Imagery in Act 2 of Macbeth
Sleep
Act 2, Scene 1
 pg 72 – Banquo: A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, / And yet I would
not sleep.
 pg 74 – Banquo: I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters
 pg 76 – Macbeth: and wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep
Act 2, Scene 2
 pg 78 – Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, /
Which gives the stern’st good-night.
 pg 78 – Lady Macbeth: Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had
done’t.
 pg 80 – Macbeth: There’s one did laugh in’s sleep
 pg 80 – Macbeth: Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! / Macbeth
does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep / Sleep that knits up the raveled
sleave of care, / The death of each days’ life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt
minds, great Nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
 pg 82 – Macbeth: 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!’
Act 2, Scene 3
 pg 86 – Macduff: Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, / That you do lie
so late?
 pg 88 – Porter: equivocates him in a sleep
 pg 88 – Macduff: Out knocking ha awakened him
 pg 92 – Macduff: Malcolm! Awake! / Shake off this downy sleep, death’s
counterfeit, / And look on death itself!
 pg 92 – Lady Macbeth: What’s the business, / That such a hideous trumpet
calls to parley / The sleepers of the house?
 pg 94 – Lennox: So were their daggers, which unwiped we found / Upon their
pillows
Act 2, Scene 4
Disease/Injury
Act 2, Scene 1
 pgs 74-76 – Macbeth: or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
/ Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
Act 2, Scene 2
 pg 80 – Lady Macbeth: These deeds must not be thought / After these ways;
so, it will make us mad.
 pg 80 – Macbeth: Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, / The death of
each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds
 pg 82 – Lady Macbeth: You do unbend your noble strength, to think / So
brainsickly of things
 pg 82 – Lady Macbeth: Infirm of purpose!
 pg 82 – Lady Macbeth: If he do bleed, / I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal
Imagery in Act 2 of Macbeth
 pg 84 – Lady Macbeth: be not lost so poorly in your thoughts
Act 2, Scene 3
 pg 88 – Macbeth: The labour we delight in physics pain
 pg 96 – Lady Macbeth: [seeming to faint] Help me hence, ho!
 pg 98 – Donalbain: There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, / The
nearer bloody.
Act 2, Scene 4
Clothing/Sewing
Act 2, Scene 1
Act 2, Scene 2
 pg 80 – Macbeth: Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care
 pg 84 – Lady Macbeth: Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us / And
show us to be watchers
Act 2, Scene 3
 pg 86 – Porter: Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a
French hose
 pg 96 – Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid, / That suffer in
exposure
 pg 96 – Macbeth: Let’s briefly put on manly readiness
Act 2, Scene 4
 pg 104 – Macduff: Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!
Planting
Act 2, Scene 1
Act 2, Scene 2
Act 2, Scene 3
 pg 86 – Porter: Here’s a farmer, that hanged himself on th’ expectation of
plenty
Act 2, Scene 4
Double
Act 2, Scene 1
 pg 80 – Macbeth: Who lies i’ th’ second chamber?
 pg 80 – Lady Macbeth: There are two lodged together.
Act 2, Scene2
Act 2, Scene 3
Act 2, Scene 4
 pg 102 – Macduff: Malcolm and Donalbain, the king’s two sons, / Are stol’n
away and fled, which puts upon them / Suspicion of the deed.
Shadow/Darkness
Act 2, Scene 1
 pg 72 – Banquo: How goes the night, boy?
 pg 72 – Fleance: The moon is down
Imagery in Act 2 of Macbeth
 pg 76 – Macbeth: Now o’er the one half-world / Nature seems dead
Act 2, Scene 2
Act 2, Scene 3
 pg 90 – Lennox: Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death
 pg 90 – Lennox: confused events / New hatched to th’ woeful time.
 pg 90 – Lennox: The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong night
Act 2, Scene 4
 pg 100 – Ross: by th’ clock ‘tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the
travelling lamp: / Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame, / That
darkness does the face of earth entomb, / When living light should kiss it?
Strange
Act 2, Scene 1
 pg 72 – Banquo: He hath been in unusual pleasure
 pg 74 – Banquo: I dreamt last night of the three Weird Sisters: / To you they
have showed some truth.
Act 2, Scene 2
Act 2, Scene 3
 pg 90 – Lennox: Lamentings heard i’th’air, strange screams of death
 pg 90 – Lennox: Of dire combustion and confused events
Act 2, Scene 4
 pg 100 – Old Man: Within the volume of which time I have seen / Hours
dreadful and things strange; but this sore night / Hath trifled former
knowings.
 pg 100 – Old Man: ‘Tis unnatural, / Even like the deed that’s done.