Macb. Methought, I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, —
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
Lady M. What do you mean?
Macb. Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house:
“Glamis hath murder’d sleep; and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more;* Macbeth shall sleep no more!”
Lady M. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brain-sickly of things: — Go, get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand. —
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: Go, carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
Macb. I’ll go no more
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on ’t again, I dare not.
Lady M. Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: The sleeping, and the dead,
Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood,
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt.
* At the start of the play, three witches hailed Macbeth as Thane (an aristocratic title) of Glamis, which was his rightful title; but they also called him Thane of Cawdor, which was not, and finally ‘King hereafter’. Moments after they left him, news came that Macbeth had been promoted Thane of Cawdor. It was then that the thought entered his mind that if Duncan were removed, Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis and of Cawdor, might become ‘King hereafter’. And now, as Macbeth thinks about what he has done, Shakespeare uses the two titles to suggest a disintegrating personality. Note that Glamis is pronounced to rhyme with farms.