Character
‘We will proceed no further in this business’
Macbeth
look like th’ innocent flower,
but be the serpent under't
to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles
Supernatural
Fair is foul, and foul is fair
Paradox, personification AND trochaic tetrameter
Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't
Lady Macbeth is not actually capable of murder despite pushing so hard for it- not a complete villain OR constrained still by her gender
When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
The witches
Unseamed him from
the nave to th' chaps
infirm of purpose!
Gender roles/ Masculinity
Bleed, bleed, poor country
Personification
Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content
ambition leads to hollow victories/ there's no point in trying to challenge the king because it will destroy your life
‘I have given suck… dashed the brains out’
Lady Macbeth
All the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this little hand
‘Macbeth doth murder sleep’
Guilt
Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more.
Imperative Verbs
So fair and foul a day I have not seen
Macbeth is either duplicitous like the witches or is already under their influence
‘brave Macbeth--Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel’
Captain to King Duncan
She should have died
hereafter
There's daggers in men's smiles
Appearance vs reality
we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor
Foreshadowing
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues
Malcolm
I am cabin'd, cribb'd
confined, bound in’
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
Kingship/ Divine rite of Kingd
Dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Metaphor/ imagery/ personification
all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
Hecate says this to the witches when she is telling them off- it shows how they have limited power because Macbeth is simply following his own ambition