Home
This site uses cookies
log out

Macbeth: Act III, Scene 4

Sign in with Google to add your annotations.

Macbeth
Act III, Scene 4

A room of state in the palace.

Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mock’ry, hence!

Théodore Chassériau, 1854

  1. Banquet prepar’d.
  1. Enter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Rosse, Lennox, Lords, and
  2. Attendants.

Macbeth

1 - 2
  1. You know your own degrees, sit down. At first
  2. And last, the hearty welcome.

Lord

3
  1.                               Thanks to your Majesty.

Macbeth

4 - 7
  1. Ourself will mingle with society,
  2. And play the humble host.
  3. Our hostess keeps her state, but in best time
  4. We will require her welcome.

Lady Macbeth

8 - 9
  1. Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends,
  2. For my heart speaks they are welcome.
  1. Enter First Murderer to the door.

Macbeth

10 - 14
  1. See, they encounter thee with their hearts’ thanks.
  2. Both sides are even; here I’ll sit i’ th’ midst.
  3. Be large in mirth; anon we’ll drink a measure
  4. The table round.—
  5. Goes to the door.
  6. There’s blood upon thy face.

First Murderer

15
  1.                              ’Tis Banquo’s then.

Macbeth

16 - 17
  1. ’Tis better thee without than he within.
  2. Is he dispatch’d?

First Murderer

18 - 19
  1.                   My lord, his throat is cut;
  2. That I did for him.

Macbeth

20 - 22
  1.                     Thou art the best o’ th’ cut-throats,
  2. Yet he’s good that did the like for Fleance.
  3. If thou didst it, thou art the nonpareil.

First Murderer

23
  1. Most royal sir, Fleance is scap’d.

Macbeth

24 - 28
  1. Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect,
  2. Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
  3. As broad and general as the casing air;
  4. But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in
  5. To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo’s safe?

First Murderer

29 - 31
  1. Ay, my good lord; safe in a ditch he bides,
  2. With twenty trenched gashes on his head,
  3. The least a death to nature.

Macbeth

32 - 36
  1.                              Thanks for that:
  2. There the grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled
  3. Hath nature that in time will venom breed,
  4. No teeth for th’ present. Get thee gone; tomorrow
  5. We’ll hear ourselves again.
  1. Exit Murderer.

Lady Macbeth

37 - 42
  1.                             My royal lord,
  2. You do not give the cheer. The feast is sold
  3. That is not often vouch’d, while ’tis a-making,
  4. ’Tis given with welcome. To feed were best at home;
  5. From thence, the sauce to meat is ceremony,
  6. Meeting were bare without it.
  1. Enter the Ghost of Banquo and sits in Macbeth’s place.

Macbeth

43 - 45
  1.                               Sweet remembrancer!
  2. Now good digestion wait on appetite,
  3. And health on both!

Lennox

46
  1.                     May’t please your Highness sit.

Macbeth

47 - 50
  1. Here had we now our country’s honor roof’d,
  2. Were the grac’d person of our Banquo present,
  3. Who may I rather challenge for unkindness
  4. Than pity for mischance.

Rosse

51 - 53
  1.                          His absence, sir,
  2. Lays blame upon his promise. Please’t your Highness
  3. To grace us with your royal company?

Macbeth

54
  1. The table’s full.

Lennox

55
  1.                   Here is a place reserv’d, sir.

Macbeth

56
  1. Where?

Lennox

57
  1. Here, my good lord. What is’t that moves your Highness?

Macbeth

58
  1. Which of you have done this?

Lord

59
  1.                              What, my good lord?

Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!

John Masey Wright, circa 1900

Macbeth

60 - 61
  1. Thou canst not say I did it; never shake
  2. Thy gory locks at me.

Rosse

62
  1. Gentlemen, rise, his Highness is not well.

Lady Macbeth

63 - 68
  1. Sit, worthy friends; my lord is often thus,
  2. And hath been from his youth. Pray you keep seat.
  3. The fit is momentary, upon a thought
  4. He will again be well. If much you note him,
  5. You shall offend him and extend his passion.
  6. Feed, and regard him not.—Are you a man?

Macbeth

69 - 70
  1. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
  2. Which might appall the devil.

Lady Macbeth

71 - 79
  1.                               O proper stuff!
  2. This is the very painting of your fear;
  3. This is the air-drawn dagger which you said
  4. Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts
  5. (Impostors to true fear) would well become
  6. A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,
  7. Authoriz’d by her grandam. Shame itself,
  8. Why do you make such faces? When all’s done,
  9. You look but on a stool.

Macbeth

80 - 85
  1.                          Prithee see there!
  2. Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?
  3. Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.
  4. If charnel-houses and our graves must send
  5. Those that we bury back, our monuments
  6. Shall be the maws of kites.
  1. Exit Ghost.

Lady Macbeth

86
  1.                             What? Quite unmann’d in folly?

Macbeth

87
  1. If I stand here, I saw him.

Lady Macbeth

88
  1.                             Fie, for shame!

Macbeth

89 - 97
  1. Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ th’ olden time,
  2. Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal;
  3. Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d
  4. Too terrible for the ear. The time has been,
  5. That when the brains were out, the man would die,
  6. And there an end; but now they rise again
  7. With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
  8. And push us from our stools. This is more strange
  9. Than such a murder is.

Lady Macbeth

98 - 99
  1.                        My worthy lord,
  2. Your noble friends do lack you.

Macbeth

100 - 108
  1.                                 I do forget.
  2. Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends,
  3. I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing
  4. To those that know me. Come, love and health to all,
  5. Then I’ll sit down. Give me some wine, fill full.
  6. Enter Ghost.
  7. I drink to th’ general joy o’ th’ whole table,
  8. And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;
  9. Would he were here! To all, and him, we thirst,
  10. And all to all.

Lord

109
  1.                 Our duties, and the pledge.

Macbeth

110 - 113
  1. Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!
  2. Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
  3. Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
  4. Which thou dost glare with!

Lady Macbeth

114 - 116
  1.                             Think of this, good peers,
  2. But as a thing of custom. ’Tis no other;
  3. Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

Macbeth

117 - 127
  1. What man dare, I dare.
  2. Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
  3. The arm’d rhinoceros, or th’ Hyrcan tiger,
  4. Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
  5. Shall never tremble. Or be alive again,
  6. And dare me to the desert with thy sword;
  7. If trembling I inhabit then, protest me
  8. The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!
  9. Unreal mock’ry, hence!
  10. Exit Ghost.
  11.                        Why, so; being gone,
  12. I am a man again. Pray you sit still.

There’s blood upon thy face.

Edwin Austin Abbey, 1903

Lady Macbeth

128 - 129
  1. You have displac’d the mirth, broke the good meeting,
  2. With most admir’d disorder.

Macbeth

130 - 136
  1.                             Can such things be,
  2. And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,
  3. Without our special wonder? You make me strange
  4. Even to the disposition that I owe,
  5. When now I think you can behold such sights,
  6. And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
  7. When mine is blanch’d with fear.

Rosse

137
  1.                                  What sights, my lord?

Lady Macbeth

138 - 141
  1. I pray you speak not. He grows worse and worse,
  2. Question enrages him. At once, good night.
  3. Stand not upon the order of your going,
  4. But go at once.

Lennox

142 - 143
  1.                 Good night, and better health
  2. Attend his Majesty!

Lady Macbeth

144
  1.                     A kind good night to all!
  1. Exeunt Lords and Attendants.

Macbeth

145 - 149
  1. It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
  2. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
  3. Augures and understood relations have
  4. By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
  5. The secret’st man of blood. What is the night?

Lady Macbeth

150
  1. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

Macbeth

151 - 152
  1. How say’st thou, that Macduff denies his person
  2. At our great bidding?

Lady Macbeth

153
  1.                       Did you send to him, sir?

Macbeth

154 - 164
  1. I hear it by the way; but I will send.
  2. There’s not a one of them but in his house
  3. I keep a servant fee’d. I will tomorrow
  4. (And betimes I will) to the weird sisters.
  5. More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
  6. By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good
  7. All causes shall give way. I am in blood
  8. Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
  9. Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
  10. Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
  11. Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d.

Lady Macbeth

165
  1. You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

Macbeth

166 - 168
  1. Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse
  2. Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:
  3. We are yet but young in deed.
  1. Exeunt.
Parnell as Macbeth and Dr. Cronin as Banquo's ghost.

Parnell as Macbeth and Dr. Cronin as Banquo's ghost.

© 2021 Unotate.com • contact • privacy policy • Creative Commons text from PlayShakespeare.com • All illustrations are public domain or Creative Commons