William Shakespeare - Macbeth

Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with drum and colours.

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. What is the noise?

A cry within of women.

SEYTON: It is the cry of women, my good Lord.

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. 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:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty face 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.