Act One Flashcards
thunder, lightning or in rain?
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.
when the battle’s lost, and won.
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
Fair is foul and foul is fair,
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
Like Valour’s minion
carv’d out his passge
Portrays Macbeth as a valiant warrior
Greek connotations of capitalised fortune and valour
Minion having connotations of slavery
Which ne’er shook hands, nor
bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’chaps
So they doubly redoubled
strokes upon the foe
Witch-like terms of doubling
Reflective of “double, double, toil and trouble”
Fought back with double power
another Golgotha
Biblical allusion to where Jesus was crucified
Comparing Macbeth’s heroics to that prevalence of the sacrifice of Jesus
munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d
I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do
Scares Jacobean audience
Tripartite structure
Trochaic tetrameter
I’ll drain him dry as hay,
Sleep shall he neither night nor day.
Thrice to thrice,
and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
3
Trochaic tetrameter
Nonsensical language -> Confusion
So foul and fair a day
I have not seen.
Macbeth echoes a1s1
Foreboding
you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.
Outcast
Untamed
Unruly
Pariahs
Supernatural
Strange
Subverts societal expectations of femininity
All hail Macbeth, hail to thee,
Thane of Glamis
Thane of Cawdor
king thereafter
If you can look into the seeds of time
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
Lesser than Macbeth,
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
What, can the devil speak true?
Shock from Banquo
Calling them “devils” = Supernatural
The instruments of darkness
tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles
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.
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.
chance may crown me without my stir.
He doesn’t want to murder Duncan but he wants to be King
I have begun to plant thee
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.
Stars, hide your fires
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand. Yet let that be,
Which the eye fears when it is done to see.
and yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o’th’
milk of human kindness
Milk = Fertility, sexual, children, purity, immaturity, portraying women as using femininity as a form of exerting control
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
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
Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,
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”
heaven’s breath
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
twice done and then done double
Witch like language used by LM to assure Duncan of their purity
Foreboding
here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come.
Christianity - holy water - cleansing of sins - fragility - life and death
Considering his guilt that he would feel if he chose to murder
This even-handed justice
Commends th’ingredience of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips.
By killing him, they kill themselves too
Noble language of “chalice”
Witch language of “poison”
his virtues will plead like angels
naked newborn babe
heaven’s cherubin
Highlights Duncan’s innocence and purity
Cherubin = Angels = Christ = Jacobeans
DROK
GCOB
Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself
MB’s motivation to murder
Was the hope drunk?
LM taunting
When you durst do it,
then you were a man.
I have given suck and know
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
Screw your courage
to the sticking-place
Lute - musical imagery - LM is playing him like an instrument - she is in control
False face must hide
what the false heart doth know.
