Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606)

On a blasted heath, three witches stop a soldier coming home from war and hand him a crown he has not imagined wanting. The prophecy does its damage not by tempting Macbeth but by making the waiting unbearable, the throne suddenly owed him, Duncan suddenly in the way. It is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies and the most airless, each murder breeding the next with barely a breath between bloodied scenes. The marvel is the music he gives his killers: Macbeth watching a dagger float toward a hand not yet bloodied, then measuring his despair as tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeping in its petty pace; Lady Macbeth, who steadied his nerve for the first killing, scrubbing in her sleep at a spot all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten. He goes numb where she goes haunted, the bold one undone by conscience, the hesitant one past feeling. No play has ever made damnation sound so much like poetry, or shown so exactly how a man talks himself across the line he swore he would not cross.