MACBETH.
Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still, “They come!” Our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up.
Were they not forc’d with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.
[A cry of women within.]
What is that noise?
SEYTON.
It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[Exit.]
MACBETH.
I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t. I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
Enter Seyton.
Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON.
The Queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH.
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.