Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ th’ olden time, / Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal; / Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d / Too terrible for the ear: the time has been, / That, when the brains were out, the man would die, / And there an end; but now they rise again, / With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, / And push us from our stools.
Act III, Scene 4 · Macbeth
Context
Attempting to regain composure after the ghost's first appearance, Macbeth reflects on how murder in the past stayed final, unlike now when the dead seem to return.
Analysis
Macbeth nostalgically recalls a time 'when the brains were out, the man would die, / And there an end'—the plain finality of 'And there an end' contrasts brutally with his present experience where death refuses to conclude. The repetition of 'murders' and 'mortal' keeps circling back to killing, yet the syntax can't reach closure; the dead 'rise again' and 'push us from our stools,' turning Macbeth's reign into a permanent haunting.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Macbeth's tragedy lies in the collapse of consequence—he craves the simplicity of murder-as-solution, but his own guilt transforms death into something that 'rise[s] again,' making escape impossible.