extract 2 act 1 scene 5 (for Monday June 1st)

Enter Macbeth’s Messenger. 

What is your tidings?

Macbeth’s Messenger

The King comes here tonight.

Lady Macbeth

Thou’rt mad to say it!

Is not thy master with him? Who, were’t so,

Would have inform’d for preparation.

Macbeth’s Messenger

So please you, it is true; our thane is coming.

One of my fellows had the speed of him,

Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more

Than would make up his message.

Lady Macbeth

Give him tending,

He brings great news.

Exit Macbeth’s Messenger. 

The 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 topful

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, you 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!