Macbeth Flashcards
[ Macbeth ]
‘I have no spur to prick the side of my intent, but only vaulting ambition’
R - Audience sympathy with tragic hero’s moral struggle
L - Metaphor : ambition is compared to spur, knowing this is not a good enough motive to murder a king
[ Lady Macbeth ]
‘too full o’th’ milk of human kindness’
‘coward’
‘like the poor cat i’th’ adage’
L
Metaphor : feminising Macbeth
Noun : ultimate insult for a warrior, she wants to spur him into action
Simile : Macbeth wants the crown but too afraid to act on ambition
Describe Macbeth as a cat but not lion diminishes him – domestic not regal
[ captain ]
‘brave Macbeth … like Valour’s minion carved out his passage’
L
Adjective, personification : Macbeth is Bravery’s favourite.
Verb : highlights Macbeth’s brutality which is culturally admired on the battlefield but condemned of it.
[ Macbeth ]
‘we have scotched the snake, not killed it’
‘full of scorpions is my mind’
‘I am in blood steeped in so far that … returning were as tedious as go o’er’
R - Snake is the symbol of treachery
Jacobean audience recognised it from medal struck by James I after Gunpowder plot thwarted
L - Metaphor
Scorpions excruciating psychological pain
River of blood – cannot undo the murder, may as well continue
[ Macbeth ]
He cannot say ‘Amen’
‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking’
‘He has given his ‘eternal jewel … to make them kings’
C - Murder of king is an act against God (divine right of king)
R - Psychoanalytical interpretation – he is dissociative order (modern)
L - Metaphor
Soul is most precious, he has damned it to make Banquo’s children kings
[ Macbeth ]
Duncan’s ‘virtues will plead like angels’ against the ‘deep damnation’ of his ‘taking off’
C - Warning to the Gunpowder plot
L - Simile : remind the divine right of king Alliteration : emphasise that it is an act against God
[ Macbeth ]
‘hang those that talk fear’
‘my way of life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf’
R - Macbeth no longer noble, makes him lacks of audience sympathy for his mocking abuse of power
I / L
1. natural metaphor of dying, withering, creates sense of pathos for audience
2. natural image ironic as Macbeth has committed unnatural act
[ Macbeth ]
‘the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstling of my hand’
‘give to the edge of the sword his wife, his babes…’
R - audience revulsion at his barbaric order, killing innocent children
L
Repetition – firstling which gives words conviction, contrast of heart and hand now he is man of action not thoughts, reverting to warrior personality
Emotive language – babes
[ Macbeth ]
‘there’s not a one of them in his house I keep a servant fee’d’
He is so paranoid that he employs spies to monitor the Thanes
[ Macbeth ]
‘ I have almost forgot the taste of fears’
‘blow wind, come wrack, at least we’ll die with harness on our back’
R - Audience admires his bravery
L - Sensory image : Macbeth has become desensitised, unfeeling, he must die for natural order to be restored
Rhyming couplet
Cyclical structure : Macbeth will die on battlefield as he began play on battlefield
[ Malcolm ]
‘our country sinks beneath the yoke. It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds’
L - Personification
Scotland suffers as beast of burden or slave under Macbeth’s tyrannical rule counterbalances our pity
