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Macbeth · William Shakespeare · c. 1606
LADY MACBETH
A commander's wife who reads faster than he thinks. Alone for the first time with a plan she has already finished making.
The speech139 words · 4 beats
0:00 / 1:18
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 the access and passage to remorse,
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
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!'turn
- Speaking to
- Herself, then whatever is listening.
- What just happened
- A letter has arrived from her husband describing three strangers on a heath who called him king. A messenger has just told her the actual king will sleep here tonight. She has perhaps two minutes alone.
- Objective
- To burn out the part of herself that would flinch.
- The turn
- The switch from asking spirits for cruelty to asking the dark for cover — she stops preparing herself and starts preparing the room.
- Watch out for
- Verse, sustained on one rising line. The trap is playing it as evil rather than as a woman terrified she isn't hard enough.