Upon the sightless couriers 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.

MACBETH'S GUILTY CONSCIENCE, AND
FEARS OF BANQUO.

Lady M.

How now, my lord? why do you keep
alone,

Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without remedy
Should be without regard: what's done, is done.

Macb. We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it:
She'll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.

But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,

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,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.

MARCELLUS'S SPEECH TO THE MOB.

FROM THE PLAY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.'

Wherefore rejoice? that Cæsar comes in triumph? What conquest brings he home?

What tributaries follow him to Rome,

To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless
things!

O, you hard hearts! you cruel men of Rome!
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome :
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made a universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way

That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?

Be gone!

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.

CALPURNIA'S ADDRESS TO CÆSAR.

On the Prodigies seen the Night before his Death.

FROM THE PLAY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.'

Cal. Cæsar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;

And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead:
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,

In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,

And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets. O Cæsar! these things are beyond all use,

And I do fear them.

Cæs. What can be avoided,

Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
Yet Cæsar shall go forth; for these predictions
Are to the world in general as to Cæsar.

K

Cal. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

After the above page, we should, perhaps, omit to do justice to our great poet, did we not produce the following quotation in ridicule of prodigies. It is to be found in the Third Act of the First Part of the Play of King Henry the Fourth. Hotspur and Glendower are the speakers.

Glen.

PRODIGIES RIDICULED.

At my nativity

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and, at my birth,
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.

Hot. Why, so it would have done,

At the same season, if your mother's cat had
But kitten'd, though yourself had ne'er been born.

Glen. I say, the earth did shake when I was born.

Hots. And I say, the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose, as fearing you, it shook.

Glen. The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.

Hots. O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on

fire,

And not in fear of your nativity.

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth

Is with a kind of cholic pinch'd and vex'd

By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down Steeples, and moss-grown towers.

Then contiuues Hotspur,

At your birth,

Our grandam earth, having this distemperature,
In passion shook.

MARC ANTONY'S SPEECH TO THE ROMANS
OVER THE DEAD BODY OF CÆSAR.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Cæsar put it on;

'Twas on a summer's evening in his tent;
That day he overcame the Nervii :-

--

Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
See, what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd;
And, as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,

Mark how the blood of Cæsar follow'd it,