Act 1 key quotes

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair"

• two of the key ideas in the play — duplicity (appearing “fair” but begin “foul”) and corruption (being “fair” but becoming “foul”)

• Paradox is used to introduce the inverted morality of the witches — not only are they evil, but they delight in it

• Alliteration to accentuate the connectedness of ‘fairness’ and ‘foulness’, of good and evil. People are rarely straightforwardly good or bad, Shakespeare tells us, and the line between these two concepts will be blurred and crossed throughout the play:

“As two spent swimmers, that do cling together / And choke their art”

• simile suggesting a desperate/pitiful battle, two tired armies dragging one another gracelessly/clumsily to their deaths lacking glory/heroism, until Macbeth arrives making him seem more glorious/heroic

• The imagery can be zoomed into the image of the sea (large, uncontrollable, etc), the image of drowning (helpless, miserable, pitiful, etc), the idea that the armies are worn out (“spent”)

“unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops”

• Vivid and grotesque imagery — conveys both the horror and the glory of the war

• Metaphor of “unseaming” — the delicacy of this imagery suggests Macbeth’s skill in battle — the precision of the blow, despite its brutality

• Introduces the character of Macbeth in a memorable and notably brutal way — he is a man of action, a warrior

• Contrasts strikingly with Macbeth’s fear after Duncan’s murder when he can’t even bear to look at his dead body — this imagery shows Macbeth is clearly used to death and killing, so Duncan’s murder must be something very different if it scares him so

There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face”

• Metaphor of the mind as being constructed — it is something complex and intricate but hard to figure out from the outside — like trying to work out how a building was built just by looking at it

• Noun “art” suggesting that to read people’s intentions is a skill, a complicated thing that nobody can really grasp

• Dramatic irony is being used here as this is structurally positioned just before Macbeth’s entrance, another person whose traitorous intent Duncan will, again, fail to detect

“Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires”

• Symbolic use of light and dark — good and evil

• Adjective “deep” is ambiguous — it could mean that Macbeth’s evil desires are well-hidden; it could also suggest that they come from somewhere deep inside him, from his core; they are essential

• Imperative clause (“Let not…”) reveals Macbeth’s desire to continue to conceal his desires — there is shame here, arguably, a desire to feel other than he does — links to free will and control

• Revealed in an aside — a dramatic technique that Shakespeare uses a lot to reveal the inner thoughts of characters

“too full o' the milk of human kindness”

• Important metaphor that conveys Macbeth’s innate goodness at the start of the play (despite all the terrible things he will go on to do)

• Imagery in the metaphor is deliberately gendered — milk symbolises femininity (since only women can produce milk) and it is equated with human kindness, suggesting that (for Lady Macbeth at least) femininity is good, kind, noble

• Adverb “too” is interesting — how can one be “too full”? Being full is a binary — one is either full or not — but Lady Macbeth suggests something else here, namely that Macbeth has too much kindness, too much femininity

“pour my spirits in thine ear”

• Metaphor evokes the idea of spirit as soul or essence (she will pour her evil essence into him)

• It also conveys the idea of spirit as determination or courage (like a person who has spirit or is spirited)

• It also has supernatural connotations and links to Lady Macbeth’s evocation of “spirits” later in the scene.

• It could also be alcohol — she will intoxicate him with her words — links to Lady Macbeth’s later words in Act 1 Scene 7: “Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself…”

“look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't”

• A mixture of simile and metaphor with evocative imagery

• The femininity of the innocent flower mixed with the poisonous nature of the serpent

• The idea of striking in secret, like a snake in the grass

• The overt Biblical connotations of the serpent in the garden of Eden — the root of all evil through original sin and something generally associated with the Devil — the father of lies and the embodiment of evil in the world, from a Christian perspective

“false face must hide what the false heart doth know”

• links to duplicity

• needs to present in a different way to hide how his heart feels

• channeling lady macbeth

• has to act in order to hide his true feelings

• aware of his disloyalty and deceit