Macbeth & Hamlet Quotes
Directions: For each quote, explain who said, to whom, the context, and the literal and symbolic meaning.
1. Act 1 Scene 2 - “…cast thy nighted colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust:”
2. Act 1 Scene 3 - “This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!”
3. Act 1 Scene 4 - “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
4. Act 1 Scene 5 - “O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables,--meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:”
5. Act 2 Scene 2 - “… I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”
6. Act 3 Scene 1 - “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?”
7. Act 3 Scene 1 - “Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?
We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.”
8. Act 3 Scene 1 - “Love! his affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger:”
9. Act 3 Scene 3 - “O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder. Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will: My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;”
10. Act 3 Scene 4 - “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.”

11. Act 3 Scene 4 - “Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.”
12. Act 4 Scene 4 - “We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name.”
13. Act 4 Scene 5 - “He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.”
14. Act 4 Scene 5 - “And where the offence is let the great axe fall.”
15. Act 5 Scene 2 - “There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will,--“
16. Act 5 Scene 2 - “No medicine in the world can do thee good; In thee there is not half an hour of life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practice Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie, Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd: I can no more: the king, the king's to blame.”
17. Act 5 Scene 2 - “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
Macbeth
1. Act 1 Scene 1 – “Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
2. Act 1 Scene 2 – “No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth.”
3. Act 1 Scene IV – “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:”
4. Act 1 Scene V – “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it!”

5. Act 2 Scene 1 – “Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.”
6. Act 2 Scene 2 – “What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas in incarnadine, Making the green one red.”
7. Act 2 Scene 3 - “This murderous shaft that's shot Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way Is to avoid the aim.”
8. Act 3 Scene 1 – “Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the weird women promised, and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity, But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings.”
9. Act 3 Scene 2 – “We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it: She'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.”
10. Act 4 Scene 1 – “Infected be the air whereon they ride; And damn'd all those that trust them!”
11. Act 4 Scene 3 – “Come, go we to the king; our power is ready; Our lack is nothing but our leave; Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments.”
12. Act 5 Scene 1 – “Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.”
13. Act 5 Scene 5 – “I have almost forgot the taste of fears; The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors”
14. Act 5 Scene 8 – “And let the angel whom thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb Untimely ripp'd.”
15. Act 5 Scene 8 – “Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'”