fair is foul and foul is fair
Act 1, Scene 1 - Witches - oxymoron - supernatural and mysterious - good and evil
O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman
Act 1, Scene 2 - Duncan - Macbeth is a hero, his violence a good thing.
So foul and fair a day I have not seen
Act 1, Scene 3 - Macbeth - opening line - oxymoron similar to witches - mysterious story
Thou shalt get Kings, though thou be none
Act 1, Scene 3 - Third Witch - prophecy - Banquo
Why do you dress me in borrow'd robes?
Act 1, Scene 3 - Macbeth to Ross - disbelief of prophecy becoming true - theatrical imagery
The instruments of darkness tell us truths
Act 1, Scene 3 - Banquo - distrusts witches - His character is calm and sensible.
Speak, I charge you!
Act 1, Scene 3 - Macbeth - command - witches fail to obey - lack of control? - fear of evil?
Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires
Act 1, Scene 4 - Macbeth (to audience) - his double personality - imagery an oxymoron
Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
Act 1, Scene 5 - Lady Macbeth - supernatural evil - desperation - unsex me. Disturbing line from a woman in context.
Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell
Act 1, Scene 5 - Lady Macbeth - light/dark imagery - Hellish imagery - guilt - shroud
Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't
Act 1, Scene 5 - Lady Macbeth - religious imagery - Adam and Eve - sin against God
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th'inventor
Act 1, Scene 7 - Macbeth - fears moral consequences - humility - psychological state
Vaulting ambition
Act 1, Scene 7 - Macbeth fatal flaw of tragic hero. Sees ambition as an obstacle.
There's husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out
Act 2, Scene 1 - Banquo - Religious imagery - dark imagery
Is this a dagger which I see before me
Act 2, Scene 1 - Macbeth - visions - horror image - two interpretations: dagger of Macbeth's imagination OR conjured by the Witches to spur on Macbeth to kill Duncan
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still
Act 2, Scene 1 - Macbeth dagger soliloquy - contradictions like the Witches
Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't
Act 2, Scene 2 - Lady Macbeth - indicates she has some conscience - not purely evil
I could not say 'Amen'
Act 2, Scene 2 - Macbeth - Amen means 'so be it' in Hebrew - cannot ask for anything given his sin - guilt
Macbeth shall sleep no more
Act 2, Scene 2 - Macbeth thinks he heard a voice cry 'sleep no more!' - accepts danger of sleep when he is to be king - madness
The devil himself could not pronounce a title more hateful to mine ear
Act 5, Scene 7 - Young Siward - religious imagery - hatred for Macbeth publicly known
This dead butcher and his fiend like queen
Act 5, Scene 8 - Malcolm - butcher: someone who kills with no remorse or regret or reason - fiend - evil and immoral, capable of manipulating victims.
Out damned spot: out I say
Act 5, Scene 1 - Lady Macbeth - Spot is a symbol - of Duncan's blood - guilt - madness
Beware Macduff
Act 4, Scene 1 - First apparition - possible threat of Macduff
None of woman born shall harm Macbeth
Act 4, Scene 1 - Second apparition (Bloody child) - comforts Macbeth but has double meaning - foreshadows Macduff killing him
Mother's womb untimely ripp'd
Act 5, Scene 8 - Macduff was never technically born but cut from his mother
until Great Birnham wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him
Act 4, Scene 1 - Third apparition (crowned child) - branches cut down and used as camouflage used by the English led by Siward and Malcolm, Duncan's son
Something wicked this way comes
Act 4, Scene 1 - Second witch - their own creation - Macbeth now comes LOOKING FOR THEM - foreshadows Macbeth's fall
When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Act 1, Scene 1 - First witch - Pathetic fallacy - connections to dark weather - dark imagery - supernatural - dark exposition - tragedy - conspiracy
secret, black, and midnight hags!
Act 4, Scene 1 - Macbeth - arrogant command to the Witches - contrasts Act 1, Scene 3 where he addresses them with shock and surprise
We have scotch'd the snake, not killed it
Act 3, Scene 2 - Macbeth - worried about threat (Banquo) - snake is the threat to his kinship - religious imagery - snake tempts
O, full of scorpions is my mind
Act 3, Scene 2 - Macbeth - the fact Banquo and Fleance still live is like the sting of a scorpion
will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hands
Macbeth to himself. Linked to guilt. uses a soliloquy. Needing all of the water from the ocean is a metaphor for getting rid of guilt. He doubts he ever will.
Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full direst cruelty.
Lady Macbeth. 'Unsex me here' (Ambition and power, gender) She wants a spirit to get rid of her status as a woman and give her the power and respect of a man or king. Language - Image fill me with cruelty so we can carry out our plan.
Tragedy
Type of Shakespeare play
Act
Play chapter