Macbeth quotes

• Macbeth


  A heroic, "brave" fighter who turns into a tormented villainous traitor who commits the unforgivable sin of regicide
• Plot of the play Macbeth

  Follows Macbeth's pathway through violence and murder, ending in his own death
• Macbeth in Act 1

  • A brave and valiant soldier
  • Has a high capacity for violence
• Macbeth commits regicide


  It is an unchristian act and he cannot be redeemed, as the divine right of kings meant an act against a king is an act against God
• Macbeth in Act 2

  • Recognises regicide is wrong
  • Remorseful from the regicide
  • Has lost the courage he had in Act 1
• Macbeth in Act 3

  • Lacks remorse and is ruthless
• Macbeth in Act 4


  • Given false confidence from the witches
  • Becomes ruthless, ordering the killing of Macduff's wife and children
• Macbeth in Act 5

  • Becomes desensitised to his terrible actions
  • Recognises he may have been tricked by the witches
  • Wants to die a soldier's death, reminding the audience of the soldier he once was
• ‘Brave Macbeth’ 


  – Macbeth is a brave an valiant soldier
• ‘Unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops’

  – he has a high capacity for violence
• ‘Stuck in his throat’

  he recognises that regicide is  an unchristian act and he cannot be redeemed. In Jacobean times the divide right of kings meant that an act against a king is synonymous with an act against God.
• ‘Macbeth enters with bloody daggers’
• ‘Afraid to think about what [he had] done’.

  – he is remorseful from the regicide and he has lost the courage that he had in 1:2
• Wake Duncan’

  – he is remorseful
• ‘All great Neptune’s Ocean could not wash [the] blood from [his] hands’.

  – It shows the extent of Macbeth’s troubled conscience. The hyperbolic image of blood red travelling also shows a corruption of nature as a consequence of the regicide
• ‘fruitless crown’
• ‘Without than he within’

  – shows the lack of remorse and ruthlessness
• ‘With twenty trenched gashes on his head’

  – visceral description that emphasises Macbeth’s ruthlessness
• ‘none of woman born shall harm Macbeth’

  Macbeth is given false confidence from the witches
• ‘beware macduff’
• ‘a show of eight kings’


  – Macbeth is shown that banquo’s descendants will become king
• ‘give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword’ 


  – kill Macduff’s wife and children
• ‘till famine and the ague eat them up’ 


  – Shakespeare uses a metaphor of disease to describe Scotland under Macbeth’s reign
• 'I have almost forgotten the taste of fears'


  – Macbeth has become desensitised
• ‘our castle’s strength will laugh a siege to scorn’ 


  – Shakespeare uses a mocking tone to show Macbeth’s confidence which he has gained by the witches false promises of invincibility
• ‘to hear a night-shriek’ 


  – An echo for the audience for when Macbeth was frightened because of his actions in 2:2
• ‘I have supped full with horrors’ ‘direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts cannot once start me’


  – Macbeth has lost the capacity to feel because he has internalised his terrible actions, and we understand that Macbeth recognises how far he has fallen
• 'she should have died hereafter'


  Macbeth’s final soliloquy, shows that Macbeth has become dehumanised by his actions because he doesn’t seem to care that his ‘dearest partner of greatness’ has died
• ‘to doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth’


  -Shows his fear and doubt of the witches prophecy and realises that he may have been tricked
• ‘we’ll die with harness on our back’


   he wants to die a soldiers death, reminding the audience of the soldier he once was