Macbeth Quotes

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