macbeth act 2 Flashcards
“the innocent sleep, / Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care / The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds “
Embedded and contextualised example: Having reluctantly gone through with the regicide, Macbeth is immediately best by guilt and remorse, claiming that he heard a voice say that he will never sleep again; he then goes on to explain the importance of sleep, calling it “the innocent sleep, / Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care / The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds”
One of the key introductions for the motif of sleep as innocence and peace of mind in the play
A series of metaphors each of which convey the same key idea in slightly different ways, all of which you could analyse (e.g. without sleep, our minds will unravel, like a sleeve that is not knitted up at the end of each day)
The semantic field of mortality (life and death) that Macbeth uses - foreboding, conveys the mortal consequences of what has happened
Relevant characters and themes: Macbeth, guilt and remorse, power and corruption, greed and ambition, good and evil
“Will all great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Embedded and contextualised example: When Lady Macbeth goes off to incriminate the chamberlains, Macbeth finds himself alone, contemplating what he has done. He looks down at his bloody hands and wonders if “all great Neptune’s oceans [can] wash this blood / Clean from [his] hand? No,” he concludes. Instead his hand will “the multitudinous seas incarnadine”.
One of the most important lines in the entire play.Develops the other key motif in the play (alongside sleep): blood as symbolic of both violence and its consequences, especially guilt and remorseThe metaphor here is powerful and rich with meaning - the idea that all the water in the ocean cannot clean the blood (the guilt) from his hands; death and killing happen in an instant, but blood remains and stains
Quantifier “all” and adjective “great” used for emphasis - it’s not enough just to say the oceans, Macbeth needs to show their significance even more clearly
Use of Neptune, the god of the sea - a supernatural reference to further emphasise the power of the ocean in order to reinforce the greatness of his guilt
The blood will turn the ocean red - the remorse will metaphorically grow and spread until it has stained, tainted, spoiled every aspect of Macbeth’s life; he will be haunted by it forever
Cognates of the word ‘blood’ (‘blood’ and ‘bloody’) are used more than any other lexical word in the play - one might argue that, above all, this is a play about the terrible consequences of murder
The symbolic use of water as cleansing people of sin - linking to Christian ideas of baptism
Relevant characters and themes: Macbeth, guilt and remorse, power and corruption, greed and ambition, good and evil
“A little water clears us of this deed”
Embedded and contextualised example: When she returns from incriminating the chamberlains, Lady Macbeth claims, in contrast to Macbeth’s metaphor about Neptune’s oceans, that “a little water clears [them] of this deed”.
The juxtaposition of this line with Macbeth’s line (above) conveys the early difference between the two when it comes to guilt and remorse
The adjective “little” used to further diminish the significance of the regicide - it doesn’t even need much water
The irony that this line later evokes given how much guilt and remorse Lady Macbeth goes on to feel, evidence in Act 5 Scene 1
The symbolic use of water as cleansing people of sin - linking to Christian ideas of baptism
Relevant characters and themes: Lady Macbeth, guilt and remorse, power and corruption, greed and ambition, good and evil
