Macbeth

• "What are you" - Macbeth Act I Scene III


  "Something wicked this way comes" - Witches Act 4 Scene I
• "Cannot be ill cannot be good"
• "Whose murder is yet fantastical, shakes so much my single state of man that function"
• Sleep

  Shakespeare uses Motif of sleep to represent a clear conscience
• Bird imagery

  • "The raven is hoarse" - Lady Macbeth
  • "An owl shrieks" - Act 2 scene 2
  • Mousing owl kills "towering hawk"
  • "The most diminuitive of birds will fight ... against the owl" - Lady Macduff
  • "Hell-kite" - Macduff about Macbeth
  • "What, you egg?" - Murderer
  • "All my pretty chickens?" - Macduff
• "I cannot fly" - Macbeth
• "As sparrows, eagles or the hare, the lion"


  Captian uses Sarcasm to show that of course Macbeth and Banquo won, compares them to eagles and lion. Eagle is a symbol of nobility and power. Lion foreshadows Macbeth's position as Lions are known as "Kings of the animal kingdom"
• "Yellow leaf"


  Deteriorating, cannot go back to how he once was
• "honour, love, obedience, troops of friend"
• "to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly"


  Injustice - 'good characters' like LMD, Banquo and Duncan killed but sinful characters (like the Macbeth's get rewarded by becoming K + Q)
• "Bleed, bleed poor country"


  Macduff is Patriotic

  Personification - Scotland is greatly suffering and will soon die if Macduff doesn't act as a bandage and kill Macbeth

  Adjective poor - Macduff feels sympathy for suffering country
• What disease did King Edward the confessor heal

  Scrofula or King's evil - he healed people not killed them. Makes England look better and audience would be english. Pleases King James I as they know not all monarchs are bad, some are powerful and kind
• Mercurial


  "Wish the state of the world were now undone. Ring the Alarum Bell!"
• "Why do you dress me with borrowed robes?"


  "Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief"
• Macbeth changes : "But I shame to wear a heart so white"


  "Cream faced loon"
• "Brave Macbeth, well he deserves that name"


  "[Macbeth's servants] whose hearts are absent too"
• "Worthy Macduff" - Malcom


  "Worthy gentleman" - Duncan about Macbeth
• Macbeth feels remorse


  "My soul is too much charged with the blood of thine already" - About Macduff
• "intrenchant air"


  Macbeth still sees himself as invincible

  Use of word echoes "twenty trenched gashes on his head" - he still thinks of Banquo?
• "Out damn spot"


  Link to "Out brief candle"

  It was believed witches had spots (moles) which were signs of demonic possesion
• "Fair is foul and foul is fair"


  They don't mind about winning fairly, they equivocate Macbeth

  Witches can't tell the difference between good and evil

  "I fear thou played most foully for it" - played link to strategy MB as soldier

  "So foul and fair a day I have not seen"

  "Fair hostess" - was foul

  Speak in unison in trochee unlike most other characters, sets them apart , subverts christianity
• "Speak then to me" - Banquo


  Curiosity killed the cat
• Banquo speaks a lot more than Macbeth in Act 1 scene 3 yet Macbeth is more authoritive in his few sentences
• "Air is delicate" - Act 1, Scene 5


  Banquo recognises it could all be easily shattered like glass, appearance vs reality
• Banquo has "cursed thoughts" but unlike Macbeth doesn't act on them


  Example to audience - warns not to commit regicide and links to gunpowder plot
• "Their candles are all out" - Banquo


  Links to "stars hide your fires" - supernatural are changing the world order? Was Macbeth's "black and deep desire" so strong it came true?
• "Give me my sword"

  Overthinker like Macbeth - does he not feel safe in his best friends house? paranoia of witches or paranoia of Macbeth?
• Banquo - Give me my sword - Who's there?

  Macbeth - A friend.


  Full stop recognises end of friendship - betrayal

  There is tension

  Macbeth sees himself on equal level to Banquo but contasts to later when Banquo calls him "My Lord"

  Dramatic irony as audience know what Macbeth is going to do

  Ironic for later on when he has Banquo killed, he calls Banquo an "enemy" - drastic change
• Hubris

  Over-confidence
• [Lady Macbeth's] "senses are shut"


  Not aware she is being watched, these are her true thoughts
• "infected mind" - Doctor about LMB


  Infected by evil spirits - "full of scorpions is the mind dear wife" - conscience is finally infecting her but too late
• Macbeth wants the doctor to cure scotland's "disease" and "purge it to a sound and pristine health". This is ironic because Macbeth is the disease
• "I will not yield"

  Almost cyclical, he has turned back to the soldier he once was, doesn't want to give Macduff satisfaction of beating him in this way and sees no honour bowing down to "young Malcom" (patronises him)
• Play ends in a rhyming couplet "one" and "scone"


  Peace and order have been restored to Scotland
• Adam and Eve

  "Vaulting ambition ... falls" - Mirrors fall in genesis - ambition is truly evil

  "Be the serpent" - LMB represents temptation from the devil testing Adam and Eve (in this case Macbeth, who was originally "valiant") into commiting regicide (which goes against divine right of kings and mirrors Adam and Eve disobeying God's will)
• Chiasmus


  "fair is foul and foul is fair" - distorted sense of morality, invert language in the way they want to invert Macbeth's goodness, fricative alliteration sounds sinister and repulsive
• "Unseamed him from nave to the chops"


  Unseam - take out stitches from cloth, easy and skillful
• "Instruments of darkness tell us truths; win us with honest trifles, to betray in deepest consequence"
• "Hie thee hither"


  Alliteration of H shows that she is breathless, excited to become queen
• Lady Macbeth speaks a lot more than Macbeth in Act I scene 5 showing how there is power imbalanc