The king, being tired with his journey, went early to bed, and in his state-room two grooms of his chamber (as was the custom) slept beside him.  He had been unusually pleased with his reception, and had made presents, before he retired, to his principal officers; and among the rest, had sent a rich diamond to lady Macbeth, greeting her by the name of his most kind hostess.

Now was the middle of the night, when over half the world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse men’s minds asleep, and none but the wolf and the murderer is abroad.  This was the time when lady Macbeth waked to plot the murder of the king.  She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband’s nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do a contrived murder.  She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which commonly in the end accompanies inordinate ambition.  She had won him to consent to the murder, but she doubted his resolution:  and she feared that the natural tenderness of his disposition (more humane than her own) would come between, and defeat the purpose.  So with her own hands armed with a dagger, she approached the king’s bed; having taken care to ply the grooms of his chamber so with wine, that they slept intoxicated, and careless of their charge.  There lay Duncan, in a sound sleep after the fatigues of his journey, and as she viewed him earnestly, there was something in his face, as he slept, which resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.

She returned to confer with her husband.  His resolution had begun to stagger.  He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed.  In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty by the laws of hospitality it was to shut the door against his murderers, not bear the knife himself.  Then he considered how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of offence to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths.  Besides, by the favours of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men, and how would those honours be stained by the reputation of so foul a murder!

In these conflicts of the mind lady Macbeth found her husband, inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further.  But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty!  Then she threw contempt on his change