Macbeth Key Quotes Flashcards
Witches and their iconic lines
- double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble
- fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air
Describing Macbeth
- brave Macbeth
- unseam’d him from the nave to th’chops (violent nature)
Macbeth’s reaction when he finds out he is the Thane of Cawdor
Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?
Banquo’s warning to Macbeth when he realises that he is being tempted by the Supernatural
The instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray in deepest consequence
Appearance vs Reality
(include who said it)
- 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
Macbeth referring to Lady Macbeth as greater than him/ on par with him
- ## My dearest partner of greatness
Lady Macbeth thinks that Macbeth won’t be able to kill Duncan
I fear thy nature is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way
Lady Macbeth wanting to renounce her femininity
- 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
Macbeth’s ambition
- 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
Lady Macbeth emasculating Macbeth
When you durst do it, you were a man
Lady Macbeth’s reaction to the murder
- 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
Macbeth’s famous dagger soliloquy
Is this a dagger before me? It’s handle turned towards me? Come, let me clutch thee
Macbeth’s reaction after the murder
- 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?
Nature going a bit cookoo after Duncan’s death
A falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d
Banquo being suspicious of Macbeth
I fear, thou play’dst most foully for’t
Macbeth about the witches
Prophet - like (🤨)
Lady Macbeth telling Macbeth to call it a day with the murders
Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy
Zoomorphic imagery
(name who said it)
- 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
Symbolic of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s changed dynamic
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed
Macbeth seeing the Ghost of Banquo
- Never shake thy gory locks at me
- Prithee, see there! Behold, look, lo! How say you? Why - what care I?
Macbeth basically announcing that he is not gna stop killing people
I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er
Witches showing that Macbeth has stooped to their level
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes
Public view on Macbeth has changed
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues
Macduff’s reaction to his dead family
- All my pretty chickens and their dam in one fell swoop?
- But I must also feel it like a man
Parallels between LM manipulating Macbeth and Malcom manipulating Macduff to gain the crown
Let grief Convert to anger. Blunt not the heart, enrage it - Malcom
AND
When you durst do it, you were a man
Lady Macbeth going cuckoo and sleepwalking
- 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
Description of Macbeth as king towards the end of the play
Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief
Macbeth’s reaction to the death of Lady Macbeth
- She should have died hereafter
- tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Macbeth being depresso expresso at the end of the play
- 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
Macduff announcing that he shall kill Macbeth
I have no words; My voice is in my sword
Last description of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
Dead butcher and his fiend-like Queen
Banquo key quotes
- 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
Duncan key quotes
- 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
Macduff key quotes
- 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
