MACBETH

Question 1

Macbeth’s introduction as a heroic warrior

Answer 1

‘Disdaining fortune… like valour’s minion’

Question 2

Macbeth mirrors the witches’ speech here

Answer 2

‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (mirrors witches)

Question 3

Macbeth questions his appointment as Thane of Cawdor

Answer 3

‘Why do you dress me in borrowed robes’

Question 4

Macbeth vacillates between seeing the witches as good and evil

Answer 4

‘This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good’

Question 5

Macbeth at this point does not wish to take any action in order to become king [2 quotes]

Answer 5

‘If chance may have me king, why, chance may crown me’
‘We will proceed no further in this business’

Question 6

Macbeth beginning to succumb to the witches’ and his wife’s will

Answer 6

‘Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires’

Question 7

Macbeth’s immediate guilt linking to blood motif

Answer 7

‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’

Question 8

Macbeth beginning to go insane

Answer 8

‘sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep!’

Question 9

Macbeth’s duplicitous description of Duncan

Answer 9

‘His silver skin laced with his golden blood’

Question 10

Macbeth doesn’t have an heir

Answer 10

‘Fruitless crown’

Question 11

Macbeth realises he has to kill more people in order to stay as king [2 quotes]

Answer 11

‘We are yet but young in deed’
‘We have scorched the snake, not killed it’

Question 12

Macbeth very much feeling the consequences of his actions

Answer 12

‘Oh full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife’

Question 13

Macbeth reaching the point of no return

Answer 13

‘I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more returning were as tedious as to go over’ (after seeing Banquo’s ghost)

Question 14

Macbeth becoming dominant over his wife

Answer 14

‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, until thou applaud the deed’

Question 15

Malcolm and Macduff’s opinions of Macbeth

Answer 15

‘Black Macbeth’, ‘devil’

Question 16

Description of Macbeth as a tyrant linking to his earlier reaction to being appointed Thane of Cawdor

Answer 16

‘Like a giant’s robe, upon a dwarfish thief’

Question 17

Macbeth despairing over what he has done

Answer 17

‘I have supped full of horrors’

Question 18

Macbeth’s final speech

Answer 18

‘Life’s but a walking shadow’

Question 19

Macbeth’s belief in the witches (being debunked)

Answer 19

‘I bear a charmed life’ (double meaning, blessed or bewitched)

Question 20

Lady Macbeth’s egalitarian relationship

Answer 20

‘Dearest partner in greatness’

Question 21

Macbeth too heroic to do what is necessary

Answer 21

‘Too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way’

Question 22

Lady Macbeth losing femininity [2 quotes]

Answer 22

‘Come, you spirits… unsex me here… fill me with direst cruelty’
‘Take my milk for gall’

Question 23

Lady Macbeth goading/tempting her husband

Answer 23

Look like the innocent flower ‘Be the serpent under’t’

Question 24

Lady Macbeth’s resolve and loyalty

Answer 24

‘Dashed the brains out’ (of her child had Macbeth told her to, total resolve)

Question 25

Lady Macbeth’s mistrust of her husband

Answer 25

‘I laid their daggers ready, he could not miss them’ (clear mistrust)

Question 26

Lady Macbeth beginning to realise her guilt

Answer 26

‘These deeds must not be thought after these ways: so it will make us mad’

Question 27

Lady Macbeth not affected by guilt, and trivialising her husband’s

Answer 27

‘A little water clears us of this deed’

Question 28

Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, has gone insane

Answer 28

‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’

Question 29

Insanity is incurable

Answer 29

‘This disease is beyond my practice’

Question 30

Banquo’s immediate scepticism of the witches

Answer 30

‘That look not like the inhabitants of the Earth’

Question 31

Banquo surprised that the witches’ prophecy comes true

Answer 31

‘What, can the devil speak true?’

Question 32

Banquo noticing Macbeth contemplating the witches’ prophecy

Answer 32

‘look, how our partner’s rapt’

Question 33

Banquo understanding the Witches’ equivocal nature

Answer 33

‘The instruments of darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence’

Question 34

Banquo beginning to mistrust Macbeth

Answer 34

‘The temple-haunting martlet’

Question 35

Banquo remaining loyal to Duncan

Answer 35

‘There if I grow, the harvest is your own’

Question 36

Banquo acknowledging the witches’ influence on him

Answer 36

‘I dreamed last night of the weyward sisters’, ‘cursed thoughts’

Question 37

Banquo directly voicing his suspicion of Macbeth (in a soliloquy of course)

Answer 37

‘I fear he played most foully for it’

Question 38

Banquo’s aptitude for kingship

Answer 38

‘Royalty of nature'

Question 39

Macbeth equivocating about Banquo’s murder

Answer 39

‘Our dear friend Banquo, who we miss’

Question 40

Witches immediately ambiguous and equivocal

Answer 40

‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’

Question 41

Macbeth physically repulsed by witches, still remains sceptical

Answer 41

‘Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair’

Question 42

Banquo questioning the witches’ appearance

Answer 42

‘You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so’

Question 43

Witches referring to Macbeth as evil

Answer 43

‘By the pricking of my thumbs // something wicked this way comes’

Question 44

Macduff’s progressive views on masculinity

Answer 44

‘I must also feel it as a man’

Question 45

Macduff’s opinion on Macbeth [2 quotes]

Answer 45

‘Bring thou this fiend of Scotland’ ‘Tyrant, show thy face’

Question 46

Macduff’s resolve to avenge his family

Answer 46

‘My voice is in my sword’

Question 47

Donalbain’s mistrust of everyone

Answer 47

‘There’s daggers in men’s smiles’

Question 48

The porter’s speech

Answer 48

‘Could not equivocate to heaven’

Question 49

___ came first, the chicken or the ___

Answer 49

‘What you egg?’

Question 50

Malcolm’s unquestioning loyalty and truthfulness

Answer 50

‘Would not betray the Devil to his fellow and delight no less in truth than life’

Question 51

Malcolm representing the people’s needs

Answer 51

‘What I am truly is thine and my poor country’s to command’

Question 52

Malcolm’s loyalty to God

Answer 52

‘God above deal between thee and me’

Question 53

Natural order being disrupted and causing a tectonic anomaly

Answer 53

‘The earth was feverous and did shake’ (night of Duncan’s death)

Question 54

Unprecedentedly bad weather thanks to disrupted natural order

Answer 54

‘This sore night hath trifled former knowings’