Macbeth Top 9 Quotes

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of the witches' quote:

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
 Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Answer:

• The witches speak this quote and hint at their power to fly through the fog.

• It introduces the perspective of duality, or appearance versus reality: what seems fair is actually foul, and what seems foul is actually fair.

• It describes a world that cannot be trusted.

• It links to the idea that you can't read a man's intentions from his face, as seen with Duncan repeatedly appointing traitors.

• The repetition of the 'f' sound (fricatives) conveys the violence of the witches' desires.

• The witches' portrayal can be interpreted as sinister or childlike.

• The quote is in trochaic tetrameter, which can make the witches seem less sinister and more like a childish fantasy.

• The witches never actually tell Macbeth to do anything evil, they only prophesise the future.

• The quote reminds us of the equivocation between what looks good and what looks bad.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of the witches' quote about Banquo:

“Lesser than Macbeth and greater.

Not so happy, yet much happier.

Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.”

Answer:

• The quote is flattery of King James, who was believed to be a descendant of Banquo.

• By portraying Banquo as a noble figure who doesn't participate in the regicide, Shakespeare suggests that King James comes from this noble ancestry.

• This noble ancestry is chosen by God.

• All the powers of evil work their way on Macbeth, but Banquo's line will take over as though he's been appointed by God.

• This plays into the idea of the divine right of kings, suggesting that God chooses the next king, making the king God's representative on Earth.

• The play serves as a warning to the nobles not to overthrow King James, because they would be going against God's divine plan and would be punished.

• Banquo is set up as the antithesis to Macbeth, becoming the model of good behaviour, while Macbeth becomes the model of bad behaviour for the watching nobles.

• The play reminds the nobles that the Gunpowder Plot was unsuccessful and that any other plotting against the king will also be unsuccessful and end in tragedy for the rebels.

• The quotation reminds us of "fair is foul and foul is fair," highlighting the idea of appearance versus reality.

• The witches don't tell Banquo to do anything; it's just a prophecy about the future.

• The witches suggest Banquo will be much happier than Macbeth because he won't act on his evil thoughts.

• The witches seem to know that Macbeth won't be happy because he will act on those evil thoughts.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Lady Macbeth's quote:

“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.”

Answer:

• The quote is not just about being "unsexed" but represents a rejection of the patriarchy.

• Lady Macbeth is saying that to succeed in society, she has to be a man, and the qualities of manhood are cruelty.

• Shakespeare uses this to suggest what kind of king King James should be: someone who rejects cruelty.

• Shakespeare doesn't want King James to be a cruel ruler; cruelty and kingship do not belong together, which is a message of the play.

• The quote can be used to show that women are excluded from power, only gaining it through their relationships with men (fathers or husbands).

• This encourages Lady Macbeth to manipulate and control her husband.

• Society forces women to act in unfeminine ways if they want to achieve power.

• Lady Macbeth has just lost her child and is a grieving mother and a failed wife because she hasn't provided an heir to Macbeth.

• She is focused on becoming queen as a solution to her grief and lack of power, fixating on the crown.

• In attacking God, she attacks the king and wants Duncan killed.

• Lady Macbeth may be seen as inherently evil or as made evil by society.

• Shakespeare is asking what kind of society forces women to value themselves only on their appearance, the person they're married to, or their ability to have children.

• Alternatively, Shakespeare may be suggesting that Lady Macbeth's problem is that she doesn't know her place and exceeds the role of a woman, therefore she is rightly punished.

• Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, thinks that Shakespeare had a "recusant Catholic background."

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Lady Macbeth's advice to Macbeth:

“Look like th’ innocent flower,
 But be the serpent under ’t.”

Answer:

• This advice comes straight out of Genesis in the Adam and Eve story, where Eve meets the serpent who persuades her to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil that she shouldn't eat.

• The serpent is Satan (the devil), and Eve is the one that the devil is able to influence most.

• Just like Eve influenced Adam, Lady Macbeth influences Macbeth.

• This is a misogynistic interpretation of the Bible that was current at the time and favoured by King James in his book Daemonologie, where he suggests that women are much more evil than men, using Eve's behaviour as proof.

• Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a worse figure than Macbeth, though another interpretation is that Shakespeare is giving King James the view he wants since King James is the one sponsoring Shakespeare.

• King James had a medal produced to commemorate his victory over the Gunpowder Plot, which showed a snake (the plotters) underneath the flower; this reference would have delighted the king and reminded the nobles that the Catholic plotters were unsuccessful.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Macbeth's quote:

"I have no spur
 To prick the sides of my intent, but only
 Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
 And falls on th’ other—."

Answer:

• Macbeth is saying his intentions are not enough and are like a horse that will fail its jump.

• His ambition is the only thing pushing him forward, but it is not sufficient.

• Lady Macbeth is the rider that he needs to control his ambition, meaning he is not in control.

• Even the witches' prophecies are not enough to make him kill Duncan, meaning his ambition alone is not his fatal flaw.

• His love for his wife could be his hamartia.

• Macbeth acknowledges Lady Macbeth's equal partnership.

• Choice of a horse which is low in the Great Chain of beings foreshadows how he will become animalistic and bloodthirsty and his hold on power will not last.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Lady Macbeth's imagery:

“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.”

Answer:

• It's supposed to show that she has abandoned all sense of femininity.

• She has rejected the patriarchal roles and also her duty to provide children for her husband.

• At a deeper level, it shows us how much the death of her baby has affected her.

• It's led to this extreme level of violence which she is describing about the baby but actually she wants Macbeth to inflict on Duncan.

• It's a kind of revenge killing: "this is what the world has done to me it's taken my baby away and killed it and I now can no longer put it on my breast I'm still lactating my milk is still there remember she asks her milk to be turned to Gaul".

• In this society, the king is God's representative on Earth (according to the divine right of kings), so in her attack against God, she attacks the king and wants Duncan killed.

• Her promise to Macbeth could never be broken; it's even more important than a matter of life and death.

• The consonants of B's and D's show how aggressive this imagery is, which reflects her own aggression and also suggests the aggression that Macbeth must use in his actions to kill Duncan.

• As always with Lady Macbeth, the quotation can be used to prove that she is a fiend-like queen (inherently evil) or that society has made her evil.

• If her main role in life is to provide heirs, but her children can never survive because they don't have any children (and this must have happened quite frequently), then we can have a massive amount of sympathy for her.

• The death of children in childbirth or soon after was incredibly common, so Shakespeare is legitimately asking what kind of society forces women to value themselves only on their appearance, the person they're married to, or their ability to have children.

• Alternatively, Shakespeare may be suggesting that Lady Macbeth's problem is that she doesn't know her place and exceeds the role of a woman, therefore she is rightly punished.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Lady Macbeth's quote:

“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? What need we fear
who knows it, when none can call our power to
 account?”

Answer:

• The quote reveals how Lady Macbeth now realises her soul is going to hell and wants to get rid of her guilt.

• The spot of blood she imagines on her hand represents her Christian guilt.

• Her line, "Hell is murky," links back to the "filthy air" mentioned by the witches.

• She carries a light around with her (a taper) that symbolizes Christianity.

• Earlier in the play, she was the brains behind the operation, believing they would get away with the regicide because of their power.

• She was wrong, because as soon as the nobles find out Macbeth killed Duncan, they start to turn on him.

• Her sleepwalking scene shows she is going through all the things that she regrets, and she thinks the most persuasive argument was being able to get away with it.

• Her ambition has been too great, causing her excessive grief.

• She asked for supernatural help and allied herself to the forces of evil, hence the hell references.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Macbeth's quote:

“I ’gin to be aweary of the sun
 And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now
 undone.—”

Answer:

• It can be used to show that Macbeth understands that he is going to die. He knows the end is coming despite the witches' prophecies that he can never be killed.

• Macbeth's revenge isn't just to kill as many people as he can in battle, it's to wish that the whole world is undone; he wants to destroy everything.

• This suggests that his nihilism is actually childish, a childish impulse to want to destroy everything without thinking about the consequences.

• Shakespeare is drawing a parallel with any nobles in the audience who want to get rid of King James, telling them that their desire to become king is ultimately a childish desire.

• Symbolically, to reject the sun is to reject God, as the sun often symbolised God in literature and paintings.

• In rejecting God, Macbeth automatically rejects the whole world. He wants the world to be undone; without faith in God, the world is meaningless, and one will become nihilistic as Macbeth is.

• Shakespeare wants to emphasise the Christian faith because if the nobles emphasise their own Christian faith, they cannot kill the king, who they believe (or are told to believe) is appointed by God. They'll certainly believe that their souls will go to hell, and Macbeth has served as an example to show that going against God will lead to punishment on Earth, just as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are punished on Earth as well as eternal damnation and punishment in hell.

• The extreme nature of this imagery (wanting to destroy the whole world) may reflect how guilty Macbeth now feels for what he's done. He's not admitting his guilt; he's transposing those emotions onto other things; he is blaming God and blaming the world, which is a childish refusal to take responsibility for what he himself has done.

Question: Explain the meaning and significance of Macbeth's quote:

"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.”

Answer:

• The phrase "out, out" echoes Lady Macbeth's language of "out, damned spot," which on one hand shows that he is similarly evil, but on the other hand shows how closely they are attuned to each other. It emphasises his love for her.

• The image of light in the candle is a Christian image, and Macbeth is suggesting that his love for his wife is more powerful than his love for God. This can be seen as indicative of his evil state, turning away from God and deserving divine punishment, but on the other hand, it is a true love story.

• When he talks about life being a poor player, the player means an actor playing a part, and here he's expressing his nihilistic view that life is pointless.

• If fate is already decided by God, then it doesn't matter what we do on Earth; we don't really have free will. We're just going to end up at the point that God has dictated. Therefore, we are like actors working through a script that someone else has written for us, and we believe as we're performing that script that we're in charge, but then at some point, the veil is lifted, and we understand that we haven't been in control; fate or God has.

• One could sympathise with Macbeth here, or one could argue this is total self-deception; he has written his own script, he has taken all his own decisions which he didn't have to take, and therefore he is refusing to accept responsibility.

• His actions have led to his wife feeling tremendous guilt and then committing suicide; he doesn't want to face up to that and therefore he blames the scriptwriter, not him, not her, but God.

• Shakespeare's audience would have seen this as deeply ironic because he's been acting on his own free will and that's what's led to the tragedy.

• They would also have enjoyed the dark humour of this moment. The actor playing Macbeth is actually strutting his hour on the stage; he is actually performing someone else's script. So underlying that is the idea that maybe God has written our scripts; maybe we're not fully in control of what happens to us.

• Shakespeare, as a self-invented man, might look on Macbeth as somebody who could have chosen differently, could have had success in a different way. The problem for Macbeth is that he has tried to write his script in blood.

• This, of course, is also a rejection of God; all the audience would have been Christian, and so it turns them entirely against Macbeth.

• Shakespeare wants to emphasise the Christian faith here; if the nobles emphasise their own Christian faith, they cannot kill the king, who they believe or are told to believe is appointed by God. They'll certainly believe that their souls will go to hell, and Macbeth has served as an example to show that going against God will lead to punishment on Earth, just as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are punished on Earth as well as eternal damnation and punishment in hell.

• One could argue that the extreme nature of this imagery—wanting to destroy the whole world—is a reflection of how guilty Macbeth now feels for what he's done. He's not admitting his guilt; he's transposing those emotions onto other things; he is blaming God and blaming the world. This is a childish refusal to take responsibility for what he himself has done.