| So foul and fair a day I have not seen. | (MacBeth) The day is foul due to the witches raising a storm, and fair because of Macbeth’s victories on the battlefield. Literary Devices: Macbeth uses alliteration with the repeating consonant sounds which make the words sound similar |
| The instruments of darkness tell us truths,Win us with honest trifles, to betray’sIn deepest consequence. | (Banquo) Banquo is warning Macbeth that what seems fair could actually be the work of something foul. Literary device: Personification, darkness cannot tell us truths |
| If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir. | (Macbeth) Macbeth’s weak defense against his imagination is the hope that if destiny (“chance”) will have him to be king, then destiny will do the dirty work, and he won’t have to lift a finger. Themes: repetition |
| Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. | (Lady Macbeth) To Lady Macbeth, the “milk of human kindness” is distasteful stuff—no self-respecting man has any use for it. Therefore, when we use the phrase to approve someone’s compassion, we reverse the original sentiment.Literary Device: allusion |
| Look like th’innocent flower,But be the serpent under’t. | (Lady MacBeth) She is trying to convince Macbeth to become a villain and murder King Duncan. She encourages him to play the fabulous, welcoming host to the King, so that no one will suspect his true intention — murder.Literary Device: methaphor |
| I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition… | (MacBeth)Macbeth, trying to rationalize his impending murder of King Duncan, Unfortunately, as Macbeth has just explained to himself, there’s no real justification for the crime Literary Device: irony or methaphor? |
| 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. | (MacBeth) Macbeth has come to recognize that his guilt can never be washed off, even if the blood can be washed from his hands. Literary Device: metaphor and hyperbole |
| I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious go o’er. | (MacBeth) implying that Macbeth is detatched, unsympathetic, and icily cold about the awful crimes and murders that he has committed…that, while Lady Macbeth goes emotionally mad, Macbeth stays horribly, coldly sane.Literary Device: irony and metaphor |
| Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then’tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow’r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? | (Lady Macbeth) Her inability to sleep was foreshadowed in the voice that her husband thought he heard while killing the king—a voice crying out that Macbeth was murdering sleep. And her delusion that there is a bloodstain on her hand furthers the play’s use of blood as a symbol of guilt.Literary Device: repetition and alliteration |
Macbeth Quotes/Speaker/Meaning/Literary devices
November 7, 2019