1.5 Flashcards
(13 cards)
What happens in Act 1 Scene 5?
Lady Macbeth reads her husbands letter before welcoming him home and preparing to receive the King.
“My dearest partner of greatness”
“My dearest love”
Phrases of endearment juxtapose Jacobean conventuality since wives were meant to be inferior and submit to their husbands: not seen as equals
“Yet do I fear thy nature, it is too full o’th’milk of human kindness”
Part of her soliloquy
Connotations of purity and innocence and a metaphor
Questions his manhood in order to make him act. She is limited to verbal manipulation
“Raven”
Omen of death
“Under my battlements”
Possessive pronoun juxtaposes Jacobean conventuality
“Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here”
Imperative of ‘come’ is demanding and antithesis of expected feminine attitude
Renouncing her womanhood
Associated with the witches and supernatural
Machiavellian
“Fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty.”
Superlative highlights the extremity of her demand and Machiavellian attitude
“Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse.”
Blood is a key motif
Violent connotations
“Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances.”
Imperative ‘come’
Alliteration and Sibilance = whispering/scheming
“Come”
Repetition of the imperative “come” highlights her demanding and Machiavellian attitude
“My dearest love.”
After her soliloquy this endearing term directly contrasts lady macbeths violent language making Macbeth seem weaker
“Look like th’innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t.”
Simile of exploiting nature is a biblical allusion to the Fall in genesis 3.
Enjambment shows cunning nature
“Leave all the rest to me.”
Imperative
Monosyllabic
Demanding
