Macbeth
Quotations
Act One
Scene 1
“Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air”
This is the witches’ riddle – they confuse good and bad
Scene 2
“…brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name…”
“What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won”
Scene 3
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”
Macbeth – fair and foul echoes the witches’ words and shows a link
“Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor
The greatest is behind”
Macbeth – this shows his ambition
“Why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair…”
Macbeth – shows his ‘foul’ side
“if chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
Without my stir.”
Macbeth – shows his ‘fair’ side
Scene 4
“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust”
Duncan – dramatic irony as Macbeth is just as untrustworthy
“The Prince of Cumberland! – That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires”
Macbeth – ‘foul’ and shows his desire for power
Scene 5
“Glamis thou art and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised – Yet do I fear thy nature:
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way”
Lady Macbeth – admitting that her husband IS noble
“…Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear…”
Lady Macbeth – first hint of how persuasive she can be
“Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe, topfull
Of direst cruelty.”
Lady Macbeth
“Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters”
Lady Macbeth – she is aware her husband is showing anxiety
“look like the innocent flower
But be the serpent under’t”
Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth to hide his true feelings
Scene 6
“Fair and noble hostess,
We are your guest tonight”
Duncan – dramatic irony as his hostess is planning to kill him
Scene 7
“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition…”
Macbeth – has no good reason to kill Duncan, only greed
“We will proceed no further in this business…”
Macbeth – ‘fair’ – he will not kill Duncan
“Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour,
As thou art in desire?”
Lady Macbeth mocks Macbeth
“I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘t is to love the babe that milks me:
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 this”
Lady Macbeth – showing just how ruthless she can be
“I am settled…”
Macbeth – ‘foul’ – now agrees to kill Duncan
“Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know”
Macbeth – this rhyming couplet ends the act, hides his intentions and duplicity
Act Two
Scene 1
“…the bell invites me.
Hear it not Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell”
Macbeth – builds tension
Scene 2
“…These deeds must not be thought
After these ways: so, it will make us mad”
Lady Macbeth – dramatic irony as later she has a nervous breakdown
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the green one red”
Macbeth – hyperbole to suggest Macbeth’s complete remorse at what has happened
“A little water clears us of this deed”
Lady Macbeth – ironic understatement, as later in Act 5 she cannot clean her hands, it shows
just how far she has fallen due to her breakdown
“Wake Duncan with thy knocking: I would thou couldst!”
Macbeth – immediate remorse
Act Three
Scene 1
“Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis all,
As the weird women promised; and I fear,
Thou playedst most foully for ‘t”
Banquo – his suspicions have been aroused
“Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep…”
Macbeth – his suspicions have been aroused
Scene 2
“…Noughts had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content.”
Lady Macbeth – revealing her true feelings, but shows just how duplicitous she is as she
doesn’t reveal them to her husband
“We have scotched the snake, not killed it…”
Macbeth – hints at further suspicion/bloodshed
“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck
Till thou applaud the deed”
Macbeth – demonstrates that the Macbeths’ relationship is changing and Macbeth is
becoming more independent as he does not tell her of his plan to kill Banquo
Scene 4
“…I am in blood,
Stepped in so far…”
Macbeth
“We are yet but young indeed”
Macbeth
Act Four
Scene 1
“…From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand”
Macbeth – resolves to act quickly, this is after Macduff flees
Scene 3
“black Macbeth”
Malcolm
“…Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned
In evils, to top Macbeth”
Macduff – Macbeth is now seen as a tyrant
Act Five
Scene 1
“…all the
Perfurmes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
Lady Macbeth – contrast this with Act 2, Scene 2
Scene Two
“…now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief”
Angus – views of Macbeth – impending defeat
Scene 3
“my way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends
I must not look to have.”
Macbeth – he recognises his failings, he isn’t just a stereotypical villain
Scene 5
“…Out, out brief candle”
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hair upon the stage
And then is heard no more”
Macbeth – on hearing of his wife’s death, he ponders existence and realises everything leads
to death
Scene 5
“…Blow wind! come wrack!
At least we’ll die with harness on our back”
Macbeth – he’s determined to fight on despite reports that Birnam wood appears to come
towards Dunsinane
Scene 8
“I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born”
Macbeth – still has confidence in the prophecy
“…Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripped”
Macduff
“And be these juggling fiends no more believed
That palter us in a double sense”
Macbeth – realises he has been duped by the witches
“Yet I will try the last: before my body
I throw my war like shield: Lay on Macduff;
And damned be him that first cries ‘Hold enough’”
Macbeth – determined to fight to the end
Scene 9
“…this dead butcher, and his fiend like queen.”
Malcolm