Act One

Question 1

thunder, lightning or in rain?

Answer 1

Witches were believed to have power over controlling the weather, creating an ominous impression for the Jacobean audiences.

Thunder and lightning also have connotations of destruction and intensity, effectively setting a downcast atmosphere.

Question 2

when the battle’s lost, and won.

Answer 2

Highlighting the key themes of the play as a whole, of contempt, and how nobody truly wins a war.

Oxymoronic/paradoxical statement further strengthens the foreboding of the witches

Question 3

Fair is foul and foul is fair,

Answer 3

Hover through the fog and the filthy air.

Fricatives create harsh sound
Fog = Low visibility, secretive
Filthy = “Stained” or tainted by something
Juxtaposes the regular nature of nature as a caring figure, by portraying it as malevolent

Question 4

Like Valour’s minion

Answer 4

carv’d out his passge

Portrays Macbeth as a valiant warrior

Greek connotations of capitalised fortune and valour

Minion having connotations of slavery

Question 5

Which ne’er shook hands, nor

Answer 5

bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’chaps

Question 6

So they doubly redoubled

Answer 6

strokes upon the foe

Witch-like terms of doubling
Reflective of “double, double, toil and trouble”
Fought back with double power

Question 7

another Golgotha

Answer 7

Biblical allusion to where Jesus was crucified
Comparing Macbeth’s heroics to that prevalence of the sacrifice of Jesus

Question 8

munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d

Answer 8

I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do

Scares Jacobean audience
Tripartite structure
Trochaic tetrameter

Question 9

I’ll drain him dry as hay,

Answer 9

Sleep shall he neither night nor day.

Question 10

Thrice to thrice,

Answer 10

and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.

3
Trochaic tetrameter
Nonsensical language -> Confusion

Question 11

So foul and fair a day

Answer 11

I have not seen.

Macbeth echoes a1s1
Foreboding

Question 12

you should be women,

Answer 12

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.

Outcast
Untamed
Unruly
Pariahs
Supernatural
Strange
Subverts societal expectations of femininity

Question 13

All hail Macbeth, hail to thee,

Answer 13

Thane of Glamis
Thane of Cawdor
king thereafter

Question 14

If you can look into the seeds of time

Answer 14

And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me

Banquo wants to know what will become of him as well as MB
Feels shunned - didn’t get any prophetic messages

Question 15

Lesser than Macbeth,

Answer 15

and greater.
Not so happy, yet much happier.
Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.

Abnormal pattern of speech with repetition of soft “th” sound creates a positive outlook for Banquo, ambience of hopefulness contrasted by the paradoxical prophecies given by the witches

Morai, fates, destiny

Question 16

What, can the devil speak true?

Answer 16

Shock from Banquo
Calling them “devils” = Supernatural

Question 17

The instruments of darkness

Answer 17

tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles

Question 18

Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act -
Of the imperial theme.
This supernatural soliciting
cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in a truth?
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
…
Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murder is yet but fantastical,
…
Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is,
But what is not.

Answer 18

Play-like language implies he has no free will through the connotations of prewritten fates, which resembles fate and prophecies.

Disgust at the witches’ prophecies, yet likes his fortune; internal conflict.

“yield” has connotations of giving in, surrender, which is paradoxical to Macbeth’s character as a strong warrior

“horrid image” and “horrible imaginings” is a euphemism for murder, highlighting how he doesn’t even want to think of the murder happening

Bodily language highlights the physical reaction to the idea of murdering Duncan

Switching to saying “murder” when considering the idea as a thought, yet still reassuring himself immediately after of it being “fantastical” having connotations of idealistic reality.

Question 19

chance may crown me without my stir.

Answer 19

He doesn’t want to murder Duncan but he wants to be King

Question 20

I have begun to plant thee

Answer 20

and will labour to make thee full of growing.
There if I grow, the harvest is your own. - Banquo

Nature-oriented metaphor of nurturing portrays Duncan as a teacher, and benevolent.

Question 21

Stars, hide your fires

Answer 21

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

Question 22

The eye wink at the hand. Yet let that be,

Answer 22

Which the eye fears when it is done to see.

Question 23

and yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o’th’

Answer 23

milk of human kindness

Milk = Fertility, sexual, children, purity, immaturity, portraying women as using femininity as a form of exerting control

Question 24

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue

Answer 24

LM is stronger mentally than MB and she wants to manipulate him into being “crown’d withal”

Chastise having connotations of telling off, playfulness, maternity

“pour” = intentional, manipulative, water
“ear” = bodily, seductive, temptress, using femininity as a weapon, secretive

Question 25

Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,

Answer 25

Unsex me here
Take my milk for gall

That my keen knife sees not the wound it makes
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, “Hold, hold”

Question 26

heaven’s breath

Answer 26

Smells wooingly here.
temple-haunting martlet

Power of their deception confirmed by Banquo - birds represent new life, and spring, and happiness

Church dwelling bird and Heaven connote to a place of worship
Creates juxtaposition between their plans and the place

Question 27

twice done and then done double

Answer 27

Witch like language used by LM to assure Duncan of their purity
Foreboding

Question 28

here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come.

Answer 28

Christianity - holy water - cleansing of sins - fragility - life and death
Considering his guilt that he would feel if he chose to murder

Question 29

This even-handed justice
Commends th’ingredience of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips.

Answer 29

By killing him, they kill themselves too

Noble language of “chalice”
Witch language of “poison”

Question 30

his virtues will plead like angels
naked newborn babe
heaven’s cherubin

Answer 30

Highlights Duncan’s innocence and purity
Cherubin = Angels = Christ = Jacobeans
DROK
GCOB

Question 31

Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself

Answer 31

MB’s motivation to murder

Question 32

Was the hope drunk?

Answer 32

LM taunting

Question 33

When you durst do it,

Answer 33

then you were a man.

Question 34

I have given suck and know

Answer 34

How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me.
smiling in my face,
dash’d the brains out

Violent, horrific imagery of murdering an infat

Question 35

Screw your courage

Answer 35

to the sticking-place

Lute - musical imagery - LM is playing him like an instrument - she is in control

Question 36

False face must hide

Answer 36

what the false heart doth know.