AQA GCSE English Literature · Paper 1

Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5

Lady Macbeth has read her husband’s letter about the witches. A messenger has just told her that King Duncan will stay at their castle tonight.

1. 1The raven himself is hoarse
2. 2That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
3. 3Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
4. 4That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
5. 5And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
6. 6Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;
7. 7Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
8. 8That no compunctious visitings of nature
9. 9Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
10. 10The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
11. 11And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
12. 12Wherever in your sightless substances
13. 13You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
14. 14And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
15. 15That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
16. 16Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
17. 17To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1623). Public domain; transcribed from the First Folio text, spelling modernised. Line numbers are for this extract.