Act 1 Scene 5 Soliloquy

Old English:

The raven himself is hoarse                      That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan                      Under my battlements. 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 murd'ring 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                                 To cry “Hold, hold!”

                  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.

Translation: The messanger has a lack of breath, that speaks of Duncan's entrance into my home. Come, you spirits that influence my lethal thoughts, make me more like the man then the women I am now and fill me  from my head to my toes with cruelty. Make my blood thick, and stop it from passing through my veins making me not feel remorseful, so that no humans of nature can stop my plan or make me keep peace between people! Come to my female breast and make poisoning substances of her milk, you murderers. You hide, unable to see you. Waiting to do your evil plan. Come, thick night, cover the world in the darkest smoke of hell, that way my knife will not see the cuts it makes, and heaven can't peep through the cover of darkness to cry "Stop!"