Macbeth Quotes

Act 1, Scene 1:

• "fair is foul and foul is fair" - the witches - paradox

Act 1, Scene 2:

• "brave Macbeth"

• "Bellona's bridegroom" - metaphor and plosive alliteration

• "Valour's minion" - personification of valour

• Macbeth’s sword “smoked with blood execution” and he “unseamed a man from the nave to the chaps”

Act 1, Scene 3

• "If chance will have me king, why, chance my crown me" - Macbeth – personification

• Banquo warns Macbeth that the “instruments of darkness” (the witches) use truths as a way to trick people

Act 1, Scene 4

• "Let not light see my black and deep desires" - Macbeth - plosive alliteration

Act 1, Scene 5

• "unsex me" - Lady Macbeth - imperative

• "take my milk for gall" - Lady Macbeth - symbolism

• Macbeth is "too full o'th'milk of human kindness" - Lady Macbeth - metaphor

• Lady Macbeth asks for "heaven" to not be able to "peep through the blanket of dark" - metaphor

• She also tells Macbeth to "look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under't"

Act 1, Scene 7

• Macbeth has "no spur" but "vaulting ambition" that makes him want to kill Duncan

• Lady Macbeth claims she would "dash the brains out" of her own child rather than break a promise and accuses Macbeth of not being a "man"

Act 2, Scene 1

• Banquo calls on the "merciful powers" to "restrain" his own ambitions

• Banquo warns Macbeth to keep his "allegiance clear"

• Macbeth fears his dagger comes from a "heat oppressed brain"

• Macbeth compares himself to Tarquin, the Roman who raped Lucrece when he was supposed to protect her

Act 2, Scene 2

• Macbeth cannot say "amen" and hears the guard say "Macbeth doth murder sleep"

• Macbeth says the blood on his hands will turn the "green one red"

• Lady Macbeth says "a little water clears us of this deed"

Act 2, Scene 4 • “dark night strangles the travelling lamp” – personification

• Duncan’s horses eat each other

• a “towering falcon” was killed by an owl

• there was a violent storm – pathetic fallacy

Act 3, Scene 1
• Macbeth says he has a “barren sceptre” and a “fruitless crown” – metaphor

• He says he has sold his “eternal jewel” and “filed his mind” (he means defiled)

Act 3, Scene 2 • Macbeth tells his wife to be “innocent of the knowledge dearest chuck” when she asks what they should do about Banquo

Macbeth calls life a “fitful fever” – metaphor and fricative alliteration

Act 3, Scene 3

The torch-light is struck out at the same time as Banquo is killed – symbolism

Act 3, Scene 4 •

Macbeth says he is “cribbed, cabined, confined” when he hears Fleance escaped – metaphor and plosive alliteration •

Banquo’s ghost sits in Macbeth’s seat - symbolism •

Macbeth imagines himself wading through a river of blood and it is too late to turn back – metaphor

Act 4, Scene 1 •

Macbeth calls the witches “black and midnight hags” and demands “answer me” – imperative •

Macbeth is told not to speak to the spirits three times •

Macbeth says “damned be all that trust” the witches – he means himself Act 4, Scene 3 •

Macduff says that “each new morn, new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face” in Scotland – anaphora, sibilance, personification (of heaven) •

Macduff says he must feel his family’s death “as a man”