Macbeth · William Shakespeare · Act 1, Scene 5

Lady Macbeth: "Come, you spirits"

Characters
Lady Macbeth
Length
128 words, 1 min spoken
 
Female role
 
Drama

The situation

She has just read Macbeth’s letter and heard that the King comes tonight.

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The text

Lady MacbethThe 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 th’ access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, your 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!”

Text: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1533. Public domain text from Project Gutenberg. Download the text

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