The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for ChildrenLamb, Charles
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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3: Books for Children
Lamb, Charles
Children's poetry; Children's stories
In these conflicts of the mind lady Macbeth found her husband,
inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But
she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to
pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit
into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink
from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would
be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their
nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw
contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and
cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender
it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would, while it was
smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its
brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform
that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt
of the deed upon the drunken sleepy grooms. And with the valour of her
tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more
summoned up courage to the bloody business.
So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to
the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another
dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and
at the point of it drops of blood: but when he tried to grasp at it,
it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot
and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand.
Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king's room, whom he
dispatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the
murder, one of the grooms, who slept in the chamber, laughed in his
sleep, and the other cried "Murder," which woke them both: but they
said a short prayer; one of them said, "God bless us!" and the other
answered "Amen;" and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who
stood listening to them, tried to say "Amen," when the fellow said
"God bless us!" but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word
stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it.
Again he thought he heard a voice which cried, "Sleep no more: Macbeth
doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life." Still it
cried, "Sleep no more," to all the house. "Glamis hath murdered sleep,
and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no
more."
With such horrible imaginations, Macbeth returned to his listening
wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the
deed was somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that
she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his
hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with
purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem
their guilt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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