Appendix B: Script from a scene in Orson Welles' Macbeth
Lady Macbeth
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promised.
Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, "Hold, hold!"
Lady Macbeth
Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor!
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.
Macbeth
My dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight.
Lady Macbeth
And when goes hence?
Macbeth
Tomorrow, as he purposes.
Lady Macbeth
He that's coming must be provided for!
Macbeth
We will speak further.
Lady Macbeth
Put this night's business into my dispatch.
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under 't.
Priest
Chants in Latin.
Lady Macbeth
When Duncan is asleep -
Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him - I'll drug his servants' wine.
Macbeth
King Duncan is my kinsman
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angel trumpet tongues against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
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