TEXT:
MACBETH
It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood. What is the night?
LADY MACBETH
Almost at odds with morning, which is which.
MACBETH
How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding?
LADY MACBETH
Did you send to him, sir?
MACBETH
I hear it by the way; but I will send:
There's not a one of them but in his house
I keep a servant fee'd. I will to-morrow,
And betimes I will, to the weird sisters:
More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.
LADY MACBETH
You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
MACBETH
Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:
We are yet but young in deed.
Exeunt
NOTES:
Blood will have blood
Here Macbeth is loosely quoting the Bible. Genesis 9:6 says “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed” - although of course Macbeth would not have been likely to quote from the King James Version.
The Aeneid
As if last week’s reference to the Hyrcanian tiger weren’t enough from the Aeneid, here Shakespeare again gives another nod, this time to a myth of a tree that is instrumental to revealing the mystery of a Virgilian whodunnit.
Magot-pies
This is the evocative older version of “magpie”. As if these birds weren’t enough trouble!
Chough
A little bigger than a jackdaw, a chough is another member of the crow family, with a dramatic and distinctive red beak.
Rook
Another member of the crow family. A bird of ill-omen.
Augury
Hamlet may have defied it, but Macbeth is very worried that even the appearance or flight-patterns of birds (to say nothing of the whispering of the trees) might denounce him for the murders he has committed. He calls such patterns or messages “understood relations” - an elegant euphemism for the interpretation of signs.
Crimes and Mentalities
A very in-depth analysis is to be found in Malcolm Gaskill’s Crimes and Mentalities in Early Modern England. You can read therein all about how people thought, and worried, about crimes and punishments in Shakespeare’s time.