Listen, read along to this excellent audio recording of MACBETH, a play by William Shakespeare

"Macbeth", with Paul Scofield - 1966 - BBC Radio

Text of entire play

Macbeth dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death. - Wikipedia

Characters

Duncan – King of Scotland

Malcolm – Duncan's elder son

Donalbain – Duncan's younger son

Macbeth – a general in the army of King Duncan; originally Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor, and later King of Scotland

Lady Macbeth – Macbeth's wife, and later Queen of Scotland

Banquo – Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of King Duncan

Fleance – Banquo's son

Macduff – Thane of Fife

Lady Macduff – Macduff's wife

Macduff's son

Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness – Scottish Thanes

Siward – general of the English forces

Young Siward – Siward's son

Seyton – Macbeth's armourer

Hecate – Queen of the witches

Three Witches

Captain – in the Scottish army

Three Murderers – employed by Macbeth

Third Murderer

Two Murderers – attack Lady Macduff

Porter – gatekeeper at Macbeth's home

Doctor – Lady Macbeth's doctor

Doctor – at the English court

Gentlewoman – Lady Macbeth's caretaker

Lord – opposed to Macbeth

First Apparition – armed head

Second Apparition – bloody child

Third Apparition – crowned child

Attendants, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers

Excerpts of some of the more famous phrases 

and those relating to Cambodia

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths

To beguile the time,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,

Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under't. 

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

the sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil

There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood,

The nearer bloody.

But I remember now

I am in this earthly world; where to do harm

Is often laudable, to do good sometime

Accounted dangerous folly: 

O nation miserable,

With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,

When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again

Alas, poor country!

Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air

Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or ere they sicken.

 

Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds

Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:

More needs she the divine than the physician.

 

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love: now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.

 

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.