Their candles are all out.—Take thee that too.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers!
Restrain in me the cursèd thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!
Macbeth, indeed, in its imaginative setting is a play of the night; and with unwearied imagery Shakespeare again and again appeals to the forces of darkness as so many symbols of the black pall of crime that weighs upon the souls of Macbeth and his wife. Nearly every page of the drama yields some striking picture fit to conjure up such fears as Banquo feels. Thus Macbeth himself on his way to the king’s chamber:
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep.
And, again, Lady Macbeth in the same scene:
It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman