Lady Macbeth

In Lady Macbeth’s famous soliloquy from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth calls the dark forces to help her carry through a terrible act. The soliloquy was made a song by Karin Sjöholm, and has been performed several places, the character being a mix of Lady Macbeth and a Raven (the image of death referred to in the text).

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!’