| Husbandry | Management of affairs and resources; conservation, saving”Hold, take my sword. There’s husbandry in heaven. Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.” (pg. 23) |
| Augment | To make larger; enlarge in size, number, strength or extent”So I lose none in seeking to augment it, but still keep my bosom franchised and allegiance clear, I shall be counseled.” (pg. 23) |
| Possets | A drink made of hot milk curdled with ale, wine, or the like, often sweetened and spiced; bedtime drinks”That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; what hath quenched them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st good-night. He is about it. The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms do mock their charge with snores. I have drugged their possets, that death and nature do contend about them, whether they live or die.” (pg. 25) |
| Raveled | to disentangle or unravel the threads or fibers of a woven or or knitted fabric; to involve; confuse; perplex, tangled”Methought I heard a voice cry ‘sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’ – the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.” (pg. 27) |
| Incarnadine | Make red; blood-red; crimson; flesh colored”They pluck out mine eyes! With all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” (pg. 27) |
| Infirm | Unsteadfast, faltering, or irresolute, as persons or the mind; vacillating, weakness, not firm”Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures.” (pg. 27) |
| Equivocator | to use ambiguous or unclear expressions, usual to avoid commitment or in order to mislead; prevaricate or hedge; a Jesuit (who allegedly used false arguments in his zeal for souls.); liar, deceiver”Who’s there, in th’ other devil’s name? Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.” (pg. 28) |
| Carousing | To engage in a drunken revel”Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him.” (pg. 29) |
| Clamored | A loud uproar, a vehement expression of desire or dissatisfaction”New hatched to th’ woeful time: the obscure bird clamored the livelong night. Some say, the earth was feverous and did shake.” (pg. 30) |
| Sacrilegious | unholy, pertaining to or involving sacrilege”Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the lord’s anointed temper,and stole thence the life o’ th’ building.” (pg. 30) |
| Countenance | To make ones appearance as of something else; appearance, pertaining to the face or visage”Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself! Up, up, and see the great doom’s image! Malcolm! Banquo! As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites, to countenance this horror.” (pg. 30) |
| Scruples | Suspicions; a moral or ethical consideration or standard that acts as a restraining force.”That suffer in exposure, let us meet and question this most bloody piece of work, to know it further. Fears and scruples shake us.” (pg. 32) |
| Malice | evil intent on the part of a person”In the great hand of God I stand, and thence against the undivulged pretense I fight of treasonous malice.” (pg. 32) |
| Consort | Pair together; a companion”What will you do? Let’s not consort with them. To show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy. I’ll go England.” (pg. 32) |
| Warrant | Justification, authorization, sanction”Therefore to house; and let us not be dainty of leave-taking, but shift away. There’s warrant in that theft which steals itself when there’s no mercy left.” (pg. 32) |
| Subomed | To be bribed or induced”What good could they pretend?They were suborned: Malcolm and Donalbain, the king’s two songs, are stol’n away and fled.” (pg. 33) |
| Benison | an utterance of good wishes; blessing or being blessed”Farewell father.God’s benison go with you, and with those that would make good or bad, and friends of foes!” (pg. 35) |
MacBeth Act 2 Vocab
August 21, 2019