Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make ‘s love known?
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. In his response to Macduff’s question why he killed Duncan’s guards, Macbeth betrays his capacity for deception, evil and the hunger for power. He weaves a fictitious tale of being so overcome by the sight of the murdered Duncan, that he could not restrain himself from slaying the King’s guilty guards. But we, and the audience, know that he was simply covering his tracks to ensure his own path to the throne. The arrogant and overweeningly ambitious Macbeth could not help but use metaphor and simile in his description of the dead Duncan: “His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature.”