Famous Quotes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Famous Quotes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth
|Donalbain to Malcolm (Duncan’s sons): Act II, Sc. 3 |This sentence means that there are ulterior motivations under the surface of |
|"There 's daggers in men's smiles". |what-seems-to be. In other words, what appears on one's face may not be the |
| |sentiment in one's heart. |
| | |
|Lady Macbeth to her husband, Macbeth: |Lady Macbeth's soothing words are odd, to say the least, coming from a conspirator.|
|Act III, Scene 2 |She intends to calm her husband, who's having more trouble than she forgetting that|
| |he murdered King Duncan. She means by "what's done, is done" exactly what we mean |
|"What 's done is done". |by it today—"there's no changing the past, so forget about it." |
| |When Lady Macbeth herself succumbs to guilty dreams, she will sing the same tune, |
|Full Text: |but in a different key. Sleepwalking, as has become her wont, she mutters, as if to|
|How now, my lord, why do you keep alone, |Macbeth, "What's done cannot be undone" (Act 5, scene 1, 68). |
|Of sorriest fancies your companions making, | |
|Using those thoughts which should indeed have died | |
|With them they think on? Things without all remedy | |
|Should be without regard: what's done, is done. | |
|Macbeth to Lady Macbeth Act I Sc. 7 |Macbeth says this after Lady Macbeth goads him to do what he must to take the |
|"I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none". |crown. |
| |Translation: |
| |Please, stop! I dare to do only what is proper for a man to do. He who dares to do |
| |more is not a man at all. |
|The Witches Act I Sc. 1 |Chant the Weird Sisters as they go to wait for the battle to be over so they can |
|"Fair is foul, and foul is fair” |deliver their seductive prophesies to Macbeth. The witches find what normal mortals|
| |find fair to be foul and vice versa. They don’t see things the same. |
|Macbeth to Macduff Act V Sc. 7 |I have a charmed life, which must not yield |
|"I bear a charmed life". |To one given birth to by a woman. |
| | |
|Lady Macbeth to herself about Macbeth Act I Sc. 5 |Lady Macbeth says this line immediately after reading a letter she has just |
|"Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness." |received from her husband. In that letter, Macbeth informs his wife that the |
|(Act I, Scene V). |witches have prophesied that he will be... |
|Macbeth to self but Lady Macbeth hears Act II Sc. 2 |Lady Macbeth at first tries to steady her husband, but she becomes angry when she |
|"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, |notices that he has forgotten to leave the daggers with the sleeping chamberlains |
|this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the |so as to frame them for Duncan’s murder. He refuses to go back into the room, so |
|green one red" |she takes the daggers into the room herself, saying that she would be ashamed to be|
| |as cowardly as Macbeth. As she leaves, Macbeth hears a mysterious knocking. The |
| |portentous sound frightens him, and he asks desperately, “Will all great Neptune’s |
| |ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” (2.2.58–59). As Lady Macbeth reenters |
| |the hall, the knocking comes again, and then a third time. She leads her husband |
| |back to the bedchamber, where he can wash off the blood. “A little water clears us |
| |of this deed,” she tells him. “How easy it is then!” (2.2.65–66). |
| | |
|The Witches to themselves Act IV, Scene I |Three Scottish witches are going about their business—tossing poisoned entrails, |
| |eye of newt, toe of frog, and such, into a cauldron—while awaiting a visit from the|
|"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." |man they said would be king: Macbeth. "Double, double toil and trouble" is part of |
| |the refrain to their demonic incantation. The witches are actually trying, with |
| |their spells, to pile up toil and trouble until they "double"—yielding twice the |
| |toil and double the trouble for Macbeth, presumably. |
|Lady Macbeth to herself sleep walking: Act V Sc. 1 "Out, damned spot! |Lady Macbeth sleepwalks through the royal castle. As her waiting-woman and her |
|out, I say!" |doctor listen in, she mutters fragments of an imaginary conversation that recalls |
| |the night she and her husband conspired to murder King Duncan. The hour is two |
| |o'clock; she upbraids her husband for his bad conscience; she insists that there |
| |will be nothing to fear once they've grabbed the crown; she marvels at how much |
| |blood Duncan had to shed. As Lady Macbeth replays this scene for the eavesdroppers,|
| |she not only incriminates herself, but also reveals the pangs of conscience she had|
| |ridiculed in her husband. |
| |One motif of Macbeth is how tough it is to wash, scrub, or soak out nasty |
| |bloodstains. Macbeth had said that even the ocean couldn't wash his hands clean of |
| |Duncan's blood; Lady Macbeth, who scorned him then, now finds the blood dyed into |
| |her conscience. The king and queen persist in imagining that physical actions can |
| |root out psychological demons, but the play is an exposition of how wrong they are.|
|Lady Macbeth to herself sleep walking: Act V, Sc. I |Continued from the same sleepwalk as the one above. |
|"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." | |
|Macbeth to Banquo Act I Sc. 3 |By "chance" (fortune), he's referring to the weird sisters' prediction that he will|
|"If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me" |be king. He figures that if being king is his destiny, he doesn't have to do |
| |anything ("without my stir") to make it happen. |
| | |
| |Macbeth doesn't want to kill King Duncan, but Lady Macbeth would have him murder |
| |all of Scotland to get his crown! |
| | |
| | |
| |Macbeth inherits the former thane of Cawdor’s title due to his death as a traitor, |
|Malcolm to King Duncan regarding Cawdor’s death Act I Sc. 4 |as the three witches had predicted. |
|"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it; he died as one that |Malcolm, one of the king's two sons, pictures the Cawdor's histrionic repentance at|
|had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as |the gallows. Nothing in Cawdor’s life(reflected as well on his character as did his|
|'t were a careless trifle” |pious loyalty on the verge of execution. Duncan sometimes rewarded the groveler |
| |with his life. |
| |Translation of larger passage:In order to deceive them, you must appear the way |
|Lady Macbeth to Macbeth Act I Sc. 5 |they expect you to look. Greet the king with a welcoming expression in your eyes, |
|"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't." |your hands, and your words. You should look like an innocent flower, but be like |
| |the snake that hides underneath the flower. The king is coming, and he’s got to be |
| |taken care of. |
|Macbeth in a monologue Act I Sc. 7 |Translation: |
|"I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting |I can’t spur myself to action. The only thing motivating me is ambition, which |
|ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other." |makes people rush ahead of themselves toward disaster |
|Macbeth Act II Sc. 1 |Macbeth has made his decision to kill the King and take the crown as his own. |
|"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?" |Inspired in part by his own ambition, the decision to murder Duncan is aided by the|
| |prophecies of the Witches as well as the insistent urging of his wife. Still, |
| |Macbeth is wracked with guilt over what he is about to do, and his mind races with |
| |thoughts of such evil action. He begins to hallucinate and sees a bloody dagger in |
| |the air, which will be his instrument of murder. He goes on to comment on the |
| |wickedness of the world, thoughts which are interrupted by the ringing of the bell,|
| |a signal from Lady Macbeth that Duncan's guards are drugged and sleeping. He goes |
| |off to complete the dire deed. Shakespeare's Macbeth is notable for hallucinations,|
| |terrifying dreams, witches, prophecies and all of the combining forces of nature |
| |which lead to chaos and murder in the gloomy countryside of Scotland. |
|Macbeth Act V Sc. 5 |After hearing that his wife has died, Macbeth takes stock of his own indifference |
|"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that |to the event. Death—our return to dust—seems to him merely the last act of a very |
|struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is |bad play, an idiot's tale full of "sound and fury", but without meaning, |
|a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." |"signifying nothing". Murdering King Duncan and seizing his throne in retrospect |
| |seem like scenes of a script Macbeth was never suited to play. The idea that "all |
| |the world's a stage" is occasionally very depressing to Shakespeare's heroes. |
| |If life is like a bad play, it is thus an illusion, a mere shadow cast by a "brief |
| |candle." The candle is perhaps the soul, and the prospects for Macbeth's are grim. |
|Lady Macbeth to Macbeth Act II Sc. 2 |For now, Lady Macbeth remains the voice of calculating reason, as she tells him |
| |that the blood can be washed away with a little water. But, as Lady Macbeth |
|“A little water clears us of this deed: |eventually realizes, the guilt that the blood symbolizes needs more than water to |
|How easy it is then!” |be cleansed away. Her hallucinations later in the play, in which she washes her |
| |hands obsessively, lend irony to her insistence here that “[a] little water clears |
| |us of this deed” (2.2.65). |
| | |
|LADY MACBETH to Macbeth Act II Sc. 2 |Lady Macbeth is lamenting the fact that she was not the one that committed the |
|My hands are of your colour; but I shame |murder of Duncan. When Macbeth returns from performing the deed, they clasp hands,|
| To wear a heart so white. (Knock.) I hear a knocking |which gets the blood from Macbeth to Lady Macbeth |
|At the south entry: retire we to our chamber; A little water clears us of | |
|this deed: | |
|How easy is it, then! Your constancy | |
|Hath left you unattended. (Knock.) Hark! more knocking. | |
|Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, | |
|And show us to be watchers. Be not lost | |
|So poorly in your thoughts. | |
|MACBETH to Macduff Act V Sc.7 |Translation: |
|I will not yield, |I’m not going to surrender and have to kiss the ground in front of Malcolm, or be |
|To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, |taunted by the common people. Even though Birnam Wood really did come to Dunsinane,|
|And to be baited with the rabble’s curse. |and I’m fighting a man not of woman born, I’ll fight to the end. I’ll put up my |
|Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane, |shield and battle you. Come on, let’s go at it, Macduff, and damn the first man who|
|And thou opposed, being of no woman born, |cries, 'Stop! Enough!' |
|Yet I will try the last. Before my body | |
|I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, | |
|And damned be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!” | |
|BANQUO to Macbeth Act I Sc. 3 |Translation: |
|…—What are these |How far is it supposed to be to Forres? (he sees the WITCHES) What are these |
|So withered and so wild in their attire, |creatures? They’re so withered-looking and crazily dressed. They don’t look like |
|That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' Earth, |they belong on this planet, but I see them standing here on Earth. (to the WITCHES)|
|And yet are on ’t?—Live you? Or are you aught |Are you alive? Can you answer questions? ... |
|That man may question? … | |
| Macbeth to Seyton or to himself (Act V Sc. 5) |Translation: |
| |I have almost forgotten the taste of fears. |
|“I have almost forgot the taste of fears; |There was a time when my senses would have cooled |
|The time has been, my senses would have cool'd |To hear a night-shriek, and my head of hair |
|To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair |Would rouse and stir, at a dismal treatise, |
|Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir |As if it were alive. I have had dinner with horrors; |
|As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors…” |Horror, familiar to my murderous thoughts, |
| |Cannot once startle me. |
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