Quotes for themes Flashcards
(21 cards)
Power quotes (Malcolm and Duncan’s reign as legitimate)
Macbeth: “Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead like angels…against the deep damnation of his taking off”
Malcolm: “Devilish Macbeth, by many of these trains hath sought to win me into his power, ;and modest wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste; but god above deal between thee and me
Malcolm: “What I truly am is thine and my poor country’s to command”
Power quotes (Macbeth’s reign as illegitimate)
Angus: “Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief”
Act 3 Scene 1
Macbeth: “they hailed him father to a line of kings and upon my head they placed a fruitless crown and a barren sceptre”
Act 5 Scene 8
Stage direction: “re-enter Macduff, with Macbeth’s head”
Power quotes (power in the wrong hands as damaging to country)
Act 2 Scene 4
“Duncan’s horses … Turn’d wild in nature” “tis’ said they eat each other”
Macduff: “bleed bleed poor country … In the tyrant’s grasp” -
Ross: “Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know itself! It cannot be called our mother, but our grave;
Power quotes (Supernatural)
Macbeth: “this supernatural soliciting cannot be ill: cannot be good…why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heat knock against my ribs, against the use of nature? Present fears are less than horrible imaginings”
Stage directions: First Apparition: an armed Head//Second Apparition: A bloody Child// Third Apparition: a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand
Second apparition: “None of women borne shall harm Macbeth”
Ambition quotes (Beginning Macbeth)
Act 1 Scene 3 - Contrast between Banquo and Macbeth as they hear the witches’ prophecies
Banquo: “instruments of darkness…win us with honest trifles to betray’s in deepest consequence”
Macbeth: “two truths are told as happy prologues to the swelling act”
Act 1 Scene 4 - Occurs after Malcolm is announced heir to the throne
Macbeth: “Stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires”
Act 1 Scene 3 - Aside
Macbeth: “this supernatural soliciting cannot be ill: cannot be good…why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heat knock against my ribs, against the use of nature? Present fears are less than horrible imaginings”
Act 1 Scene 7 - Macbeth is trying to decide whether to carry on with the plan to kill Duncan
Macbeth: “I have no spurs to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition which o’rleaps and falls on th’ other”
Act 1 Scene 7 - see above
Macbeth: “We’ld jump the life to come”
Ambition quotes (middle)
Act 3 Scene 1 - Macbeth’s soliloquy about Banquo
Macbeth: “There is none but he Whose being I do fear”
Macbeth: “They hail’d him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,”
Macbeth: “Be innocent of the knowledge my dearest chuck”
Act 3 Scene 3 - After Macbeth has killed Duncan and LM feels guilty
Lady Macbeth: “Nought’s had, all’s spent/ Where our desire is got without content”
Ambition quotes (end)
Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go’er”
Lady Macbeth: “Here’s the smell of blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
Macbeth: “And be these juggling fiends no more believe’d that palter us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope”
Macbeth: “It [life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”
Gender/masculinity quotes (LM transcends boundaries)
Lady Macbeth: “Pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valour of my tongue”
Lady Macbeth: “Come you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here/ And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull/ Of direct cruelty”
Lady Macbeth: “Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall”
Gender/masculinity quotes (Macbeth)
Lady Macbeth: “When you durst do it, then you were a man”
Macbeth: “I had else been perfect, whole as the marble … But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears”
Macbeth: “There is none but he Whose being I do fear”
Macbeth: “They hail’d him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,”
Macbeth: “Be innocent of the knowledge my dearest chuck”
Gender/masculinity quotes (masculinity associated with loyalty and nobility)
The Captain: “Brave Macbeth - Well he deserves that name - Confronted him with brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution”
Malcolm: “dispute it like a man”
Macduff: “But I must also feel it as a man”
Duncan: “fair and noble hostess, we are your guests tonight”
“[Duncan’s] gentle senses”
Loyalty quotes
(potential for corruption LM and M)
The Captain: “Brave Macbeth - Well he deserves that name - Confronted him with brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution”
Macbeth: “this supernatural soliciting cannot be ill: cannot be good…why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heat knock against my ribs, against the use of nature? Present fears are less than horrible imaginings”
Lady Macbeth: “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t”
“your servants ever”
Loyalty quotes (misplaced)
Banquo: My duties are with a most indissoluble tie forever knit.
Banquo: “I fear thou playd’st most foully for it”
Macbeth: “Thou canst say I did it: never shake thy gory locks at me!”
“twenty trenched gashes”
Macbeth: “And be these juggling fiends no more believe’d that palter us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope”
Loyalty quotes (complex nature)
Witches: “fair is foul and foul is fair”
Stage direction: Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH’s head
Lady Macduff: “All is the fear and nothing is the love; As little is the wisdom, where the flight So runs against all reason.”
Good vs evil quotes (corrupted for personal desires through Macbeth)
The Captain: “Brave Macbeth - Well he deserves that name - Confronted him with brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution, like valour’s minion.”
Macbeth: “Stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires”
Macbeth: “But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? / I had the most need of blessing and ‘Amen’/ Stuck in my throat”
Stage direction: “A cry of women within”
Macbeth: “She should have died hereafter”
Good vs evil (character of Lady Macbeth)
Lady Macbeth: “Come you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts, and fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direct cruelty”
“take my woman’s milk for gall”
“when you durst do it they you were a man”
“will all the perfumes of Arabia sweeten this little hand”
Stage direction: “taper”
Fate vs free will quotes (witches as symbol of fate)
Banquo: “But ‘tis strange,/ And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence”
Fate vs free will (Macbeth takes over from fate, leading to his downfall)
Macbeth: “Stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires”
Macbeth: “Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee
Macbeth: “Answer me”
Macbeth: “And be these juggling fiends no more believe’d that palter us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope”
Fate vs free will (fate brings back rightful king)
Stage directions: “A show of Eight Kings” “the ghost of Banquo following”
“Macduff, was from his mother’s womb, untimely ripped”
Witches: “Lesser than Macbeth yet greater”
Deception quotes (LM and M)
Lady Macbeth: “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it”
Macbeth: “Stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires”
Macbeth: “The service and the loyalty I owe, in doing it, pays itself”
LM: “your servants ever”
Deception quotes (truth must come out)
Lady Macbeth - “Out damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why then, ‘tis time to do ‘t. Hell is murky!”
Malcolm: “this tyrant, whose sole name blisters out tongue, was once thought honest”
Macbeth: “Thou canst say I did it: never shake thy gory locks at me!”
“twenty trenched gashes”
Deception quotes (witches)
Witches: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”
Banquo: “The instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles only to betray us in deepest consequence”
Banquo: “But ‘tis strange,/ And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence”
