Characters Flashcards
1
Q
How does Shakespeare portray King Duncan?
A
- Duncan epitomises good kingship: he trusts his nobles and rewards their loyalty with honour and titles.
- However, Shakespeare also makes him naïve: he is unable to detect the deceit - ‘the mind’s construction’ - in either Macdonald or Macbeth.
2
Q
How is King Duncan’s death portrayed in the play?
A
- Duncan’s unsuspecting nature serves to increase the pathos of his brutal murder - further enhanced by his being asleep and in Macbeth’s ‘double trust’ - as well as Macbeth’s own feelings of guilt.
- His regicide symbolises the perversion of the natural order, which cannot be restored until the rightful heir - Malcolm - is crowned.
3
Q
What are some key Quotations from King Duncan
A
- He [Cawdor] was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust. (1:4)
- We will establish our estate upon / Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter, / The Prince of Cumberland. (1:4)
- There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. (1:4)
- This Duncan / Hath borne his faculties so meek. (Macbeth, 1:7)
- Here lay Duncan / His silver skin laced with his golden blood / And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature. (Macbeth, 2:3)
4
Q
How are the Wierd Sisters portrayed in the play?
A
- The Weird Sisters embody contemporary doubts about whether or not the ultimate fate of the soul was decided before birth - called ‘predestination’
- “weird’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘wyrd’, meaning fate; their number corresponds to that of the Fates of Greek and Roman mythology. Yet they do not directly compel Macbeth to do anything.
- The ‘all-hail’ greeting is an allusion to Judas’ betrayal of Christ, familiar to audiences through the Bible
- they face no punishment at the end of the play - curious given James I’s own interest in witch hunting.
5
Q
Quotes: Wierd Sisters. From Act 1 Scene 1
A
- When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
- Fair is foul, and foul is fair, / Hover through the fog and filthy air.
6
Q
Quotes: Wierd Sisters. From Act 1 Scene 3
A
- What are these, / So withered and wild in their attire, / That look not like the inhabitants o’th’earth, / And yet are on’t? (Banquo)
- You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so. (Banquo)
- All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter.
- Thou [Banquo] shalt get kings, though thou be none.
- The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, / And these are of them. (Banquo)
- Into the air; and what seemed corporal, / Melted, as breath into the wind. / Would they have stayed. (Macbeth)
- Were such things here as we do speak about? (Banquo)
- And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray in deepest consequence. (Banquo)
7
Q
Quotes: Wierd Sisters. From Act 4 Scene 1
A
- Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
- By the pricking of my thumb, / Something wicked this way comes.
- How now, you secret, black and midnight hags? (Macbeth)
- Tell me, thou unknown power. (Macbeth)
- He [Macbeth] will not be commanded. Here’s another [apparition], / More potent than the first.
- Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth. Beware Macduff.
- For none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.
8
Q
How does Shakespeare portray Macbeth
A
- Macbeth begins the play as a loyal thane, however his violent nature is described in ominous terms, foreshadowing what is to follow.
- Shakespeare contrasts his traditional masculine aspect with the perceived feminine weakness of his indecisiveness and lack of will to resist temptation - this inversion of gender highlights corruption of the natural order.
- Shakespeare’s decision to immediately have him expresses guilt for the regicide, encourages us to empathise with him.
- while he reasserts a perverse masculinity through his tyrannical behavior, his contrasting nihilistic breakdown and steely determination in Act Five - renders him an object of pity as much as hateful fear and scorn, like a ‘bear’ that has been ‘tied […] to a stake’
9
Q
Quotes: Macbeth. From Act 1
A
- So fair and foul a day have I not seen. (1:3)
- If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me. (1:3)
- Stars, hide your fires, / Let not light see my black and deep desires. (1:4)
- He’s here in double trust: / First, as I am his kinsman, and his subject, / Strong both against the deed. / Then as his host. (1:7)
- We will proceed no further in this business. (1:7)
- I dare do all that may become a man, / Who dares do more, is none. (1:7)
- Away, and mock the time with the fairest show: / False face must hide what the false heart doth know. (1:7)
10
Q
Quotes: Macbeth. From Act 2
A
- Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? (2:1)
- I heard a voice cry, ‘sleep no more. /Macbeth doth murder sleep.’ (2:2)
11
Q
Quotes: Macbeth. From Act 3
A
- Our fears in Banquo stick deep. (3:1)
- We [Macbeth and wife] have scorched the snake, not killed it: / She’ll close and be herself. (3:2)
- Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck. (3:2)
- O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife: Thou knowst that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. (3:2)
- But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined [on Fleance’s escape]. (3:4)
- Thou canst not say I did it: never shake / Thy gory locks at me. (3:4)
12
Q
Quotes: Macbeth. From Act 5
A
- I’ll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hacked. (5:3)
- Why should I play the Roman fool, and die / On mine own sword?(5:8)
- I must not yield [my life] / To one of woman born. (5:8)
13
Q
How does Shakespeare portray Lady Macbeth
A
- Shakespeare has her subvert contemporary ideals of womanhood through the violent language she uses in pursuit of power.
- This is juxtaposed with Macbeth’s effeminate vacillation. However, we may question what is revealed by her reluctance to commit the murder herself.
- Unlike Macbeth, she remains calm in the aftermath of the regicide, seemingly a force of reason.
- Shakespeare chooses to make her completely absent from Act Four, enhancing the shock we experience at her complete mental breakdown which opens Act Five.
- Her subsequent suicide was seen as a mortal sin by contemporaries, and contrasts with Macbeth’s determined final stand.
14
Q
What is significant about Lady Macbeths first words in the play.
A
- Like Macbeth, the first words Shakespeare gives Lady Macbeth are not her own: she reads Macbeth’s letter about the prophecies
- This immediately implies she is under their influence.
15
Q
Quotes: Lady Macbeth. Act 1 Scene 5
A
- I do fear thy nature, / It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness.
- The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
- Hither / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, / And chastise with the valour of my tongue.
- 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.
- Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.
- Come thick night, /And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell.
- O never / Shall sun that morrow see [Duncan].
- Thy letters have transported me beyond / This ignorant present.
- Look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t.
- You shall put / this night’s great business into my dispatch.
