Plot
To whom are the witches speaking in Act 1 when they call this person "Thane of Cawdor"?
Macbeth
Who says this?
About whom?
In what situation?
"Yet do I fear thy nature; / It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness / to catch the nearest way."
Lady Macbeth says it,
about Macbeth,
in Act 1, when she has learned about the witches' predictions.
Macbeth calls this noun "the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast."
What is he talking about?
Sleep
In the Banquet Scene, Macbeth tells the first murderer:
There the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled / Hath nature that in time will venom breed.
What does he mean?
He is talking about Banquo (the grown serpent) being killed and lying in a ditch. The "worm that's fled" is Fleance, who someday will "breed venom" because he will grow up to take the throne of Scotland.
What is dramatic irony?
When the reader or audience member knows something that other characters do not know.
When the witches tell Banquo "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none," what do they mean?
They mean that Banquo will be the father of kings (i.e. he will "beget" or "get" them), but he will never be king himself.
1. In the Banquet Scene, which character says:
"Thou canst not say I did it: never shake / Thy gory locks at me."
2. To whom is the character speaking?
3. What are "Thy gory locks"?
1. Macbeth
2. the ghost of Banquo
3. Banquo's bloody hair
This conversation is from Act 2, Scene 3:
Lady Macbeth: What's the business / That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley / The speakers of the house"
Macduff: O gentle lady, / 'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak. / The repetition in a woman's ear / Would murder as it fell.
Explain the DRAMATIC IRONY here.
Macduff doesn't know that Lady Macbeth planned and participated in King Duncan's murder, but the reader knows.
In Act 2, Scene 2, Macbeth comes back from Duncan's room and tells Lady Macbeth:
"But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'? / I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' / Stuck in my throat."
What does he mean?
Macbeth is wondering WHY (wherefore) he could not bless himself when he was in the king's chamber, about to kill him.
What do the rebels use to disguise themselves as they march to Macbeth's castle on Dunsinane hill?
tree branches (boughs)
After killing King Duncan and the king's servants, Macbeth decides in Act 3 to have two other characters killed. Give their names.
Banquo + Fleance
a. Who is speaking?
b. Which scene is this?
"Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!"
a. Lady Macbeth
b. the sleepwalking scene (Act 5, Scene 1)
After killing the king's two servants, Macbeth returns to his guests and says, "The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees / Is left this vault to brag of."
Explain the metaphor he is using.
Macbeth is saying that life is like a wine glass that has been emptied. All that is left are the lees (the grit at the bottom of the glass). The best part of life has been used up and only the bad parts remain.
What does Macduff mean in Act 5, Scene 8 when he tells Macbeth:
"Despair thy charm / And let the angel whom thou still hast served / Tell thee Macduff was from his mother's womb / Untimely ripped."
Macduff is claiming that he is not born from a woman since he was brought into the world through his mother's belly (in a C-section) rather than through the traditional way (her birth canal).
Who is being described and what does this passage mean?
"Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief."
Macbeth is being described. The speaker is saying that the people who are still loyal to Macbeth only stay with him because they have to. They do not respect or love him or want to serve him. He is a terrible king. He is too small for the title of king. It is too big for him.
How is the prophecy of Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane Hill fulfilled?
In Act 5, Scene 4, the rebels cut down tree branches (boughs) and hold them in front of themselves as they move towards Macbeth's castle on Dunsinane Hill.
a. Who says these lines?
b. What part of the play is this?
"My thanes and kinsmen,
Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland
In such an honour named. What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny."
a. Malcolm
b. the end -- he has become the new king of Scotland
What figurative language is Donalbain using in Act 2, Scene 4 when he tells Malcolm, "Our separated fortune / Shall keep us both the safer. Where we are, / There's daggers in men's smiles"?
Donalbain says that there are "daggers in men's smiles." He does not mean they have LITERAL daggers in their mouths; rather, he means that many people who appear to be smiling and friendly might actually be out to get them.
What does Macbeth mean when he says this (during the Banquet Scene):
"the times have been / That, when the brains were out, the man would die, / And there an end: but now they rise again, / With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, / And push us from our stools."
Macbeth is talking about how dead people now come back to haunt the living, which never happened in years past.
(He has just scene the ghost of Banquo.)
List the three prophecies the apparitions tell Macbeth in Act 4, Scene 1.
1. Beware Macduff. Beware the Thane of Fife.
2. Macbeth shall never be defeated until Birnam Woods comes to Dunsinane castle.
3. No man born of a woman shall harm Macbeth.
What two things does Malcolm promise to do when he is addressing his supporters in the play's final speech?
He promotes his thanes and kinsmen to earls and he promises to bring home any Scottish people who exiled themselves to other countries while Macbeth was king.
a. Which character is speaking here?
b. What is about to happen?
"Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly."
a. Lady Macduff
b. This is shortly before she is murdered.
Explain how Lennox is using irony in this passage from Act 3, Scene 6:
"Who cannot want the thought how monstrous / It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain / To kill their gracious father? Damned fact, / How it did grieve Macbeth! Did he not straight / In pious rage the two delinquents tear / That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep? / Was not that nobly done?"
Possible answers:
1. Lennox does not believe that Malcolm and Donalbain killed Duncan.
2. Macbeth was not grieved by Duncan's killing.
3. It was not pious (holy) rage that made Macbeth kill the king's servants, nor was it a noble action.
Name any three things that Macbeth compares life to in his "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech in Act 5, Scene 5.
a brief candle,
a walking shadow,
a poor player (actor),
a tale told by an idiot.
In Act 2 and 3, which two characters are accused of bribing King Duncan's servants to kill the king?
Did they really do this?
The king's sons, Malcolm and Donalbain
No, they did not