Macbeth

Question 1

All Macbeth Quotes

Answer 1

• “Disdaining fortune… smok’d with bloody execution” (Act 1 - Violence)
• “Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other” (Act 1 - Ambition)
• “Life is but a walking shadow…it is a tale…signifying nothing” (Act 5 - Ambition)
• “Tell me and call em” (to Witches) (Act 4 - Supernatural)
• “Stars,hide your fires. Let no light see my black and deep desires” (Act 1 - Appearance vs reality)
• “O,full of scorpions is my mind,dear wife” (Act 3 - Guilt)

Question 2

“Disdaining fortune… smok’d with bloody execution” (Act 1 - Violence)

Answer 2

• “Disdaining fortune” shows a disregard for his fate, and his attempt to manipulate the natural order by comitting regicide
• “Smok’d” could connote to heat and hell,foreshadowing his evil

Question 3

“Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other” (Act 1 - Ambition)

Answer 3

• Personification makes ambition like a human-like force,controlling and plaguing his innocent mind
• Verb vaulting describes Macbeth’s mammoth ego - and hints towards how his ambition is his harmatia and leads to his death

Question 4

“Life is but a walking shadow…it is a tale…signifying nothing” (Act 5 - Ambition)

Answer 4

• Understands futility of his ambition
• Noun “tale” highlights how the witches influences was like an ominous nursery rhyme, speaking in trochaic tetrameter and rhyming couplets which almost parody their dialogue

Question 5

“Tell me and call em” (to Witches) (Act 4 - Supernatural)

Answer 5

• By speaking in imperative phrases, it shows how Macbeth is driven by greed and hunger by relying on the supernatural. He has embraced his new turannical demeanour

Question 6

“Stars,hide your fires. Let no light see my black and deep desires” (Act 1 - Appearance vs reality)

Answer 6

• Paradoxical language continues to plague the speak
• “black” and “fire” juaxtapose one another
• Fire creates irreversible damage hinting and how his duplicitous nature will lead to his death

Question 7

“O,full of scorpions is my mind,dear wife” (Act 3 - Guilt)

Answer 7

• “scorpions” are poisonous hinting at how Macbeth’s ambition has poisoned his mind - he is consequently plagued by guild and remorse. “Full” emphasises this
• Metaphor with an animal taking over his mind shows he resembles more of a savage creature than a moral human. His machiavellian rule has been so omnipotent