Macbeth Key Quotes

Question 1

Witches and their iconic lines

Answer 1

• double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble
• fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air

Question 2

Describing Macbeth

Answer 2

• brave Macbeth
• unseam’d him from the nave to th’chops (violent nature)

Question 3

Macbeth’s reaction when he finds out he is the Thane of Cawdor

Answer 3

Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?

Question 4

Banquo’s warning to Macbeth when he realises that he is being tempted by the Supernatural

Answer 4

The instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray in deepest consequence

Question 5

Appearance vs Reality
(include who said it)

Answer 5

• Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires - Macbeth
• nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry ‘Hold, hold’ - Lady Macbeth
• look like th’innocent flower but be the serpent under’t - Lady Macbeth
• false face must hide what false heart doth know - Macbeth
• There’s daggers in men’s smiles - Donaldbain

Question 6

Macbeth referring to Lady Macbeth as greater than him/ on par with him

Answer 6

• ## My dearest partner of greatness

Question 7

Lady Macbeth thinks that Macbeth won’t be able to kill Duncan

Answer 7

I fear thy nature is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way

Question 8

Lady Macbeth wanting to renounce her femininity

Answer 8

• Come you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here and fill me to the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty
• Have pluck’d my nipple from its boneless gums and dash’d the brains out, had I sworn as you have to this

Question 9

Macbeth’s ambition

Answer 9

• I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other
• If chance will have me king, why chance crown me without my stir

Question 10

Lady Macbeth emasculating Macbeth

Answer 10

When you durst do it, you were a man

Question 11

Lady Macbeth’s reaction to the murder

Answer 11

• Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t
• My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white
• a little water clears us of this deed

Question 12

Macbeth’s famous dagger soliloquy

Answer 12

Is this a dagger before me? It’s handle turned towards me? Come, let me clutch thee

Question 13

Macbeth’s reaction after the murder

Answer 13

• I could not say ‘amen’
• Macbeth does murder sleep, th’innocent sleep
• Will all Great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood clean from my hand?

Question 14

Nature going a bit cookoo after Duncan’s death

Answer 14

A falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d

Question 15

Banquo being suspicious of Macbeth

Answer 15

I fear, thou play’dst most foully for’t

Question 16

Macbeth about the witches

Answer 16

Prophet - like (🤨)

Question 17

Lady Macbeth telling Macbeth to call it a day with the murders

Answer 17

Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy

Question 18

Zoomorphic imagery
(name who said it)

Answer 18

• We have scorch’d the snake, not killed it - Macbeth, about Duncan and his children
• O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! - Macbeth
• O, treachery, Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly fly! - Banquo

Question 19

Symbolic of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s changed dynamic

Answer 19

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed

Question 20

Macbeth seeing the Ghost of Banquo

Answer 20

• Never shake thy gory locks at me
• Prithee, see there! Behold, look, lo! How say you? Why - what care I?

Question 21

Macbeth basically announcing that he is not gna stop killing people

Answer 21

I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er

Question 22

Witches showing that Macbeth has stooped to their level

Answer 22

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes

Question 23

Public view on Macbeth has changed

Answer 23

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues

Question 24

Macduff’s reaction to his dead family

Answer 24

• All my pretty chickens and their dam in one fell swoop?
• But I must also feel it like a man

Question 25

Parallels between LM manipulating Macbeth and Malcom manipulating Macduff to gain the crown

Answer 25

Let grief Convert to anger. Blunt not the heart, enrage it - Malcom
AND
When you durst do it, you were a man

Question 26

Lady Macbeth going cuckoo and sleepwalking

Answer 26

• Out damned spot, out I say
• All of the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand
• What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed

Question 27

Description of Macbeth as king towards the end of the play

Answer 27

Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief

Question 28

Macbeth’s reaction to the death of Lady Macbeth

Answer 28

• She should have died hereafter
• tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Question 29

Macbeth being depresso expresso at the end of the play

Answer 29

• Out, out brief candle!
• Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more

Question 30

Macduff announcing that he shall kill Macbeth

Answer 30

I have no words; My voice is in my sword

Question 31

Last description of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

Answer 31

Dead butcher and his fiend-like Queen

Question 33

Banquo key quotes

Answer 33

• the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray, in deepest consequence
• my noble partner
• my bosom franchised and allegiance clear
• I dreamt last night of the weird sisters
• I fear thy playd’st most foully for’t
• fly, good fleance, fly,fly,fly
• restrain me in my cursed thoughts
• If I grow, the harvest is your own

Question 34

Duncan key quotes

Answer 34

• valiant cousin, worthy gentleman
• silver skin lac’d with his golden blood
• there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face
• Fair and noble hostess, we are your guest tonight
• I have begun to plant thee and will labour to make thee full of growing
• Go pronounce his present death and with his former title greet Macbeth

Question 35

Macduff key quotes

Answer 35

• most sacreligious murder hath broke ope
• I must also feel it like a man
• not for their own demerits but for mine
• turn hell-hound turn
• my voice is in my sword
• lest our old robes sit easier than the new