Significance

Question 1

Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air (1.1.1)

Answer 1

Introduces the theme of appearance vs. reality and moral inversion.

Question 2

Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution, / Like Valour’s minion carved out his passage / Till he faced the slave; / Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, / Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps, / And fix’d his head upon our battlements. (1.2.2)

Answer 2

Portrays Macbeth as a valiant warrior, foreshadowing his capability for violence.

Question 3

No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive / Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death, / And with his former title greet Macbeth (1.2.4)

Answer 3

Sets up Macbeth’s rise and the theme of betrayal and trust.

Question 4

What are these / So Wither’d, and so wild in their attire, / That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth, / And yet are on’t? (1.3.5)

Answer 4

Shows Banquo’s skepticism and sets contrast with Macbeth’s ambition.

Question 5

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. (1.3.8)

Answer 5

Foreshadows the danger of half-truths and manipulation.

Question 6

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir. (1.3.8)

Answer 6

Reveals internal conflict—whether to act or wait for fate.

Question 7

There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face: / He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust. (1.4.8)

Answer 7

Ironically, he places similar trust in Macbeth, who will betray him.

Question 8

Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires. (1.4.11)

Answer 8

Macbeth begins to contemplate murder.

Question 9

I fear thy nature; / It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way. (1.5.11)

Answer 9

She doubts Macbeth’s will to seize power and plots to influence him.

Question 10

The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements. 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. (1.5.12)

Answer 10

Calls on dark forces to strip her of femininity and conscience.

Question 11

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men / May read strange matters. To beguile the time, / Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, / Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t. (1.5.13)

Answer 11

Highlights duplicity; foreshadows manipulation.

Question 12

If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly. (1.7.15)

Answer 12

Shows Macbeth’s moral hesitation and awareness of consequences.

Question 13

I have no spur / To Prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on the other. (1.7.16)

Answer 13

Reveals his main motivation—ambition—and its dangers.

Question 14

We will proceed no further in this business: / He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people, / Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, / Not cast aside so soon. (1.7.16)

Answer 14

Shows moral struggle before Lady Macbeth pressures him.

Question 15

I have given suck, and know / How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this. (1.7.17)

Answer 15

Extreme imagery shows her commitment and ruthless nature.

Question 16

But screw your courage to the skicking-place, / And we’ll not fail. (1.7.17)

Answer 16

Emphasizes her role in instigating the murder.

Question 17

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (2.1.20)

Answer 17

The dagger vision reflects his guilt and mental instability.

Question 18

Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done’t. (2.2.21)

Answer 18

Reveals a hint of vulnerability despite her earlier boldness.

Question 19

Go get some water, / And wash this filthy witness from your hand. / Why did you bring these daggers from the place? (2.2.23)

Answer 19

She takes charge; Macbeth is already unraveling.

Question 20

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hands? No; this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / making the green one red. (2.2.23)

Answer 20

Symbolizes overwhelming guilt and the permanence of the crime.

Question 21

Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, / As the weird women promised, and I fear / Thou play’dst most foully for’t. (3.1.33)

Answer 21

Shows Banquo’s integrity and sets tension between him and Macbeth.

Question 22

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown / And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, / Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand. (3.1.35)

Answer 22

Macbeth’s obsession with power and fear of losing it grows.

Question 23

Gentle my lord, sleep o’er your rugged looks; / Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night. (3.2.39)

Answer 23

She urges calm, unaware of Macbeth’s independent plot to kill Banquo.

Question 24

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed. (3.2.39)

Answer 24

Shows his descent into secrecy and self-reliance in evil.

Question 25

O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! (3.3.40)

Answer 25

Banquo dies loyal and brave; Fleance escapes, prophecy lives on.

Question 26

Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus, / And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat; / the fit is momentary. (3.4.43)

Answer 26

She tries to maintain appearances while Macbeth loses control.

Question 27

It will have blood: they say blood will have blood. (3.4.45)

Answer 27

He realizes violence breeds more violence—cycle of bloodshed.

Question 28

I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er. (3.4.46)

Answer 28

He feels he cannot turn back; commitment to path of evil.

Question 29

Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits: / The flighty purpose never is o’ertook / Unless the deed go with it: from this moment / The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand. And even now, / To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done. (4.1.56)

Answer 29

He resolves to act immediately, no more hesitation.

Question 30

All is the fear and nothing is the love; / As little is the wisdom, where the flight / So runs against all reason. (4.2.57)

Answer 30

Criticizes Macduff’s flight, showing Macbeth’s tyranny affects innocents.

Question 31

He has no children. All my pretty ones? / Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? / What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / at one fell swoop? (4.3.67)

Answer 31

Devastation and call for vengeance against Macbeth.

Question 32

Out, damned spot! out, I say!...Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (5.1.70)

Answer 32

Her guilt consumes her, mirroring Macbeth’s earlier torment.

Question 33

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. (5.1.70)

Answer 33

Shows remorse and awareness of the irreversible nature of her crimes.

Question 34

I have lived long enough: my way of life / Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf, / And that which should accompany old age, / As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have. (5.3. 73)

Answer 34

Reflects on how power cost him love and honor; bitter realization.

Question 35

Out, out brief candle! / Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing. (5.5.77)

Answer 35

Expresses nihilism and the futility of life.

Question 36

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield / To one of woman born. (5.8.80)

Answer 36

False confidence based on misinterpreted prophecy.

Question 37

Despair thy charm, / And let the angel whom thou still hast served / Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d. (5.8.80)

Answer 37

Fulfillment of the witches' paradox; Macbeth’s doom.

Question 38

My thanes and kinsmen, / Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland / In such an honour named. (5.8.82)

Answer 38

Restores order, announces a new era of peace in Scotland.