Act II, Scene 1 Quotes — Macbeth

I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

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.

So I lose none / In seeking to augment it, but still keep / My bosom franchis’d, and allegiance clear, / I shall be counsell’d.

Now o’er the one half-world / Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtain’d sleep. Witchcraft celebrates / Pale Hecate’s off’rings; and wither’d murder, / Alarum’d 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.—

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-oppressed brain?

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, / And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers, / Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose!

I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters: / To you they have show’d some truth.