Macbeth Quote Review

Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff! Beware the Thane of Fife! Dismiss me. Enough. (4.1)

First Apparition (Armed Head=head with armor) to Macbeth, giving a warning Equivocation theme

"A little water clears us of this deed."

Lady Macbeth to Macbeth after Duncan's murder

O' never shall sun that morrow see! 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 th' innocent flower, but be the serpent under't. He that's coming must be provided for; and you shall put this night's great business into my dispatch, which shall to all our nights and days to come give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. (1.5)

Lady Macbeth to Macbeth appear innocent and hide the evil; she is going to plan everything for the murder that will happen in the night; Equivocation theme

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. Make thick my blood. Stop up th' access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers, wherever in your slightless substances you wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry "Hold, hold!" (1.5)

Lady Macbeth to self she calls upon evil so spur her on to kill Duncan without guilt or any emotion; manhood and nature motif

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet I do fear thy nature; it is too full o' th' milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. (1.5)

Lady Macbeth to self wants Macbeth to be king but thinks he is too weak to act; manhood theme

Out, damned spot, out, I say! one, two... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (5.1)

Lady Macbeth to self/Gentlewoman and Doctor - confesses to murder of Duncan Guilt theme and blood motif

"The bell invites me, hear it not Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to Heaven, or to Hell."

Macbeth before killing Duncan

"The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o'erleap Let not light see my black and deep desires."

Macbeth in an aside after Duncan names Malcolm the successor to the throne

"I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other."

Macbeth in aside when thinking about the murder of Duncan Ambition theme

Infected be the air whereon they ride, and damned all those that trust them! I did hear the galloping of horse. (4.1)

Macbeth to Lennox - cursing anyone who trusts the witches, curses him self because he believed in them

"I bear a charmed life"

Macbeth to Macduff Fate theme

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him. (4.1)

Third Apparition (child crowned with tree in hand) to Macbeth Equivocation theme

fair is foul, and foul is fair (1.1.)

all witches to all witches; major theme of equivocation

Lesser than Macbeth and greater. not so happy, yet much happier. thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. (1.3)

witches to Banquo, whose children will have the royal lineage; equivocation theme

"There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face, He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust."

Duncan referring to the traitor, the Thane of Cawdor

"Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all as the weird women promised, and I fear thou play'dst most foully for't."

Banquo in his suspicion of Macbeth

But 'tis strange. and oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness to tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray 's in deepest consequence. (1.3)

Banquo to Macbeth, distrusting the witches. This also serves as warning to Macbeth; equivocation theme

"There's daggers in men's smiles"

Donalbain to Malcolm Deception/Equivocation theme

And be these juggling fiends no more believed that palter with us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee. (5.8)

Macbeth to Macduff - Macbeth feels betrayed, weak, and broken Equivocation theme

The Thane of Cawdor lives, why do you dress me in borrowed robes? (1.3)

Macbeth to Ross, Angus, Banquo questioning his new title; clothing motif

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)

Macbeth to Seyton - no meaning to his life

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir. (1.3)

Macbeth to self in a moment of sanity—perhaps needs not allow his ambitions to speed things along; ambition theme

Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? come, let me clutch thee...or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppresséd brain? (2.1)

Macbeth to self, freaking out about the murder, hallucinating, guilt already plaguing his heart

"Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight with a new Gorgon. Do not bid me speak See, and then speak yourselves."

Macduff after discovering the body of King Duncan