Quote Bank Flashcards
“Fair is foul and foul is fair”
ACT 1:1 Witches
Supernatural
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen” - Macbeth Act 1:3
parallels to witches
“Come thick night and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell…not heaven peep through the blanket of the dark”
Act 1:5 Lady Macbeth
Supernatural, femininity
“brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel, which smok’d with bloody execution…Like valour’s minion”
Act 1:2 Sergent
Bravery and Fear
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return to plague the inventor:
..our poison’d chalice To our own lips
Act 1:7 Macbeth
Bravery and Fear, Fate
Motif of Blood and Fate
“To be thus is nothing/But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo/stick deep ”
Act 3:1 Macbeth
Bravery and fear
“O full of scorpions is my mind”
Act 3:2 Macbeth
Bravery and Fear
“Come you spirits…Unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe topful if direst cruelty…take my milk for gall you murdering ministers”
Act 1:5 Lady Macbeth
Supernatural, femininity, religion
“Look like th’innocent flower,/But be the serpent under’t”
Act 1:5 Lady Macbeth
Masculinity, deception, public/private faces
Metaphor: serpent = biblical + imperative = power and command
“The raven himself is hoarse who croaks the fatal entrance…/Under my battlements”
Act 1:5 Lady Macbeth
Masculinity, leadership, Fate
Raven = Omen & evil
“The repetition, in a woman’s ear, Would murder as it fell”
Act 2:3 Macduff
femininity, context at time
“look to the lady”
“his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off”
Act 1:7 Macbeth
Leadership vs tyranny, divine
“Not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damned In evils to top Macbeth”
Act 4:3 Macduff
Leadership vs tyranny
Contrasts to Duncan - divine right of kings
“This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues”
Act 4:3 Malcolm
Leadership vs tyranny
“dead butcher and his fiend-like queen”
Slaughter of innocent
“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust”
Act 1:4 Duncan
Trust and Deception
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles”
Act 2:3 Donalbain
“A little water clears us of this deed, how easy it is then!”
Act 2:2 Lady Macbeth
Guilt/Remorse
Motif of Blood
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
Act 5:1 Lady Macbeth
Guilt and remorse, blood imagery
Exotic (Arabia) - even riches and power cannot undo her actions + guilt
“My hands are of your colour but I shame To wear a heart so white”
Act 2:2 Lady Macbeth
Guilt and Remorse
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine”
Act 2:2 Macbeth
Guilt and remorse, blood imagery
“ ‘ Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep’ “
Act 2:2 Macbeth
Supernatural, sleep, natural order
“As they had seen me with these hangman hands…I had most need of blessing, and “Amen” stuck in my throat“
Act 2:2 Macbeth
Divine Order, Guilt/remorse
Lost all connection to God. King selected leader on God behalf
“Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple”
Act 2:3 Macduff
Natural Order, Violence
silver skin lac’d with his golden blood
“stars hide your fires/ Let light not see my black and deep desires”
Act 1:4 Macbeth
Natural Order, Deception
Signs of nobleness will shine like stars
“Destroy your sight with a new Gorgon”
Act 2:3 Macduff
Natural Order, Violence
“It will have blood…Blood will have blood”
Act 3:4 Macbeth
Violence
Motifs of Blood
“Lamentings heard I’ the air; strange screams of death,”
Act 2:3 Lennox
Natural Order
“I have no spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only only/Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself /And falls on th’other”
Act 1:7 Macbeth
Ambition
“I am settled and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”
Act 1:7 Macbeth
Ambition
“We will proceed no further in this business:”. Influenced - weak
“The very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand”
Act 4:1 Macbeth
Ambition
Greatly shows the transition in play. Impulsive and strong-willed
“We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it”
Act 3:2 Macbeth
Guilt/Remorse
“his title/Hang loose about him like a giant’s robe/Upon a dwarfish thief”
Act 5:2 Angus
Natural Order
” upon my head they placed a fruitless crown and put a barren scepter in my grip”
Act 3:1 Macbeth
DO & K, fate, control
” when you durst do it, then you were a man”
Act 1:7 LM
Gender
plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn
Act 1:7 LM
Gender
Have we eaten from the insane root that takes reason prisoner?
He hath wisdom that doth guide his valour
All my pretty ones? All my pretty chickens… I must also feel it as a man
Out, out, brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
Act 5:5 M
Ambition, nihilism, tyranny
At least we’ll die with harness on our back
Bear like we must fight the course
Macduff was from his mother’s womb ripped
Out damned spot. Out I say! Will these hand ne’er be clean?
Hell is murky!–Fie, my Lord. Fie!
Bleed bleed poor country!…It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds.
Hear it not Duncan for it is a knell. That summons thee to heaven or to hell
Tis day, and yet darkness strangles the travelling lamp
I have no words; my voice is in my sword
Act 5:8
Macduff
As cannons over-charged with double cracks/So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe
A 1:2
Sergeant
“C” sonic Repetition “double”
I fear thy nature/ It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
Thou wouldst be great,/Art not without ambition, but without/The illness should attend it
Act 1:5
falcon towering in her pride of place/ Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed
