| Quotation: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” | Location: I.3.38 (p.8) – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Banquo – Situation: These are Macbeth’s first words – he and Banquo are returning from battle – this is right before Banquo sees the witches – Significance: Paradox – Macbeth echoes the witches’ words – the day is foul because the weather is ugly; it is fair because they won the battle |
| Quotation: “No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive/ Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death/ And with his former title greet Macbeth.” | Location: Page 6 lines 64 and 65 – Speaker: King Duncan – Spoken To: Ross – Situation: Ross told king Duncan that Scotland had won the war. Thane of Cawdor is now another traitor and Ross need to kill him. The King wants to reward Macbeth with the name of Thane of Cawdor. – Significance: Macbeth gets a new title which makes him get much more power and position. This is his second trait of a tragic hero as well. |
| Quotation: “Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear/ Things that do sound so fair?” | Location: page 9 line 51 – Speaker: Banquo – Spoken To: To the three witches – Situation: The witches all hail Macbeth and Banquo – Significance: Banquo is upset that they aren’t speaking to him. Macbeth was afraid because they were predicting things for Macbeth but not him. These things they were predicting were already almost all true. They predicted for Banquo that his sons would be kings. |
| Quotation: “Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:/ By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis,/ But how of Cawdor?” | Location: page 9 lines 70 and 71 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Witches – Situation: They are giving prophecies that don’t make sense to Macbeth and Banquo. Macbeth wants to know how he will be what they say. – Significance: Two out of three of those titles were true and Macbeth wants to know more. This shows that the witches are most likely true. |
| Quotation: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me/ In borrowed robes?” | Location: page 11 line 108 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Ross – Situation: Ross and Angus deliver the news that Macbeth is the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth thought the Thane of Cawdor was still alive. – Significance: Macbeth realizes that the witches are telling the truth to him. |
| Quotation: This supernatural soliciting/ Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,/ Why hath it given me earnest of success,/ Commencing in a truth?” | Location: page 12 line 133 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Banquo – Situation: He is trying to figure out if the prophecy is good or bad. He doesn’t find it bad because he is now Thane of Cawdor. But he is still having bad thoughts on how he will become king (killing Duncan). – Significance: Macbeth says he will let fate take its course and not take action in the prophecies. He is not deciding his fate. |
| Quotation: “There’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face./ He was a gentleman on whom I built/ An absolute trust.” | Location: page 14 line 12 – Speaker: King Duncan – Spoken To: Malcom – Situation: King Duncan explained his trust that he put in the old Thane of Cawdor. – Significance: He is now going to put his trust in Macbeth since he knows he can trust him since he killed a traitor as well. |
| Quotation: “We will establish our estate upon/ Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter/ The Prince of Cumberland.” | Location: page 15 – Speaker: King Duncan – Spoken To: All of the men at the feast (Banquo and Macbeth) – Situation: He gives his son Malcolm the title of Prince of Cumberland and is now heir to the throne. – Significance: Macbeth realizes that now he has another person in his way before he becomes king. He calls upon the supernatural about his dark thoughts on killing both Duncan and Malcolm. |
| Quotation: “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor and shalt be/ What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature./ It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness/ To catch the nearest way.” | Location: page 16 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: Herself – Situation: She is reading a letter to Macbeth and sees that he could become king. She is happy that she could become king. She is afraid though that he is too weak to do all of these things. – Significance: She is unsure of how Macbeth will play out his future. |
| Quotation: “Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty.” | Location: page 17 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: Herself – Situation: She is trying to get get herself to kill the king. She also asked the spirits to make her stronger and more cruel. – Significance: She is deciding that if Macbeth can’t kill the king then she will. |
| Quotation: “To beguile the time,/ Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,/ Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,/ But be the serpent under’t.” | Location: page 18 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: Macbeth – Situation: She is telling Macbeth how he should act around the king (innocent but be the serpent underneath). – Significance: Macbeth is not sure on if he should still kill the king but Lady Macbeth is ready to kill him and has the plan all ready. |
| Quotation: “I have no spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/ And falls on th’ other–“ | Location: page 21 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Himself – Situation: Macbeth is trying to talk himself out of killing the king. He is saying he should serve and be loyal to him. – Significance: Macbeth talks about the afterlife and realizes he should not kill the king. Duncan is Saintly and this shows how Macbeth’s good character is coming back out against evil. |
| Quotation: “I have given suck, and know/ 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 gums/ And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you/ Have done to this.” | Location: page 22 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: Macbeth – Situation: Lady Macbeth is angry with Macbeth for not wanting to kill the king. She is calling herself more ruthless. – Significance: Lady Macbeth shows how ruthless she is by saying she’d kill her own child. |
| Quotation: “I am settled, and bend up/ Each corporal agent to this terrible feat./ Away, and mock the time with fairest show;/ False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” | Location: 23 – Speaker: Mac. – Spoken To: Lady – Situation: Macbeth decided to go through with the plan by blaming it on the guards. – Significance: Macbeth is showing his flaw as a tragic hero. |
| Quotation: “Merciful powers,/ Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature/ Gives way to in repose.” | Location: page 24 line 8 – Speaker: Banquo – Spoken To: his son Fleance – Situation: He is teaching his son about the night and castle because the witches predicted he will be king. – Significance: Banquo is starting to believe in the witches. |
| Quotation: “Is this a dagger which I see before me,/ The handle toward my hand?” | Location: 25 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: to himself – Situation: He is thinking about how he will kill Duncan and is hallucinating about already doing the killing. – Significance: This is his peptalk to kill duncan and shows how he is actually going to kill him. |
| Quotation: “I go, and it is done. The bell invites me./ Hear it no, Duncan, for it is a knell/ That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.” | Location: 26 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Himself – Situation: Macbeth is now summoned to kill Duncan after hallucinating about the actual kill. – Significance: The bell signals that it is killing time and he is going through with the kill. |
| Quotation: “I laid their daggers ready -/ He could not miss ’em. Had he not resembled/ My father as he slept, I had done’t.” | Location: page 27 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: herself – Situation: She is anxious about the killing. – Significance: She is not as ruthless as she thought and wouldn’t even kill her own father or child now. She doesn’t want to kill him anymore. |
| Quotation: “Will 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.” | Location: page 29 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Lady Macbeth – Situation: He just killed the king and is washing his hands. – Significance: He is saying how he could never wash all of the dirty work he has done. |
| Quotation: “A little water clears us of this deed.” | Location: page 30 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: Macbeth – Situation: she came to wash her hands after the death – Significance: She doesn’t care about the king being dead and shows how she is not cowardly. |
| Quotation: “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece:/ Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope/ The lord’s anointed temple and stole thence/ The life o’ th’ building!” | Location: 33 – Speaker: Macduff – Spoken To: Macbeth and Lennox – Situation: They have announced that the king is dead – Significance: People now know the king is dead and they are horrified. |
| Quotation: “Who could refrain/ That had a heart to love, and in that heart/ Courage to make’s love known?” | Location: 35 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: All of the noblemen – Situation: Macbeth says he killed the guards the look like a hero. – Significance: Macbeth is trying to act like a loyal hero to duncan and avenging the death of duncan. He is trying to show his loyalty and love for him. |
| Quotation: “Thou hast it now – King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,/ As the weird women promised; and I fear/ Thou play’dst most foully for’t.” | Location: page 39 – Speaker: Banquo – Spoken To: To the old man, ross, macduff – Situation: Banquo is realizing that the witches prophecies are true. – Significance: Banquo is stilling wondering about his prophecies and is wondering if Macbeth killed the king. |
| Quotation: “We hear our bloody cousins are bestowed/ In England and in Ireland, not confessing/ Their cruel parricide.” | Location: page 40 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Banquo – Situation: He is saying how the sons killed the king but they won’t confess. – Significance: He needs to keep Banquo without suspicion because he knows about the prophecies |
| Quotation: “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown/ And put a barren scepter in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,/ No son of mine succeeding.” | Location: page 41 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Himself – Situation: He is upset that Banquo’s sons might become kings – Significance: Macbeth is paranoid and wants the throne to himself. This shows his evil coming out |
| Quotation: “Tis safer to be that which we destroy/ Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” | Location: page 45 – Speaker: Lady – Spoken To: herself – Situation: The Lady is talking about about her feelings after killing the king and the outcome. – Significance: If you get what you want and you’re still not happy, you’ve spent everything and gained nothing. It’s better to be the person who gets murdered than to be the killer and be tormented with anxiety. |
| Quotation: “Come, seeling night,/ Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,/ And with thy bloody and invisible hand/ Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond/ Which keeps me pale.” | Location: page 47 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Himself and the Lady – Situation: He is talking about his plan to kill Banquo to Lady Macbeth – Significance: He is waiting for night to come so that Banquo can die and he will be in fear no more. |
| Quotation: “O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!” | Location: pg 49 – Speaker: Banquo – Spoken To: Fleance – Situation: The murderers killed Banquo but not Fleance because Fleance ran away. – Significance: Banquo told Fleance to run and get away and Fleance did. Macbeth may have been the third murderer or a witch or Macbeth’s servant. |
| Quotation: “There the grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled/ Hath nature that in time will venom breed,/ No teeth for th’ present.” | Location: pg. 51 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: First Murderer – Situation: Macbeth did not throw a huge fit about the murderers not killing Fleance is not a direct affect to Macbeth. – Significance: Macbeth said they will deal with Fleance another time when he is a threat. |
| Quotation: “Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus,/ And hath been from his youth. Pray you keep seat./ The fit is momentary; upon a thought/ He will again be well.” | Location: pg.52 – Speaker: Lady Macbeth – Spoken To: Everyone at the table – Situation: Banqous ghost comes to the house and Macbeth freaks out and he is scared and cannot look at Banqou. – Significance: Lady Macbeth tells everyone it is just a symptom that he has had when he was younger. She made excuses over Macbeths odd behaviors. She is scared that Macbeth will tell people about Banqous death. |
| Quotation: “I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,/ Returning were as tedious as go o’er,” | Location: pg.55 and 56 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: Ghost Banquo – Situation: Lady Macbeth tells everyone to go home because people are asking him what he is seeing. – Significance: Macbeth almost told everyone Banquo has been murdered. |
| Quotation: “Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan/ was pitied of Macbeth. Marry, he was dead./ And the right valiant Banquo walked too late;/ Whom, you may say (if’t please you) Fleance killed,/ For Fleance fled.” | Location: pg. 59 – Speaker: Lennox – Spoken To: Lord – Situation: Lennox is wondering about the fourth prophecy. He is going to talk to the witches. He is wondering where Banquo is. – Significance: He is wondering about Macbeth. |
| Quotation: “Some holy angel/ Fly to the court of England and unfold/ His message ere he come, that a swift blessing/ May soon return to this our suffering country/ Under a hand accursed!” | Location: page 60 – Speaker: Lennox – Spoken To: A lord – Situation: Lennox and the Lord are talking about Macbeth behind his back. – Significance: Lennox and the Lord want to send prayers to Macduff so that people will believe Macduff that the country Macbeth is ruling is falling. They need people to help overrule Macbeth. |
| Quotation: “By the pricking of my thumbs,/ Something wicked this way comes.” | Location: page 63 – Speaker: Second Witch – Spoken To: The other witches – Situation: They are making a potion to make Macbeth feel safe. – Significance: They want Macbeth to feel safe to be back in Hecate’s good graces. |
| Quotation: “From this moment/ The very firstlings of my heart shall be/ The firstlings of my hand.” | Location: page 68 – Speaker: Macbeth – Spoken To: himself – Situation: He found out Macduff fled to England – Significance: Macbeth is going to trust his instincts and kill all of Macduffs family. |
| Quotation: “Whither should I fly?/ I have done no harm. But I remember now/ I am in this earthly world, where to do harm/ Is often laudable, to do good sometime/ Accounted dangerous folly.” | Location: page 72 – Speaker: Lady Macduff – Spoken To: herself-ish – Situation: The Lady Macduff was just told she is in danger but she says she has done nothing to deserve it. – Significance: She says that bad people get praised and good people get punished. Macbeth doesn’t care if she is killed or her family (son is stabbed) even if they are innocent. |
| Quotation: “What you have spoke, it may be so perchance./ This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,/ Was once thought honest; you have loved him well;/ He hath not touched you yet.” | Location: IV.3.73 – Speaker: Malcolm – Spoken To: MacDuff – Situation: MacDuff is in England talking to Malcolm about returning to their homeland. – Significance: Malcolm feels that MacDuff is suspicious and not to be trusted. |
| Quotation: “That, when they shall be opened, black Macbeth/ Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state/ Esteem him as a lamb, being compared/ With my confineless harms.” | Location: IV.3.75 – Speaker: Malcolm – Spoken To: MacDuff – Situation: Malcolm is still refusing to return for he believes he would be a bad king. – Significance: He doesn’t want to return for he may be worse ruler than MacBeth. |
| Quotation: “But there’s no bottom, none,/ In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters,/ Your matrons, and your maids could not fill up/ The cistern of my lust.” | Location: IV.3.75 – Speaker: Malcolm – Spoken To: MacDuff – Situation: He’s attempting to convince MacDuff that he won’t be a good king – Significance: He’s giving specific reasons that he would not be a good king. |
| Quotation: “O nation miserable,/ With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptred,/ When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?” | Location: IV.3.77 – Speaker: MacDuff – Spoken To: Malcolm – Situation: MAcDuff basically tells Malcolm is right about himself. – Significance: Macduff has finally say that Malcolm is his and Scotland’s last hope. Macduff is mad at Malcolm whom told Malcolm that he would be a horrible king because Malcolm won’t agree with whatever Macduff says, and has lost all hope for himself and Scotland. |
| Quotation:”Such welcome and unwelcome things at once/ ‘Tis hard to reconcile.” | Location: IV.3.78 – Speaker: MacDuff – Spoken To: Malcolm – Situation: Malcolm had just revealed he had said lies and MacDuff is just like “woah”. – Significance: MacDuff is confused as to what is the truth. |
| Quotation: “Your castle is surprised, your wife and babes/ Savagely slaughtered. To relate the manner/ Were, on the quarry of these murdered deer,/ To add the death of you.” | Location: IV.3.81 – Speaker: Ross – Spoken To: MacDuff – Situation: Ross delivers the news of MACDUFF’S FAMILY’S DEATHS – Significance: MacDuff now has the knowledge of his family’s death. Ross has been besting around the brush (is was hard to tell Macduff) until finally he has said that Macduff’s wife and children are dead. Ross says he cant go into details for its too gruesome. |
| Quotation: “But, gentle heavens,/ Cut short all intermission. Front to front/ Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself./ Within my sword’s length set him.” | Location: IV.3.82 – Speaker: MacDuff – Spoken To: Malcolm – Situation: MacDuff is in shock due to his family’s death. – Significance: Macduff wants to kill Macbeth for he has killed everything that is most precious to him. He blames himself for the death of his wife and children because he has left the country and this is all this fault. The fiend of Scotland is Macbeth, Macduff wants Macbeth dead. |
| Quotation: “Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One – two – why/ then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! A/ soldier and afeard?” | Location: V.1.84 – Speaker: Lady MacBeth – Spoken To: Herself? – Situation: Lady MacBeth is trying to wash her hands. – Significance: She feels the guilt. Lady Macbeth is in a sleep walk, and she confronts that she has felt guilty for killing the king. She is washing her hands and is trying to wash the guilt away from which ironically she first told Macbeth to wash his hands that he won’t feel guilty after washing his hands. Lady Macbeth has no idea what is going on. Lady Macbeth keeps rattling off all the deaths of the king, Banquo and Macduff’s family. |
| Quotation: “Those he commands move only in command,/ Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title/ Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe/ Upon a dwarfish thief.” | Location: V.3.86 – Speaker: Angus – Spoken To: Menteith – Situation: They are speaking about the plans to attack Dunsinane. – Significance: They are meeting in Birnam Forest, a reference back to the third Apparition. |
| Quotation: “Cure her of that!/ Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,/ Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,/ Raze out the written troubles of the brain,/ And with some sweet oblivious antidote/ Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff/ Which weighs upon the heart?” | Location: V.3.89 – Speaker: MacBeth – Spoken To: Doctor – Situation: MacBeth is telling the doctor to cure his wife – Significance: MacBeth knows somethings up with Lady MacBeth Macbeth wants the doctor to fix Lady Macbeth. Macbeth tells the doctor to give the Lady medicine to fix herself though the doctor says that Lady Macbeth has to fix herself for the doctor cannot do anything to help her. |
| Quotation: “Out, out, brief candle!/ Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.” | Location:V.5.92 – Speaker: MACBETH – Spoken To: Seyton – Situation: MacBeth wife just died. – Significance: He thinks life is meaningless and short. |
| Quotation: “The castle’s gently rend’red:/ The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight,/ The noble thanes do bravely in the war,/ The day almost itself professes yours/ And little is to do.” | Location: V.8.95 – Speaker: Siward – Spoken To: MacBeth – Situation: The castle’s been invaded and MacBeth’s men turned. – Significance: The men are now fighting against him. |
| Quotation: “Despair thy charm,/ And let the angel whom thou still hast served/ Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripped.” | Location: V.8.96 – Speaker: MacDuff – Spoken To: MacBeth – Situation: MacDuff and MacBeth are fighting – Significance: MacDuff just told MacBeth that he was not technically born a woman. |
Macbeth quotes
July 6, 2019