QUOTES - MB Flashcards
spoken by the witches - the supernatural will have a significant pressence in the play
an INVERSION - lingers in the mind of his audience
don’t trust appearances
“Fair is foul and foul is fair”
MB is aware that his desires are moraly wrong and so wants to hide them from god
juxtaposition - conflicted
“Stars hide your fires, let not light see my
black and deep desires”
- one of the first lines LMB says - reveals a lot - about her character
- MB is not a 2D villian, but kind person at heart
- subtle dig at his masculinity
- sets herself up as a villian in the eyes of the audience - manipulator / just as guilty
“Yet i do fear thy nature. It is too full o’th’
milk of human kindness”
alliteration gives the sense of a ritual/ INVOCATION
LMB belives that she has to embody traits that are associated with masculinity when women were incredibly restricted
not natural - has to call upon the supernatural - explaining why she can’t cope later on
” Come, you spirits that tend on mortal
thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from
the crown to toe top-full of direst cruelty”
fate / free will (a guide / hallucination)
is the dagger a convinient excuse? - he wouldn’t be able to RECONCILE with his conscience otherwise
foreshadows other ghosts / hallucinations
“Is this a dagger which i see before me?”
- vulnerabilaty of LMB - capable of empathy
- an excuse?
- women were capable of MANIPULATION and CUNNING but incapable of violence
- reliant on her husband
- unatural masculinity
“Had he not resembled my father as he
slept, i had done’t”
reflects MB ‘s mental state (he knows that he has CONDEMNED his soul by commiting regicide)
strong reaction - audience feels sympathy
personification - “sleep” - MB has murdered the innocence of himself and his wife
“Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder
sleep”
Nature is against duncans murder
These events are not common occurences
foreshdows MB’s faliure as king
“Tis unatural, even like the deed that’s
done”
- an old man
- Different side of LMB (compared to the facade she puts on infront of others)
- remoresefull
- hiding her true self from MB
- not suited for villany - can’t deal with conequences
” Naught’s had, all’s spent, Where our
desire is got without content”
sleepwalking scene
displays LMB’s dramatic mental decline
contradicts “a little water clears us of this deed”
blood symbolises guilt
“Out damned spot, out, I say… Here’s the
smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
MB’s cold reaction to his wife’s death - worn down by guilt / paranoia
reflect of the BREIFNESS and pointlessness of life
metaphors (candles/ shadows)
consequence of going against God / the natural order means ruining your own life
“Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking
shadow… It is a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing”
Last description of MB and LMB - general hatred / no respect
“butcher” - rutheless, remorseless killer
“feind-like” - spirit / demon - dehumanise
not accurate as we know that they are far more complex than a pair of outright villians
Last reminder or MB’s tragic decline
“This dead butcher and his fiend-like
queen”
-Malcom
