May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy- As he is very potent with such spirits- Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. ACT III. Scene I.
Hamlet's Soliloquy on Death.
To be, or not to be that is the question : Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep; perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Soft you now! The fair Ophelia ! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.
ACT IV. Scene VII.
The Queen describes Ophelia's Death.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come, Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indu'd
Unto that element; but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death.
Macbeth's Vision of the Dagger.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still; And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Macbeth's Fear and Jealousy of Banquo.
To be thus is nothing;
But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares,
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. There is none but he Whose being I do fear; and under him My genius is rebuk'd, as it is said
Mark Antony's was by Cæsar. He chid the sisters When first they put the name of king upon me, And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like, They hail'd him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If 't be so,
For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd; Put rancours in the vessel of my peace Only for them; and mine eternal jewel Given to the common enemy of man,
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings! Rather than so, come fate into the list, And champion me to the utterance!
Macbeth addresses the Physician.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ?
Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it. Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff.
Macbeth on the Death of Lady Macbeth.
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
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