Key quotes Flashcards
(20 cards)
During Act 1, Scene 5 Lady Macbeth makes a reference to madness, which foreshadows her own downfall in Act 5, Scene 1. The quote is…
‘Thou’rt mad to say it’
Give examples of the semantic field of fertility from Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 1…
What does it link to from Act 1, Scene 3…
‘fruitless’, ‘seed’, ‘barren’, ‘nature’, ‘rancours in the vessel’ (women is described as vessel).
Links to ‘seeds of time’ which is mentioned by Banquo whilst he speaks to the witches.
During Act 5, Scene 1, what does Lady Macbeth say will not sweeten her little hand?
‘all the perfumes of Arabia’
When Macbeth learns of his wife’s death (in Act 5, Scene 5) Shakespeare uses a polysyndetic list to show Macbeth’s despair, this phrase is…
‘tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’
In Act 5, Scene 9, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are described by Malcolm as…
‘dead butcher and his fiend-like Queen’
In Act 2, Scene 2, evidence is given that the natural order has been disrupted, when the…
‘owl scream… cricket’s cry’
In Act 3, Scene 1, Macbeth shows his cunningness by asking questions which show the technique dramatic irony. One example is…
‘Ride you this afternoon’
‘Is’t far you ride’
In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth upon learning that Duncan would be visiting her home, speaks of a ‘raven’ and Shakespeare uses alliteration to show her separation from reality. The examples of alliteration in the scene are…
C - ‘croaks’, ‘crown’, ‘come’, (which is repeated three times)
An example of trochaic tetrameter in Act 1, Scene 1, which links to miasma is…
‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’
In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth describes her husband using a metaphor…
‘too full of the milk of human kindness’
In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth says ‘pour my spirits in thine ear’ and in Act 2, Scene 3, Macduff believes what has happened should not be told to Lady Macbeth as she is too weak and he says…
‘Tis not for you to hear what I can speak’
Lady Macbeth says this to Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 5 in order to persuade him that he will not be seen as guilty for the murder of Duncan.
‘look like th’ innocent flower but be the deadly serpent under ‘t’
A metaphor in Act 1, Scene 5, which links to her eventual madness. For most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries madness was a condition of darkness and fear, so it could imply she was already mad at the beginning of the play.
‘blanket of the dark’
Macbeth is said to be, by Banquo… by the witches. Which means to be seized by something out of his control - the supernatural.
‘rapt’
Banquo says this in Act 1, Scene 3 and it links to the metaphor of ‘tune’ (also said in Act 1, Scene 3).
‘instruments’
In Act 5, Scene 1, Lady Macbeth echoes Macbeth by saying ‘will these hands ne’er be clean’ as in Act 2, Scene 2, Macbeth refers to the murder of Duncan and this hands as a…
(looking at his hands) ‘ sorry sight’
Macbeth refers to religion at the end of Act 2, Scene 3, when Macduff announces Duncan’s murder (‘Oh horror, horror, horror’)
‘I had lived a blessed time’
In Act 2, Scene 3, Shakespeare uses dramatic irony as the Porter refers to the knocking and says he is the:
‘porter of hell Gate’
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff learns of his wife and children’s death, and he says to Ross that if Macbeth knew of the pain of losing a child he wouldn’t of done it, by saying…
‘he has no children’
Lady Macbeth claims she would have done this to her child if she had promised Macbeth that she would of.
‘and dashed its brains out’
