Macbeth quotes

Question 1

The witches’ philosophy of life

Answer 1

‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’

Question 2

Macbeth killing a rebel

Answer 2

‘unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps’

Question 3

Banquo’s reaction to witches prophecy about Macbeth becoming Thane becoming true

Answer 3

‘What, can the devil speak true?’

Question 4

Macbeth wrestling with his thoughts of killing Duncan

Answer 4

‘Let not light see my black and deep desires’

Question 5

Lady Macbeth’s fear of Macbeth not being bad enough

Answer 5

‘Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full of the milk of human kindness’

Question 6

Lady Macbeth getting ready to kill Duncan

Answer 6

‘Come you spirits’
‘And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!’

Question 7

Macbeth wondering about the consequences of Duncan’s murder

Answer 7

‘Might be the be-all and the end-all - here
But, here upon this bank and shoal of time
We’d jump the life to come’

Question 8

Lady Macbeth attacking Macbeth when he says he will not kill Duncan

Answer 8

‘I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums.
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.’

Question 9

Lady Macbeth challenging Macbeth

Answer 9

‘But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we’ll not fail.’

Question 10

Macbeth praises Lady Macbeth’s manly spirit

Answer 10

‘For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males.’

Question 11

Macbeth’s vision

Answer 11

‘Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand?’

Question 12

Lady Macbeth reveals a weakness

Answer 12

‘Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done’t.’

Question 13

Macbeth after murdering King Duncan

Answer 13

‘Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleae of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course.’

Question 14

Macbeth fearing he cannot get rid of the evidence after hearing a knock at the gate

Answer 14

‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand?’

Question 15

Macbeth says that the King’s dead body impelled him to kill the grooms

Answer 15

‘Here lay Duncan…
‘And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,’

Question 16

Banquo’s reflections of Macbeth’s rise to power

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Lady Macbeth finds getting what you want doesn’t bring peace

Answer 17

‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.’

Question 18

Macbeth wishes for night and Banquo to die

Answer 18

‘Come, seeling night,…
And with bloody and invisible handd
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale!’

Question 19

Macbeth defends his fearful reaction to Banquo’s ghost

Answer 19

‘this is more strange

Than such a murder is.’

Question 20

Macbeth feels his crime is pursuing him

Answer 20

‘blood will have blood’

Question 21

Macbeth reflects there is no going back from his evil course

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Witches chant as they await Macbeth

Answer 22

‘Double, double toil and trouble

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’

Question 23

Witches predict Macbeth’s arrival

Answer 23

‘Something wicked this way comes’

Question 24

Macbeth’s deceptive prophecies

Answer 24

‘none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.’
‘Great Birnham wood to high Dunsinane hill’

Question 25

Macbeth determines to kill Macduff when he hears that Macduff fled to England

Answer 25

‘from this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand’

Question 26

Macduff’s astonished grief at the news of his family’s death

Answer 26

‘All my pretty ones?

Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?’

Question 27

Macduff’s reaction to Malcolm saying handle the news like a man

Answer 27

‘But I must also feel it as a man’

Question 28

Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking memories

Answer 28

‘Out, damned spot! Out I say…
Hell is murky!…
Yet who would have known the old man to have so much blood in him.’

Question 29

Macbeth’s despair and stoicism about the attack on his castle

Answer 29

‘I have lived long enough: my way of life…

honour, love, obedience, troops of friends I must not look to have.’

Question 30

Macbeth questions the doctor

Answer 30

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased.’

Question 31

Macbeth, in response to wife’s death, voices defiant despair

Answer 31

‘She should have done hereafter…
All our yesterdays have lighted fools
The dusty death, Out, out brief candle!’

Question 32

Macduff tells Macbeth he is not of woman born

Answer 32

‘untimely ripp’d’

Question 33

Macbeth’s final words

Answer 33

And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold enough!’