MACBETH Flashcards
Macbeth’s introduction as a heroic warrior
‘Disdaining fortune… like valour’s minion’
Macbeth mirrors the witches’ speech here
‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (mirrors witches)
Macbeth questions his appointment as Thane of Cawdor
‘Why do you dress me in borrowed robes’
Macbeth vacillates between seeing the witches as good and evil
‘This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good’
Macbeth at this point does not wish to take any action in order to become king [2 quotes]
‘If chance may have me king, why, chance may crown me’
‘We will proceed no further in this business’
Macbeth beginning to succumb to the witches’ and his wife’s will
‘Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires’
Macbeth’s immediate guilt linking to blood motif
‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’
Macbeth beginning to go insane
‘sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep!’
Macbeth’s duplicitous description of Duncan
‘His silver skin laced with his golden blood’
Macbeth doesn’t have an heir
‘Fruitless crown’
Macbeth realises he has to kill more people in order to stay as king [2 quotes]
‘We are yet but young in deed’
‘We have scorched the snake, not killed it’
Macbeth very much feeling the consequences of his actions
‘Oh full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife’
Macbeth reaching the point of no return
‘I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more returning were as tedious as to go over’ (after seeing Banquo’s ghost)
Macbeth becoming dominant over his wife
‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, until thou applaud the deed’
Malcolm and Macduff’s opinions of Macbeth
‘Black Macbeth’, ‘devil’
Description of Macbeth as a tyrant linking to his earlier reaction to being appointed Thane of Cawdor
‘Like a giant’s robe, upon a dwarfish thief’
Macbeth despairing over what he has done
‘I have supped full of horrors’
Macbeth’s final speech
‘Life’s but a walking shadow’
Macbeth’s belief in the witches (being debunked)
‘I bear a charmed life’ (double meaning, blessed or bewitched)
Lady Macbeth’s egalitarian relationship
‘Dearest partner in greatness’
Macbeth too heroic to do what is necessary
‘Too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way’
Lady Macbeth losing femininity [2 quotes]
‘Come, you spirits… unsex me here… fill me with direst cruelty’
‘Take my milk for gall’
Lady Macbeth goading/tempting her husband
Look like the innocent flower ‘Be the serpent under’t’
Lady Macbeth’s resolve and loyalty
‘Dashed the brains out’ (of her child had Macbeth told her to, total resolve)
Lady Macbeth’s mistrust of her husband
‘I laid their daggers ready, he could not miss them’ (clear mistrust)
Lady Macbeth beginning to realise her guilt
‘These deeds must not be thought after these ways: so it will make us mad’
Lady Macbeth not affected by guilt, and trivialising her husband’s
‘A little water clears us of this deed’
Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, has gone insane
‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’
Insanity is incurable
‘This disease is beyond my practice’
Banquo’s immediate scepticism of the witches
‘That look not like the inhabitants of the Earth’
Banquo surprised that the witches’ prophecy comes true
‘What, can the devil speak true?’
Banquo noticing Macbeth contemplating the witches’ prophecy
‘look, how our partner’s rapt’
Banquo understanding the Witches’ equivocal nature
‘The instruments of darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence’
Banquo beginning to mistrust Macbeth
‘The temple-haunting martlet’
Banquo remaining loyal to Duncan
‘There if I grow, the harvest is your own’
Banquo acknowledging the witches’ influence on him
‘I dreamed last night of the weyward sisters’, ‘cursed thoughts’
Banquo directly voicing his suspicion of Macbeth (in a soliloquy of course)
‘I fear he played most foully for it’
Banquo’s aptitude for kingship
‘Royalty of nature’
Macbeth equivocating about Banquo’s murder
‘Our dear friend Banquo, who we miss’
Witches immediately ambiguous and equivocal
‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’
Macbeth physically repulsed by witches, still remains sceptical
‘Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair’
Banquo questioning the witches’ appearance
‘You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so’
Witches referring to Macbeth as evil
‘By the pricking of my thumbs // something wicked this way comes’
Macduff’s progressive views on masculinity
‘I must also feel it as a man’
Macduff’s opinion on Macbeth [2 quotes]
‘Bring thou this fiend of Scotland’
‘Tyrant, show thy face’
Macduff’s resolve to avenge his family
‘My voice is in my sword’
Donalbain’s mistrust of everyone
‘There’s daggers in men’s smiles’
The porter’s speech
‘Could not equivocate to heaven’
___ came first, the chicken or the ___
‘What you egg?’
Malcolm’s unquestioning loyalty and truthfulness
‘Would not betray the Devil to his fellow and delight no less in truth than life’
Malcolm representing the people’s needs
‘What I am truly is thine and my poor country’s to command’
Malcolm’s loyalty to God
‘God above deal between thee and me’
Natural order being disrupted and causing a tectonic anomaly
‘The earth was feverous and did shake’ (night of Duncan’s death)
Unprecedentedly bad weather thanks to disrupted natural order
‘This sore night hath trifled former knowings’
