REVISE 50 KEY MACBETH QUOTATIONS
ACT 1
‘brave Macbeth-Disdaining
fortune, with his
brandish'd steel’
‘Fair is foul and
foul is fair’
‘If chance will
have me king
why chance may
crown me’
‘Stars hide your
fires let not light
see my black and
deep desires’
Unsex me here
‘We will proceed
no further in this
business’
“look like th’
innocent flower,
but be the
serpent under’t”
only vaulting
ambition
‘Macbeth doth
murder sleep
‘his virtues. Will
plead like angels
‘O! Yet I do
repent me of my
fury, That I did
kill them.’
‘Where we are
there’s daggers in
men’s smiles’
‘Neptune’s ocean
wash this blood
clean from my
hands?’
‘What’s done is
done’
to win us to our
harm, the
instruments of
darkness tell us
truths,
ACT 2
ACT 3
‘Take my milk for
gall you
murdering
ministers
‘Too full o’ th’
milk of human
kindness’
‘art thou but A
dagger of the
mind’
“I fear thou
play’dst most
foully for it.”
‘There’s no such
thing’
Our fears in
Banquo stick
deep’
‘Screw your
courage to the
sticking place’
‘This is a sorry
sight’
‘I dare do all that
may become a
man’
“My hands are of
your colour… I
shame to wear a
heart so white’
I am in blood
stepped so far …
returning were as
tedious as go
o’er’
‘Both of you
know Banquo
was your enemy.
‘I have given
suck…dash'd the
brains out’
‘A little water
clears us of this
deed’
Tough: Write a brief explanation of each quote
to explain its relevance.
They say, blood
will have blood:
these terrible
dreams that
shake us nightly
We have
scorched the
snake, not killed
it”
‘O, full of
scorpions is my
mind, dear wife!’
‘Macbeth is ripe
for shaking’
I am cabin'd,
cribb'd, confined,
bound in
Out damned spot
Out I say!
“Upon my head
they placed a
fruitless crown …
a barren sceptre”
‘All the perfumes
of Arabia will not
sweeten this
little hand’
‘Never shake thy
gory locks at me!’
‘Out, out brief
candle’
‘Be innocent of
the knowledge,
dearest chuck’
‘Throw physic to
the dogs’
‘All my pretty
ones’
ACT 5
ACT 4
Be these juggling
fiends no more
believed
‘How now, you
secret, black and
midnight hags!’
‘I bear a charmed
life that must not
yield to one of
woman born’
By the pricking of
my thumbs,
Something
wicked this way
comes.
‘Blood-boltered
Banquo smiles
upon me’
Macduff was
from his
mother’s womb
untimely ripped’
TOUGHER: Use 4 colours to colour code quotes to 4 themes:
1. Ambition 2. Guilt/Fear 3. Appearance versus Reality
4. Nature and the unnatural
‘Bear-like I must
fight the course’
TOUGHEST 3: Identify at least one language feature
in each quote. Create a code e.g.
M = metaphor, P = personification, V = verb.