| “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” | 3 WITCHESSignificance: Theme 1 [Fair is Foul] |
| “What he hat lost, noble Macbeth hath won.” | KING to ROSSSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F] |
| “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” | MACBETH to BANQUOSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F] |
| “All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!” | FIRST WITCH to MACBETHSignificance: Stating information the audience AND Macbeth knows. |
| “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!” | SECOND WITCH to MACBETHSignificance: Dramatic irony |
| “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” | THIRD WITCH to MACBETHSignificance: Stating information none of us know, not even Macbeth; foreshadowing. |
| “Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear/Things that do sound so far?” | BANQUO to MACBETHSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F] |
| “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater./Not so happy, yet much happier./Thou shalt get kings though thou be none.” | FIRST WITCH, SECOND WITCH, AND THIRD WITCH to BANQUO and MACBETHSignificance: Prophetic, Banquo will have sons that will be kings. |
| “This supernatural soliciting/cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,/why hath it given me earnest of success,/commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion/Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair/And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,/Against the use of nature?/If chance will have me king, why,/chance may crown me,/without my stir. | MACBETH asideSignificance: Showing his goodness, nobility, good reputation. |
| “He was a gentleman on whom I built/Absolute trust.” | KING to MALCOLMSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F], betrayed trust. |
| “Stars, hide your fires;/Let not light see my black and deep desires:/The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be/Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” | MACBETH asideSignificance: Poetic, Theme 1 [F is F] |
| “Thou wouldst be great,/Art not without ambition, but without/The illness should attend it.” | LADY MACBETHSignificance: You could be great, so have some balls and suck it up, basically. |
| “Your hand, your tongue: look like th’ innocent flower,/But be the serpent under’t.” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F] |
| “Only look up clear./To alter favor ever is to fear./Leave all the rest to me.” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Keep quiet and let me do the talking; Theme 1 [F is F] |
| “Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life/And live a coward in thine own esteem/Letting “I dare not: wait upon “I would”/Like the poor cat I ‘th’ adage?” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Wants the crown without getting her hands dirty. |
| “Who dares receive it other,/As we shall make our griefs and clamor roar/Upon his death?” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: WE’ll kill him but our cover will be so smooth no one will suspect. |
| “How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:/I would, while it was smiling in my face,/Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gum,/And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you/Have done to this.” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: She’ll follow through with her word, but since he won’t he’s no better than a woman. The whole child-ripped-from-her-boob-thing is just a metaphor to show the lengths she would go to to prove how solid her word is. |
| “I think not of them./Yet, when we can entreat…” | MACBETH to BANQUOSignificance: He can’t stop thinking of the witches, but he denies it. |
| “My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,/I shall be counseled.” | BANQUO to MACBETHSignificance: Covering his ass. |
| “And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,/Which was not so before./It is the bloody which informs/Thus to mine eyes.” | MACBETH monologueSignificance: Starting to go crazy… hallucinating a dagger. |
| “Here not my steps, which way they walk, for fear/Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,/And take the present horror from the time,” | MACBETH monologeSignificance: REALLY doesn’t wanna be heard; paranoid |
| “That which hath made them drunk hat made me bold;/What hath quenched them hath given me fire.” | LADY MACBETH monologueSignificance: She had a little bit of the potion she gave to the guards, and is showing how the little bit strengthened her, but weakened them. |
| “It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,/Which gives the stern’st goodnight.” | LADY MACBETH monologueSignificance: Owl and bellman are signs of death. |
| “Had he not resembled/My father as he slept, I had done’t.” | LADY MACBETH monologueSignificance: She claims that she would have killed Duncan if he hadn’t looked like her father. |
| “List’ning their fear, I could not say, ‘Amen,’/when they did say, ‘God bless us!'””Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more.” | MACBETH to LADY MACBETHSignificance: Both mean that he’s unholy now; he’s a different person, not worthy of sleep or holy words. Has been forgotten and overlooked by God. |
| “Go get some water,/And wash this filthy witness from your hand./Why did you bring these daggers from the place?””A little water clears us of this deed:/How easy is it then!” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: How can water wash off murder; he brought the guards’ daggers with him. |
| “Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead/Are but as pictures.” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Lady MB is all talk; calling the dead ‘pictures’ only AFTER they’re dead. |
| “My hands are of your color, but I shame/To wear a heart so white.” | LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: She’s just as much to blame for the crime, but she would never show it as much as he does. |
| “Here’s a farmer, that hanged/himself on th’ expectation of plenty.””Here’s an equivocator, that/could swear in both the scales against either scale;””Here’s an English tailor come hither for stealing/Out of a French hose.” | PORTER monologueSignificance: All examples of men who tried to cheat their way up the scale and failed, Theme 1, Foreshadowing |
| 1) “What three things does drink especially provoke?”2) “Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lech-/ery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the/desire, but it takes away the performance.” | 1) MACDUFF to PORTER2) PORTER to MACDUFFSignificance: Drinking enhances desire but detracts from the performance. |
| “Who could refrain,/That had a heart to love, and in that heart/Courage to make’s love known?” | MACBETH to LADY MACBETH, MACDUFF, DONALBAIN, MALCOLM, and BANQUO.Significance: He admits to killing the guards because, in his words, ‘how could you not kill them?’ As they are the closest suspects to the king’s death. |
| “‘Tis unnatural,/Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last/A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place,/Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.” | OLD MAN to ROSSSignificance: Theme 2 [Unnatural Deeds Breed Unnatural Trouble] (UDBUT) |
| “Thine own life’s means! Then ’tis most like/The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.” | ROSS to OLD MANSignificance: Macbeth has been named king. |
MACBETH QUOTE LOG
August 6, 2019