Macbeth quotes gender roles

BANQUO: "You should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so."

(This is when Banquo comes across the witches and questions their gender, insinuating they are to foul to be women as they have beards.)

LADY MACBETH: "[...] Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here"

Lady Macbeth calls upon the spirits to make her more masculine and strong to carry out the deed of killing Duncan

MACBETH: "Prithee, peace:

I dare do all that may become a man".

This is when Lady Macbeth tells him he looks green and pale, which during the time was signs of anemia, seen to be a disease typically for young, virgin girls. He replies saying he is a man.

MACBETH: "Bring forth men-children only,

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males."

Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that she is only capable of producing male babies because she is too masculine.

MACDUFF: "O gentle lady,

'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak.

The repetition in a woman's ear

Would murder as it fell."

Macduff tells Lady Macbeth that she is too gentle to even hear about a murder. However, the irony is that she in fact plotted the murder.

LADY MACBETH: "Are you a man?"

Lady Macbeth once again questions his masculinity when he claims to see the ghost of Banquo at the dinner table.

MACDUFF: "I shall do so,

But I must also feel it as a man.

I cannot but remember such things were

That were most precious to me."

This line is said after Maduff has heard of his wife and children's murder and Malcom tells him to "Dispute it like a man".