
Characters • Macbeth • Lady Macbeth • The Witches • Banquo • Macduff • Duncan • Malcolm and Donalbain
Macbeth • “Brave Macbeth” • “Black Macbeth” • Greed • Disloyalty • Murder • Tyranny • Morality • Malleability • Tragic Hero • Tragic Villain
Quotes • Sergeant: “brave Macbeth” • Duncan: “O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman” • Macbeth to the Witches: “why do you dress me in borrow’d robes?”( clothing imagery)
Macbeth: “that is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires let not light see my dark and deep desires.” • “If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me, without my stir.” (Fate/ Chance)
“We will proceed no further in this business” (conscience) • Lady M: “Yet I do fear thy nature It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way”- (M’s good nature, Lady m’s manipulative nature) • Macbeth’s conscience: “First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed, then, as his host Who should against the murderer shut the door Not bear the knife myself.”
Macduff: “Not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damned in evils to top Macbeth.”
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”(appearances v reality) • “Is this a dagger I see before me/ The handle toward my hand” • “Macbeth does murder sleep- the innocent sleep” (conscience) • “Macbeth shall sleep no more” (conscience) • “To know my deed ‘twere best not know myself.” • “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more.”
Lady Macbeth • Manipulator • Murderess • Greed • Femininity? • Hatred • Capacity for cruelty • Guilt • Self-destructive
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 plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.Macbeth, 1. 7 Screw your courage to the sticking-place,And we'll not fail. Macbeth, 1. 7 Lady Macbeth: Things without all remedyShould be without regard; what's done is done.Macbeth: We have scotched the snake, not killed it;She'll close and be herself, while our poor maliceRemains in danger of her former tooth.Macbeth, 3. 2
The Three Witches What are theseSo wither'd and so wild in their attire,That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,And yet are on 't? Macbeth, 1. 3
Quotes from the Witches/ Apparitions • “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” • “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” • “beware Macduff”(Armed Head) • “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” (bloody child) • “Great Birnan wood to high Dunsinane Hill Shall coma against him.” (Crowned child) • “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.” (to Banquo)
Themes • Good v Evil • Appearances v Reality • Loyalty v Betrayal • Order v Chaos • Kingship/ Power • Violence • Action v Inaction • Fate v Chance • The supernatural
Quotes • “Let not light see my black and deep desires.” • “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”(Macbeth)
Motifs/ Images • Water • Manhood • Clothing • Animal imagery • Light and Darkness • Reversals in natural order • Heaven and Hell
Imagery/ Symbolism • Bad weather signals entrance of evil in the play- Thunder and lightning, fog for witches- storm on the night of Duncan’s death- “’twas a rough night” • Lennox; “ Lamentings heard i’ the air, strange screams of death.” • Lady M.: “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” (Animal/nature) • “Let not light see my black and deep desires.”(light v darkness, good v evil)
“A little water clears us of this deed” ( Lady M) • “Will al great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” ( reversal of nature- water will only turn red and not cleanse him of his sins) • “It is an accustomed action with her to be seen thus washing her hands.”( water and innocence) • “That darkness does the face of earth entomb When living life should kiss it?” • “a falcon towering in her pride of place was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.”( animal imagery/ reversals in nature) • “O full of scorpions is my mind”
“Though you untie the winds and let them fight against the churches” (turning Nature against religion and humanity) • Macduff’s wife: “for the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl.”