Twas a Rough Night
excerpt from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3
LENNOX
The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatch’d to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.
MACBETH
Twas a rough night.
LENNOX
My young remembrance cannot parallel
A fellow to it.
Bonus feature:
Nosepainting
— another excerpt from the the same Act and Scene of Macbeth,
but a little earlier on
MACDUFF
Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,
That you do lie so late?
Porter
‘Faith sir, we were carousing till the
second cock: and drink, sir, is a great
provoker of three things.
MACDUFF
What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
MACDUFF
I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.
Porter
That it did, sir, i’ the very throat on
me: but I requited him for his lie; and, I
think, being too strong for him, though he took
up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast
him.
Excerpts are from MIT’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Macbeth index
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Bonus links:
Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood