Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”
- Source
- Macbeth
- Date
- c. 1606
- Local voice
- Fictional character · Malcolm
Meaning of “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not…”
Putting grief into words can make suffering more shareable; silence may intensify pressure when pain has no form of expression.
Where does it come from?
Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III, reviewed against the scan-backed 1918 Yale text. Malcolm tells Macduff 'Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak / Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.' The frozen catalog row instead reads 'knits up the o'er-wrought heart'; that substantive inherited wording variation is disclosed rather than silently rewritten. The passage remains dramatic grief counsel, not clinical guidance.
Why the local voice matters
Malcolm urges Macduff to speak his grief in Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3.
