| fair is foul and foul is fair | Act 1, Scene 1 – Witches – paradox – supernatural |
| O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman | Act 1, Scene 2 – Duncan – bloodshed is revelled in – brutality a virtue |
| So foul and fair a day I have not seen | Act 1, Scene 3 – Macbeth – opening line – paradox similar to witches – potential for supernaturalness |
| You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so | Act 1, Scene 3- Macbeth – Witches = supernatural and transgressive of gender |
| Thou shalt get Kings, though thou be none | Act 1, Scene 3 – Third Witch – prophecy – Banquo |
| Why do you dress me in borrow’d robes? | Act 1, Scene 3 – Macbeth to Ross – disbelief of prohpecy becoming true – theatrical imagery |
| The instruments of darkness tell us truths | Act 1, Scene 3 – Banquo – less trustworthy of witches – calm and sceptical |
| Speak, I charge you! | Act 1, Scene 3 – Macbeth – imperative – witches fail to obey – lack of control? – argues against supernatural powers |
| Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires | Act 1, Scene 4 – Macbeth (aside) – |
| Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here | Act 1, Scene 5 – Lady Macbeth – similar to witches – supernatural relations – transgression of gender – imperatives – urgency – desperation – recurrence of ‘un’: cannot undo actions |
| Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell | Act 1, Scene 5 – Lady Macbeth – light/dark imagery – Hellish imagery – guilt – shroud for dead bodies – concealment – conspiracy – relates to Macbeth’s ‘Stars hide your fires…’ – femme fatale |
| Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t | Act 1, Scene 5 – Lady Macbeth – religious imagery – Adam and Eve – sin against God – regicide – deception – conspiracy -transgressive femme fatale |
| Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th’inventor | Act 1, Scene 7 – Macbeth – fears moral consequences – humility – psychological state |
| Vaulting ambition | Act 1, Scene 7 – Gothic ambition – fatal flaw of tragic hero – only motive to kill – realises it is untrustworthy |
| There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out | Act 2, Scene 1 – Banquo – Religious imagery – dark imagery |
| Is this a dagger which I see before me | Act 2, Scene 1 – Macbeth – visions – horror image – two interpretations: dagger of Macbeth’s imagination OR conjured by the Witches to spur on Macbeth to kill Duncan – ambiguity of supernatural |
| I have thee not, and yet I see thee still | Act 2, Scene 1 – Macbeth dagger soliloquy – contradictions like the Witches |
| Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t | Act 2, Scene 2 – Lady Macbeth – indicates she has some conscience – not purely evil |
| I could not say ‘Amen’ | Act 2, Scene 2 – Macbeth – Amen means ‘so be it’ in Hebrew – cannot ask for anything given his sin – guilt |
| Macbeth shall sleep no more | Act 2, Scene 2 – Macbeth thinks he heard a voice cry ‘sleep no more!’ – accepts danger of sleep when he is to be king – insomnia – erratic and tyrannical behaviour |
| The devil himself could not pronounce a title more hateful to mine ear | Act 5, Scene 7 – Young Siward – religious imagery – hatred for Macbeth publicly known |
| This dead butcher and his fiend like queen | Act 5, Scene 8 – Malcolm – butcher: someone who kills with no remorse or regret or reason – fiend – evil and immoral, capable of enchanting victims into a false sense of security |
| Out damned spot: out I say | Act 5, Scene 1 – Lady Macbeth – sleepwalking scene – manifestation of Duncan’s blood – guilt – madness – like madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre and Lucy’s inability to sleep in Dracula |
| Beware Macduff | Act 4, Scene 1 – First apparition – possible threat of Macduff |
| None of woman born shall harm Macbeth | Act 4, Scene 1 – Second apparition (Bloody child) – comforts Macbeth but has double meaning – Macduff born Caesarean – Macduff can kill him |
| Mother’s womb untimely ripp’d | Act 5, Scene 8 – Macduff confirming threat |
| until Great Birnham wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him | Act 4, Scene 1 – Third apparition (crowned child) – branches cut down and used as camouflage used by the English led by Siward and Malcolm, Duncan’s son |
| Something wicked this way comes | Act 4, Scene 1 – Second witch – their own creation – Macbeth now comes LOOKING FOR THEM – supernatural |
| When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? | Act 1, Scene 1 – First witch – Pathetic fallacy – connections to dark weather – dark imagery – supernatural – dark exposition – tragedy – conspiracy |
| secret, black, and midnight hags! | Act 4, Scene 1 – Macbeth – arrogant command to the Witches – contrasts Act 1, Scene 3 where he addresses them with shock and surprise |
| We have scotch’d the snake, not killed it | Act 3, Scene 2 – Macbeth – worried about threat (Banquo) – snake is the threat to his kinship – religious imagery – snake tempts |
| O, full of scorpions is my mind | Act 3, Scene 2 – Macbeth – the fact Banquo and Fleance still live is like the sting of a scorpion |
Macbeth quotes
November 24, 2019