Lady Macbeth Flashcards
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘the raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements’
R - Jacobean audience could recognise raven as a symbol of death
L -Declarative sentence, adjective (fatal)
Lends certainty to her words
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘unsex me here … stop up th’ access and passage to remorse’
‘take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers’
Her need to invoke evil spirits is evidence of her innate morality – she needs their assistance not to feel remorse
R /L Shocking imagery for audience – inverts cultural norms of women as nurturing
Inversion is emphasized by alliteration
She is willing to damn herself
She does not want the heaven to ‘peep’ through the metaphorical ‘blanket’ of night to see her commit murder
C - Divine right of king
Murdering the king is an act against God
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘coward’
‘like the poor cat i’ th’ adage’
L - Simile : Macbeth is being insulted and mocked. Macbeth is compared to a cat, not lion. He wants the throne, as cat wants fish, but too afraid to act on desire.
Feminist interpretation : As woman in a patriarchal society, the only way she can achieve her ambition to become queen is through her husband becoming king.
(it’s also why she has to defeminise herself)
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘look like an innocent flower, but be the serpent under it’
R - Jacobean audience would recognise image from medal struck to celebrate thwarting Gunpowder plot.
L - Simile : deceit and duplicity
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it’
Suggests emotional frailty and vulnerability Her hardness is a façade she needs to adopt in order to gain the throne.
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘a little water clears us of this deed’
‘these deeds must not be thought after these ways … it will make us mad’
L - Irony : she will later obsessively wash her hands whilst sleepwalking and she is the one who goes mad.
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘noughts had, all’s spent when our desire is got without content’
L - Rhyming couplet
Emphasizes that gaining the throne has not brought fulfilment or contentment.
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘this is the very painting of your fear … these flaws and starts, imposter to true fear’
L - Metaphor
Mocks Macbeth’s vision of Banquo’s ghost as unreal and thus nothing to be afraid of. Excuses Macbeth’s behaviour as an affliction he has had from youth.
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘out, damned spot!’
‘the Thane of Fife had a wife, where is she now?’
‘what’s done cannot be undone’
R - Sleepwalking
Jacobean – possession by evil spirits
Modern psychoanalytical interpretation – repression of guilt
L - Internal rhyme, rhetorical question
Fife and wife
She is not involved directly in this murder, find out later
[ Malcolm ]
‘fiendlike queen’
Image implies she has been damned.
R /I
1. Important message to Jacobean audience of consequences of regicide
2. modern interpretations balance this interpretation with an understanding of her psychological frailty, she is not inherently evil.
