
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That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
40
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!”
So the messenger is short of breath, like a hoarse raven, as he
announces Duncan's entrance into my fortress, where he will
die. Come, you spirits that asist murderous thoughts, make me less
like a woman and more like a man, and fill me from head to toe with
deadly cruelty! Thicken my blod and clog up my veins so I
won't feel remorse, so that no human compassion can stop my
evil plan or prevent me from accomplishing it! Come to my female
breast and turn my mother's milk into poisonous acid, you
murdering demons, wherever you hide, invisible and waiting to do
evil! Come, thick night, and cover the world in the darkest smoke of
hell, so that my sharp knife can't see the wound it cuts
open, and so heaven can't peep through the darkness and
cry, “No! Stop!”
