Enter Macbeth.
How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,[4157]
Of sorriest fancies your companions making;[4158]
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died 10
With them they think on? Things without all remedy[4159]
Should be without regard: what's done is done.
Macb. We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it:[4160]
She'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice[4161]
Remains in danger of her former tooth. 15
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,[4162]
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly: better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,[4163] 20
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;[4164]
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 25
Can touch him further.[4165][4166]
Lady M. Come on;[4165]
Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;[4165]
Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night.[4165][4167]
Macb. So shall I, love; and so, I pray, be you:[4165][4168]
Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;[4165][4168][4169] 30
Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:[4165][4168]
Unsafe the while, that we[4165][4168][4170]
Must lave our honours in these flattering streams,[4168][4171]
And make our faces visards to our hearts,[4168][4172]
Disguising what they are.[4168]
Lady M. You must leave this.[4168] 35
Macb. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.[4173]
Lady M. But in them nature's copy's not eterne.[4174]
Macb. There's comfort yet; they are assailable;
Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown 40
His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums[4175]
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done[4176]
A deed of dreadful note.[4176]
Lady M. What's to be done?