ENG 1D1
Macbeth
Act 1 – 2 Quote Review _ Key Quotes for Practice
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“Fair is foul and foul is fair, / Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Stay you imperfect speakers. Tell me more. / By Sinel’s death I know I am
Thane of Glamis. / But how of Cawdor?
“He’s here in double trust: / First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, /Strong
both against the deed; then, as his host, / Who should against his murderer
shut the door, / Not bear the knife myself.”
“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me
from the crown to the top-full / Of direst cruelty.”
“The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step / On which I must fall down or else
o’erleap, / For in my way ir lies. Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my
black and deep desires.”
“To beguile the time, / Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, / Look
like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?... / Art
thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? Or art thou / A dagger
of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”
(2.1.33 – 34; 36 – 39)
“Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep”
(2.1.50-51).
“Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep’.
. . Still it cried ‘Sleep no more! To all the house: / ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep,
and therefore Cawdor / Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more”
(2.2.35-36; 41-43).
“My hands are of your colour; but shame / To wear a heart so white. . . A little
water clears us of this deed:” (2.2. 64-65; 67).
“But this place is too cold / for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further” (2.3.14-15).
“The night has been unruly: where we lay / Our chimneys were blown down,
and s they say / Lamentings heard I’th’air, strange screams of death, / And
prophesying with accents terrible / Of dire combustin and confused events /
New hatched to th’woeful time. The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong
night: some say, the earth / Was feverous and did shake” (2.3. 53-60).
“Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had lived a blessed time; for
from this instant / There’s nothing serious in morality” (2.3.98-100)
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood / The nearer the bloody.”
(2.3.158-159).
“Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act, / Threatens his bloody
stage” (2.4.5-6) . . . “’Tis unnatural / Even like the deed that’s done.” (2.4.1112).
“Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up / Thine own life’s means! Then ‘tis most
like / The sovereignity will fall upon Macbeth” (2.4. 28-29)
“Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!” (2.4.39).