quote · Source-linked selection
If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We 'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.
If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We 'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.
Approximate author period: c. 1590 AD · renaissance
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- William Shakespeare
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1590 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Familiar Quotations, ninth edition (1905 printing) (1905 AD)
Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 7.
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
The voice behind the words.
Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
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