_"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle towards 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 marshal'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still; And on thy blade and handle, 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 curtained sleeper; now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. While 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!"_ After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is constantly haunted with the ghost of her victim, and in midnight hours, sick at soul, walks in her sleep, talking of her bloody deed: _"Out damned spot! out I say! Here's the smell of the blood still; All the perfumes of Arabia Will not sweeten this little hand!"_ And then retiring to her purple couch, amidst the cries of her waiting woman, she dies with insane groans echoing through her castle halls. Macbeth, the pliant, cowardly, ambitious tool of his wicked wife, is at last surrounded by Macduff and his soldiers, and informed that his lady is dead. And then soliloquizing on time and life, he utters these philosophic phrases: _"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!"_ And then, in the forest in front of the castle Macbeth is at last brought to bay and killed by Macduff; but the murderer of Duncan, brave to the last, exclaims: