Macbeth key quotes

• "I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition" - Macbeth
• "Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?" - Macbeth
• "O full of scorpions is my mind dear wife!" - Macbeth
• "Will all 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." - Macbeth
• "Thou canst not say I did it. Never shake thy gory locks at me." - macbeth
• "Macbeth does murder sleep" - macbeth in regards to committing regicide
• "I had most need of blessing and 'Amen' stuck in my throat " - macbeth

  • Rejected by God
  • Immediate punishment of commiting regicide
  • Consumed with guilt
• "I'll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done -- Look on't again, I dare not" - Macbeth

  • Shift in character as he was bold and fearless previously in act 1
  • Now he is weakened mentally and riddled with guilt
• "To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself" - macbeth

  • Remorseful
  • The pronoun 'my' shows that he takes responsibility
• "To be thus is nothing but to be safely thus" - Macbeth

  • Realises that all this is in vain if his position as king isn't secure
• "Our fears in Banquo stick deep" - macbeth

  • Scared that his position isn't safe due to banquo being alive
  • Shows his trust in the witches
  • Fears that Banquos prophecy will come true
• "Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown" - Macbeth

  • Irony that he has no children so his bloodline won't continue
  • Realises that commiting regicide was not for his purpose
• "But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears" - macbeth

  • Trapped in terrible mental state
  • Riddled with paranoia
• "Blood will have blood" - macbeth

  The people the macbeths have wronged will have their revenge and gain their peace blood is symbolic of guilt in the play
• "I am in blood steeped in so far that returning were as tedious as go o'er" - macbeth

  • Pointless to try and be good
• "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" - macbeth

  • Mirrors the witches speech
• "Stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires"

  • Hints of darkness in him beginning to be shown to audience
  • Tries to hide his evil nature
  • Tries to fathom the idea of commiting regicide
• "He is here in double trust" - macbeth

  • Contemplates regicide
• "We will proceed no further in this buisness" ‐ macbeth

  • Exudes masculinity
  • Fear of retribution of both heaven and earth
  • Declarative statement
• "False face must hide what the false heart doth know" ‐ macbeth

  • Overturns his earlier vacillation portraying innocence although he knows he's guilty
  • Duplicitous behaviour
• "The bell invites me hear it not, Duncan for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell " - Macbeth

  • Made up his mind
  • The bell was a signal from his wife to go and kill the King
  • Knell is a funeral bell
  • So bell that invites him has 2 meanings:
  • 1 - go kill the king
  • 2 - signifies that Duncan soul will be released into the after life
• "Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain" - macbeth

  • Slowly losing himself
  • Synonym for suffering (oppressed)
  • Moral battle
• if chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir
• this supernatural is soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good.
• commencing in a truth?


  refers to witches and their prohecy of him becoming thane of cawdor
• So foul and fair a day I have not seen


  • echoes the witches' words and establishes a connection between them and Macbeth.
  • It also suggests that Macbeth is the focus of the drama's moral confusion