Key Quotes/Points in Macbeth Flashcards
“Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it.”
Lady Macbeth thinks that Macbeth is not wicked enough or has enough ambition to murder Duncan
“Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull Of direst cruelty..”
Lady Macbeth wants to be stripped from her gender/femininity and to be filled with evilness. Displays her ambition for power.
“Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers..”
Word gull means acid/poison. She wants something that is healthy and good for children to be able to kill and harm.
“What thou art promis’d; yet do i fear thy nature, It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness..”
Lady Macbeth thinks that Macbeth is too kind to kill Duncan.
“look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t..”
Lady Macbeth is showing her dominant side. She encourages Macbeth to decieve duncan by pretending to be something he is not.
What does Hamartia mean?
A fatal flow that leads to the downfall of the tragic hero or heroine.
“let not light see my black and deep desires”
Back then, they believed that light shows your true side/intentions. Macbeth is hoping the light doesn’t shine on him and shows his true evil ambitions.
“I have no spur. To prick the sides of my intent but only…”
He uses the metaphor of a horse and rider, describing how he has no ‘spur’ on the heel of his boot to urge his horse onwards, basically to explain how he has no proper reason to go through with the deed. His only motivation of ‘valuating ambition’ would cause the horse to overlap the jump and fall upon landing.
“(aside) If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me/ Without my stir.”
The personification of “chance” emphasizes Macbeth’s ambition, but also his hesitancy
“Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair”
the play started the same way it ended
“A dagger of the mind”
Macbeth realises the dagger is a hallucination.
