Macbeth Quotes Flashcards
(21 cards)
I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on th’other (1,7)
Macbeth’s hamartia is stated (ambition), shown through the word ‘falls’
An extended metaphor showing lack of control (having no spur)
Contextual link to the Fall and Adam and Eve.
Tarquin’s ravishing strides (2,1)
Paranoid king, only appearing with a bodyguard of dangerous men to stop anyone plotting his murder.
Presided over all capital punishment and could sentence anyone who opposed him to death
Will all Great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood/ clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather/ the multitudinous seas incarnadine, /making the green one red (2,2)
Neptune- Macbeth’s departure from Christianity, in his referencing of a Pagan god. God of the seas could also link to baptism, but Macbeth is choosing not to go to god but distancing himself from any chance of absolution and not relying on a belief in God
Break in iambic pentameter shows his weakening mental state
Incarnadine is vivid imagery.
My hands are of your colour, but I shame/ to wear a heart so white (2,2)
White- surrender, contrasting the colour of Macbeth inside vs outside (white vs red)
‘To wear a heart’ refers to jousting, where a woman in the crowd would give the knight a ‘heart’, or emblem.
Calling Macbeth out for giving her, the knight, a surrendering heart. Irony here, that Lady Macbeth later does not shame to wear the ‘white heart’ of innocence, as the guilt she portrays ends up being too much for her to handle
Whats done is done (Act 3) vs whats done cannot be undone (Act 5)
Shows Lady Macbeths increasing inward guilt
Don’t shake thy gory locks at me! (3,4)
assonance and monosyllabic words show his abject terror at seeing the ghost
Guilt in Macbeth vs Lady Macbeth
Macbeth shows his guilt through paranoia, and kills many of those whom he thinks could overthrow him (eg Banquo, Macduff’s family). His guilt is portrayed in a sense of knowing and acceptance.
Lady Macbeth’s guilt was portrayed through the innocence of realisation that she had done wrong, and that she should punish herself for it. Renaissance view that all souls have an innate goodness.
Guilt is portrayed by Macbeth to incite what in the Jacobean audience
Acts of regicide should be avoided at all cost. James I sponsored his plays and the company the Lord Chamberlain’s men, and Shakespeare didn’t want him dead/him to stop his sponsorship.
fair is foul and foul is fair (1,1)
So foul and fair a day I have not seen (1,3)
Fricative makes the line memorable and threatening
Macbeth- paradoxical nature of the day- bad weather, but fair due to the recent discovery he is thane of Cawdor
Sets the tone of the play as it introduces the idea of the ambiguous nature of reality and the blurred lines between good and evil
Trochaic tetrameter, while the other characters speak in iambic pentameter. Trochaic tetrameter is a more chanting rhythm, gives the impression of evil
Stars, hide your fires,/ let not light see my black and deep desires (1,4)
Rhyming couplets like the witches showing M’s sinister attributes
juxtaposition of words here shows the choice M must make between his ambition (the hamartia) and his morality
Imperative verbs commanding the natural world could be seen as blasphemous and attempting to disrupt the Great Chain of Being
Yet I do fear thy nature. It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness (1,5)
Showing that Macbeth is a soldier, not a murderer by nature
LM views kindness as a weakness, comparing M to a woman, believing he is to weak to commit regicide
The views would be immediately countered by a Jacobean audience, as LM is disregarding Jacobean stereotypes of women, establishing her as an antagonist immediately
come, you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty (1,5)
Must embody masculine traits in order to kill Duncan, as her husband does not have the masculinity to do this
Unnatural behaviour for a stereotypical Jacobean woman, so she must call upon the supernatural
Foreshadows that she cannot handle to consequences of this unnatural role
look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t (1,5)
Semantic contrast between flower and serpent
LM again insulting M by telling him to show his flower- a metaphor for generosity and benevolence, traits of a stereotypical Jacobean woman
Serpent- original sin
O, Full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife (3,2)
The use of ‘O’ breaks the iambic pentameter,, highlighting M’s agony
Dear may show that LM is costing M with her ambition
M is not blaming himself, rather the scorpions in his mind
the castle of Macduff I will surprise (4,1)
Before this scene, each character’s murder had a purpose, but now M is acting impulsively and wants to kill innocent people.
The murder of Macduff’s son is symbolic of M’s moral decline. It is shown onstage, to show the audience that he has also failed morally
Out, damned spot (5,1)
LM is being damned and punished having exercised her free will by committing regicide and emasculating herself.
Divine right of kings has resulted in LM being marked as sinful by god- linking to why Jacobean nobility shouldn’t commit regicide
all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand (5,1)
Feminine language juxtaposes the previous ‘unsex me’ and wants to conform to the expectations of women once more
LM can still smell the blood, symbolising that God, as an omniscient being will always know of her sins, and she can never escape His judgement.
Shakespeare is warning his audience that committing regicide is mental torment.
A little water clears us of this deed (2,2)
Won’t take much for their consciences to be cleared after Duncan’s murder.
Display of hubris by LM when she confidently asserts they will not be troubled by guilt
Contrasts with ‘great Neptune’s oceans’
The dead butcher and his fiend-like queen (5,8)
Depicts M as a cold-blooded killer, no honour, slaughtering only for profit (murderous expedience)
the word dead: literal death. Moral death, poetic justice- M’s own death is his reward
fined-like: refers to an evil spirit, which aligns with how LM asked the spirits of darkness to unsex her
Gender subversion, casting off her femininity to become more fiendish, transgressing traditional gender roles.
But wherefore could not I pronounce Amen?/I had most need of blessing, and Amen/Stuck in my throat. (2,2)
Amen is associated with forgiveness and connection with God, and his inability to say this shows his movement from a christian society to that of paganism and witchcraft
Chocking on his guilt, unable to call on God
Fate and free will: His inability to say Amen shows the struggle between fate and free will. Initially, Macbeth was motivated to act in his own interests, but now fate has been set into motion and the consequences of his free will are now irreversible.
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock…but now I am cabined, cribbed, confined. (3,4)
Marble is used in statues to represent immortality; rock conveys unchangeability, reflect the self-assurance Macbeth felt before he murdered Duncan
Tricolon of a restricted semantic field, shows how Macbeth has been confined by his choices
