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 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,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'
This is an important soliloquy by Lady Macbeth and invites the audience to see
her as symbolic of greed and calling upon the supernatural to fill her ‘from the
crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty!’ She calls upon evil to transform her
internally and in the next section of the play she tells Macbeth to do the same
when she exclaims, "Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under 't"
(1.5.76-78).
The imagery links to the atmosphere established in the opening scene with the
witches, therefore connecting Lady Macbeth to them. The repetition of ‘thick’ in
reference to ‘blood’ and ‘darkness’ invite the audience to see Lady Macbeth’s soul
now imbued with the ‘darkness’ of evil. Along with the superlative ‘direst’ in
conjunction with ‘cruelty’ the audience understand that Lady Macbeth wishes for
the worst evil possible. As she is planning to kill a King, there would have been
no greater crime. Regicide would mean directly attacking God and therefore the
natural order. The dark imagery foreshadows the impending chaos and gloomy
atmosphere that underpins the following four Acts.
The soliloquy opens with the ‘Raven’ as a symbol of evil and misfortune. For the
audience it is described as being ‘hoarse’ emphasising the evil as an extreme as it
waits for Duncan’s fatal arrival. Connotations associated with ‘battlements’
continue the earlier references to the battle-field as Lady Macbeth prepares
herself for her battle against all that is good.