Macbeth Act 1 Flashcards
‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’
(1,1)
The meaning of the phrase suggests that appearances can be deceiving, and what may seem good or fair on the surface can be morally corrupt or foul underneath.
Foreshadows Macbeth’s first line and how him and LM lose judgment.
Sets the mood of supernatural. Witches.
‘Brave Macbeth…unseam’d him from th’ nave to th’ chaos’
(1,2)
Said by Sergeant who is describing the way he kills MacDonald.
This gruesome depiction of battle shows Macbeth can be ruthless and violent.
‘What are these,/ So wither’d and do wild in their attire, / That look not like th’ inhabitants of th’ earth’
(1,3)
Banquo wonders if the witches are from another planet, or even real, because they look very old and wear strange clothes.
Through these observations, Shakespeare presents the Witches as being other-worldly.
What- dehumanising
Withers and wild- alliteration
Suggests the witches are supernatural.
Wild- suggests danger (savage) an uncivilised nature.
‘You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so’
(1,3)
Witches are unnatural. They do not fill the conventional gender categories.
Men played women in theatre back then… explained why they had beards.
‘Why do yield to that suggestion/ Whose horrid image doth unfox my hair,/ and make my seated heart knock at my ribs,/ Against the use of nature?
(1,3)
His mind jumps to the death of King Duncan. This is the only way that Macbeth can become king.
Murder is against nature- Divine Right of Kings.
Rhetorical question shows uncertainty.
First look at Macbeth as a conflicted character… drawn to something that disgusts him.
‘I do fear thy nature…is too full o’ th’ milk of humane kindness’
(1,5)
Foreshadows the destruction LM will impose on her husband (femme fetale)
Macbeth is not capable of murder milk= feminine.
Shakespeare uses this metaphor to suggest that despite his reputation as a brave warrior, Macbeth also has a strong sense of compassion.
‘Come you spirits…unsex me here/ And fill me…top full/ Of direst cruelty…Come to my woman’s breasts: And take my milk for gall’
(1,5)
Lady Macbeth- witch?
Milk brings life to newborns; she wants to bring death.
shows how far Lady Macbeth is willing to go to make sure her husband and herself gets to the top
She asks they put aside her feminine charms (“unsex me here”), and prays that they fill here with a murderous cruelty so that she has the confidence to go through with killing the king. She wants to remove her feminine attributes so she can participate in a cruel, masculine activity.
Later, this sense of the relationship between masculinity and violence will be deepened when Macbeth is unwilling to go through with the murders and his wife tells him, in effect, that he needs to “be a man” and get on with it.
‘Look like the innocent flower,/ But be the serpent under’t’
(1,5)
Concealment towards others… guilt and shame.
Adam and Eve… LM has been tempted into the world of evil- pay for her transgressions.
Appearance vs reality.
In this simile, Lady Macbeth exhorts her husband to conceal his murderous intentions with innocent behavior, similar to a snake lurking beneath a harmless flower.
Deception.
‘Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest of smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,’
(1,5)
John 3.20- everyone who does evil hates the light in or doesn’t come into the light for fear of being exposed.
She knows what she is doing is evil—> suggest she isn’t as courageous as she makes herself seem. Deception.
She needs to hide her wicked deeds.
From now on she will be Shrowded in darkness.
‘His virtues/ Will plead like angles, trumpet-Tongu’d against/ the deep damnation of his taking off’
(1,7)
Macbeth is giving Duncan’s virtues the ability to plead against death.
Macbeth’s statement about Duncan’s virtues pleading like angels refers to the moral outcry that Duncan’s positive qualities will provoke against the act of murder, underscoring Macbeth’s internal conflict and the play’s themes of guilt and ambition.
‘I have no spur…only/ Vaulting Ambition, which o’erleaps itself/ And falls on th’ other’
(1,7)
In this line, Macbeth is describing his lack of motivation, and the fact that the only thing driving him at present is ambition.
Macbeth knows that he can’t become King with Malcolm (and Donalbain) in the way. Therefore, he will kill Duncan and blame his sons, specifically the newly crowned Prince of Cumberland, Malcolm. In this way he can lead over both princes to take the crown.
He uses a complicated metaphor that compares his experience to horse-riding. He describes being unable to motivate himself to take action by likening himself to a rider who cannot use his spurs to motivate his horse to go faster. The one thing he does have is ambition, which he compares to a horse and rider who overestimate their ability to leap over an obstacle, and end up falling down. The passage describes the tension between Macbeth’s unwillingness to move ahead with his plan, and his acknowledgement that his ambition is leading him down a dangerous path.
‘I would, while it was smiling in my face/ Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums./ And dash’d the brains out…’
(1,7)
Lady Macbeth speaks these lines when she is trying to shame Macbeth for questioning their plan. She uses the image of a child to make a graphic statement about her own ambition and capacity for violence. By describing herself as a tender and loving mother who nonetheless would have killed her own child before she would abort a plan to seize power, Lady Macbeth disrupts the typical idea of what women and mothers are like. She uses this image to make her husband that he is being unmanly by doubting their scheme.
Lady Macbeth demonstrates the difference between herself and her husband by stating that she would be prepared to kill her own child
