Macbeth
Critique • Quotes • At the movies
Illustration, 1858 editionOriginal title
The Tragedie of Macbeth
Written
1603
First performed
1606
First published
1623, in Folio
Literary form
Play
Genres
Tragedy, historical drama
Writing language
English
Author's country
England
Length
Five acts, 2,392 lines, approx. 16,500 wordss
Notable lines
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning or in rain?
— First lines
Screw your courage to the sticking-place.
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Like a rat without a tail, I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
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?
There's daggers in men's smiles.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two. Why, then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Lay on, Macduff.
So, thanks to all at once and to each one
Whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scoune.
— Last lines
Critique • Quotes • At the movies
