Macbeth Quotes

Question 1

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”

Answer 1

~ witches
- foreshadowing, setting the mood of the supernatural

Question 2

“Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

Answer 2

~ Macbeth
- After Duncan announces that he will name his son Malcolm the next king, Macbeth hopes his disappointment doesn’t show. He must find a way to prevent Malcolm from becoming king.

Question 3

“Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness.”

Answer 3

~ Lady Macbeth (referring to Macbeth)
- She fears that Macbeth is too kind to go through with killing Duncan.

Question 4

“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!”

Answer 4

~ Lady Macbeth
- calling on the spirits to take away her feminine, weakness and fill her with evil because she wants Duncan dead.

Question 5

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?”

Answer 5

~ Macbeth
- Hallucinating that he sees a dagger before he kills Duncan.

Question 6

“Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised, and I fear
Thou play’dst most foully for’t.”

Answer 6

~ Banquo (referring to Macbeth)
- meaning: well now you have everything that you were promised by the witches. I just fear that you did something bad to get it.

Question 7

“A little water clears us of this deed.”

Answer 7

~ Lady Macbeth
- After killing Duncan, she tells Macbeth that all they have to do is wash their hands and they will be cleared of their sin.

Question 8

The instruments of darkness tell us truths

Answer 8

Banquo - less trustworthy of witches - calm and sceptical

Question 9

Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell

Answer 9

• Lady Macbeth - Hellish imagery - guilt - shroud (cover) for dead bodies - conspiracy

Question 10

Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t

Answer 10

• Lady Macbeth - religious imagery Adam and Eve - regicide - transgressive femme fatale

Question 11

Is this a dagger which I see before me

Answer 11

Macbeth - horror image conjured by the Witches to spur on Macbeth to kill Duncan - ambiguity of supernatural

Question 12

Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t

Answer 12

Lady Macbeth - indicates she has some conscience - not purely evil

Question 13

Out damned spot: out I say

Answer 13

Lady Macbeth - sleepwalking scene - manifestation of Duncan’s blood - guilt

Question 14

Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth appear evil, but what do their soliloquies and dreams suggest?

Answer 14

Audiences are able to see sometimes that both feel bad for their actions, which reflects the gothic sense of gothic duality of human nature

Question 15

cyclical structure

Answer 15

it starts with Macbeth killing a traitor

and ends up with him being killed for being a traitor- he becomes the enemy he was previously working to defeat

Question 16

prose - written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure:

Answer 16

speaking normally with no rhyme

can show loss of control like when lady Macbeth sleepwalks she talks in prose