Act 1 Flashcards
THREE WITCHES: Fair is foul, and foul is fair (1.1)
This is a motif throughout the play
Appearances are often deceptive and thing that seem good may have bad consequences.
Relates to Macbeth’s first words of the play, “so fair and foul a day i have not seen”
CAPTAIN: For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave (1.2
Macbeth is portrayed as hero. He is closely linked to violence however this time it is state-sponsored.
ROSSE: The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,
Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons (1.2)
Bellona’s bridegroom is Mars which is a compliment for Macbeth. This portrays him positively at the start of the play.
BANQUO: But ’tis strange. And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s In deepest consequence. (1.3)
d
MACBETH: If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? (1.3)
h
DUNCAN: There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust. (1.4)
There is irony here because Duncan trusts both the old and the new Thane’s of Cawdor, resulting in betrayal both times. Duncan continues to make the same mistake.
DUNCAN: I have begun to plant thee, and will labor
To make thee full of growing. (1.4)
k
LADY MACBETH: Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty! (Act One Scene Five)
k
LADY MACBETH: Bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue. Look like th’ innocent flower,
But be the serpent under ’t.
fd
LADY MACBETH: Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.
Lady Macbeth fears that her Husband is too weak to kill Duncan without some manipulation.
MACBETH: I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th’ other.
No reason to kill Duncan except for ambition
He recognises that being over ambitious can lead to downfall, which predicts his fate. His hamartia may be his ambition.
LADY MACBETH:
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 to this
Lady Macbeth shames Macbeth for being so anxious and cowardly before he goes throught with their plan.
Her imagery of a mother beating her own child juxtaposes with the typical ideas of women and mothers in an attempt to question Macbeth’s own masculinity.
