I have almost forgot the taste of fears. / The time has been, my senses would have cool’d / To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair / Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir / As life were in’t. I have supp’d full with horrors; / Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, / Cannot once start me.
Act V, Scene 5 · Macbeth
Context
After hearing a cry of women from within the castle, Macbeth reflects on how numb he has become to fear and horror. He explains that he once would have been terrified by night sounds, but now nothing can startle him.
Analysis
The visceral verb 'supp'd' transforms horror into something Macbeth has consumed like food, suggesting he has gorged himself on violence until he's reached satiation. This digestive metaphor makes his desensitization feel grotesque and physical rather than merely psychological—he hasn't just witnessed horrors, he has swallowed them whole. The phrase positions readers to see Macbeth not as heroically stoic but as emptied out, a man whose capacity for normal human response has been destroyed by his own actions.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Shakespeare tracks Macbeth's moral decline not through external punishment but through the interior collapse of his emotional range—by Act 5 he's become incapable of fear not because he's brave, but because he's hollowed out.