On Christmas Eve, 1607, the "King's Players," with Shakspere and Burbage in the respective rôles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, produced that great historical play at the grand reception room of Whitehall, in the presence of King James and the nobles of his court, surrounded by the ministers and diplomats from all the civilized nations of the world.
I never saw a grander audience, interspersed with the most beautiful ladies of the world, who shone in their jewels and diamonds like a field of variegated wild flowers, besprinkled with the morning dew.
The witches in the play seemed to startle the King, and more than ever convince him that these inhabitants of earth and air were all of a reality, and should be destroyed wherever found, believing that they held the destiny of man in the caldron of their incantations.
"Come, 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 the access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief; come, thick night,
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!"
This speech of the devilish Lady Macbeth made a deep impression on the audience, and caused the King to squirm in his throne chair at the contemplation of the murder of Duncan, but when William entered as Macbeth and rendered the following speech James wished himself a million miles away, and yet applauded to the echo the murdering thoughts of the Scottish chieftain:
"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,—
We'd jump the life to come; but, in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice,
To our own lips. He's here in double trust;
First as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife himself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath born his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless coursers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind; I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other!"
Still brooding on the murder of Duncan, Macbeth says:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle towards 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?
I see thee yet in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still;
And on thy blade and handle, gouts of blood,
Which was not so before, there's no such thing;
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus to mine eyes, now o'er the one-half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleeper; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder
Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. While I threat, he lives,
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives;
I go and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell!"
After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is constantly haunted with the ghost of her victim, and in midnight hours, sick at soul, walks in her sleep, talking of her bloody deed:
"Out damned spot! out I say!
Here's the smell of the blood still;
All the perfumes of Arabia
Will not sweeten this little hand!"