I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’ other—

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.

Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep,”—the innocent sleep; / Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave 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.

His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood; / And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature / For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, / Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers / Unmannerly breech’d with gore.

Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant / There’s nothing serious in mortality. / All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; / The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees / Is left this vault to brag of.

Where we are, / There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, / The nearer bloody.

Upon my head they plac’d 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.

O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

He has no children.—All my pretty ones? / Did you say all?—O hell-kite!—All? / What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop?