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Macbeth Key Quotations
Act 1

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“a desolate place … thunder and lightning” - (threatening atmosphere)
“hover through the fog and filthy air” - (supernatural)
“brave Macbeth … disdaining fortune” “valiant … worthy” - (positive view of Macbeth)
“disloyal traitor … Thane of Cawdor” - (foreshadows treachery)
“killing swine” - (Jacobean belief of witches)
“Thane of Cawdor … Hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter” - (supernatural, sparks Macbeth’s plot?)
“speak, I charge you” - (tries to control supernatural)
“instruments of darkness … win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence” - (treacherous
nature of the supernatural)
“chance may crown me without my stir” - (potential for things to take their course, decides against it)
“we will establish our estate upon our eldest, Malcolm” - (pushes Macbeth to take action?)
“stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires, the eye wink at the hand” - (dark and corrupt
nature of Lady Macbeth, doesn’t want God to see her actions)
“thy nature it is too full o’h’milk of human kindness” - (critical of Macbeth’s good qualities)
“I may pour my spirits in thine ear with the valour of my tongue” - (corrupting nature of Lady Macbeth)
“you spirits … unsex me here and fill me … of fires cruelty” - (summons the supernatural to aid her,
transgresses to male society to commit her deeds)
“stop up th’access and passage to remorse” - (doesn’t want to have any feelings, shows she is human inside
and knows it)
“come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall” - (lacking maternal character - transgresses gender
boundaries)
“pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell that my knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through
the blanket of the dark” - (doesn’t want to be judged by God, still wants heaven - scares audience)
“look like th’innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t” - (Garden of Eden religious imagery of deception)
“Heaven’s breath smells wooingly here” - (ironic)
“his virtues will plead like angels” - (Duncan is a good king)
“vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself and falls” - (critical of aspiring to too much, can’t step out of line past
what is in God’s plan for you)
“was the hope drunk … look so green and pale” - (critical of Macbeth’s cowardice but ironic as she won't do
what she wants of him herself)
“dashed the brains out had I so sworn as you have done to this” - (horrific, shocking imagery)
“false face must hide what the heart doth know” - (deception, innocent flower)
Act 2

- “in Heaven their candles are all out” - (stars hiding fires)
- “is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” - (supernatural is tempting Macbeth)
- “or art thou but a dagger of the mind … proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?” - (questions if he is ill, is
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the murder a product of his own thoughts, not supernatural?)
“the owl scream[ed] and the crickets cry” - (nature protests the killing of the king - chain of being)
“hangman’s hands”
“‘Amen’ stuck in my throat” - (link with God lost - chain of being)
“Macbeth does murder sleep … sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care” - (destruction of nature)
“pluck out mine eyes … Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” - (terror)
“wake Duncan with thy knocking: I would thou couldst” - (regret)
“farmer who hanged himself on expectation of plenty” “could not equivocate to heaven” - (trickery,
foreshadows Macbeth’s death)
“there’s daggers in men’s smiles” - (corruption)
“dark night strangles the travelling lamp” - (darkness, supernatural imagery in daytime)
“[the horses] ate each other” - (nature revolting against King being killed)

Act 3

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“I fear thou plaid’s most foully for’t” - (Banquo’s suspicion of Macbeth)
“if [Banquo’s soul is to] find heaven, [it] must find out tonight”
“full of scorpions is my mind” - (his thoughts poisoning himself)
“twenty trenchèd gashes on his head” - (horror)
“never shake thy gory locks at me” - (horror)
“now they rise again with twenty mortal murders on their crowns” - (ghosts, terror)
“take any shape but that” - (haunting)
“blood will have blood” - (vengeance - terror)
“I keep a servant feed” - (tyrannical leader - paranoia, immoral)
“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er”
“strange things I have in head that will to hand, which must be acted ere they be scanned”
“you all know, security is mortals’ chiefest enemy” - (Macbeth is lured into a false sense of security)
“the tyrant’s feast”
Act 4

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“hell-broth … liver of blaspheming Jew … nose of Turk … finger of birth-strangled babe” - (terror)
“midnight hags … I conjure you” - (tries to command supernatural)
“Macbeth: beware Macduff”
“none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” - (foreshadows)
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnham Wood to high Dunisane hill shall come against him”
“Banquo smiles upon me and points at them for his”
“damned all those who trust them” - (realises he is damned for trusting in the supernatural)
“do I put up that womanly defence to say I have done no harm?” - (women caught up in politics)
“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell” - (Satan)
“It weeps, it bleeds and each day a new gash is added to her wounds” - (personified Scotland)
“a devil [cannot be] more damned in evils to top Macbeth”
“bloody … false … deceitful … malicious” - (qualities of Macbeth)
“mercy … devotion … patience … courage” - (qualities of a god King (James) )
“I must also feel it as a man … did Heaven look on … sinful Macduff” - (Macduff doesn’t blame God honourable to audience)
“the powers above put on their instruments” - (God sees Macbeth as a threat too)
Act 5

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“a great perturbation in nature”
“she has light by her continually” - (scared of darkness, searching for God)
“Out, damned spot!”
“Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” - (confesses to murder)
“The Thane of Fife had a wife … O, O, O” - (simplistic and childish speech, shows her confusion and
vulnerability - not the dangerous woman we originally thought)
“I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds” - (Lady M doesn't die
in her bed - not at peace with God - sinner)
“more needs she the divine than the physician” - (only God can help her now)
“some say he’s mad; others that lesser hate him do call it valiant fury”
“like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief”
“Seyton” - (Satan)
“I have lived long enough … yellow leaf” - (life withering like autumn)
“Out, out, brief candle” - (life is but a brief candle)
“begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend” “juggling fiends” - (trickery of the supernatural)
“young Siward slain” - (sympathy reduces further for Macbeth
“why should I play the Roman fool and die on mine own sword” - (some honour maintained)
“Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped”
“dead butcher and his fiend-like queen … self and violent hands took off her life”



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