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Macbeth: Act III, Scene 2

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Macbeth
Act III, Scene 2

Forres. The palace.

Julia Marlowe as Lady Macbeth

Julia Marlowe as Lady Macbeth

Arnold Genthe, circa 1900

  1. Enter Macbeth’s Lady and her Waiting Gentlewoman.

Lady Macbeth

1
  1. Is Banquo gone from court?

Gentlewoman

2
  1. Ay, madam, but returns again tonight.

Lady Macbeth

3 - 4
  1. Say to the King, I would attend his leisure
  2. For a few words.

Gentlewoman

5
  1.                  Madam, I will.
  1. Exit.

Lady Macbeth

6 - 14
  1.                Nought’s had, all’s spent,
  2. Where our desire is got without content;
  3. ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy
  4. Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
  5. Enter Macbeth.
  6. How now, my lord, why do you keep alone,
  7. Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
  8. Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
  9. With them they think on? Things without all remedy
  10. Should be without regard: what’s done, is done.

Macbeth

15 - 28
  1. We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it;
  2. She’ll close and be herself, whilest our poor malice
  3. Remains in danger of her former tooth.
  4. But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
  5. Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
  6. In the affliction of these terrible dreams
  7. That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,
  8. Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
  9. Than on the torture of the mind to lie
  10. In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
  11. After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.
  12. Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
  13. Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
  14. Can touch him further.

Lady Macbeth

29 - 31
  1.                        Come on;
  2. Gentle my lord, sleek o’er your rugged looks,
  3. Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.

Macbeth

32 - 38
  1. So shall I, love, and so, I pray, be you.
  2. Let your remembrance apply to Banquo,
  3. Present him eminence both with eye and tongue:
  4. Unsafe the while, that we
  5. Must lave our honors in these flattering streams,
  6. And make our faces vizards to our hearts,
  7. Disguising what they are.

Lady Macbeth

39
  1.                           You must leave this.

Macbeth

40 - 41
  1. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
  2. Thou know’st that Banquo and his Fleance lives.

Lady Macbeth

42
  1. But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.

Macbeth

43 - 48
  1. There’s comfort yet, they are assailable.
  2. Then be thou jocund; ere the bat hath flown
  3. His cloister’d flight, ere to black Hecat’s summons
  4. The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
  5. Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
  6. A deed of dreadful note.

Lady Macbeth

49
  1.                          What’s to be done?

Macbeth

50 - 61
  1. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
  2. Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,
  3. Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
  4. And with thy bloody and invisible hand
  5. Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
  6. Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
  7. Makes wing to th’ rooky wood;
  8. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
  9. Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
  10. Thou marvel’st at my words, but hold thee still:
  11. Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
  12. So prithee go with me.
  1. Exeunt.
Macbeth : with introductions, notes, glossary, critical comments, and method of study

Nought’s had, all’s spent

Macbeth : with introductions, notes, glossary, critical comments, and method of study

1901

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