Key Quotes

Scene 1: “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (The witches)

Scene 2: Duncan calls Macbeth “O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman”

Scene 3: “You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so” (Banquo)

“Why do you start, and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?” Banquo asking Macbeth, Macbeth is in tune with the fair/foul idea 

“Thou shalt get Kings, though thou be none” Banquo’s prophecy

“Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?” Macbeth uncomfortable as Thane of Cawdor

“The instruments of darkness tell us truths”

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings”

Scene 5: Lady Macbeth gets a letter from Macbeth and then straight away a messenger announces that Duncan is coming tonight

“Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here” “Stop up the access and passage to remorse… pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark”

“Your face, my Thane, is as a book”

“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t” (Fair is foul)

Scene 7: “We will proceed no more in this business” 

“I would, while it was smilling in my face, have pluck’d my ****** from his boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this”

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know”

Scene 1: Banquo “In heaven their candles are all out” no light- no goodness in the air 

“Is this a dagger which I see before me, handle towards my hand?”

A bell rings “hear it not Duncan, for it is a knell, that summons thee to Heaven, or to Hell”

Scene 2:Lady Macbeth says it will “make us mad” if they think about it

“Macbeth shall sleep no more” 

“Will all great Neptune’s Ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”

Scene 3: “Where we lay, our chimneys were blown down, and heard in the air strange screams of death”

Scene 4: Horses eat each other like an outrage in nature at the King’s death 

Scene 1:“I think thou play’dst most foully for it” 

“Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown”

Scene 2: “We have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it” 

“Things bad begun, make strong themselves by ill”. Macbeth thinks he can murder to get rid of the fear he’s feeling- actually it’s guilt

Scene 3: Banquo killed, Fleance escapes

Scene 4: Macbeth sees Banquo in his seat 

“This is the very painting of your fear”

“I am in blood stepp’d in so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er”

Scene 1: “Something wicked this way comes” Macbeth 

“Beware Macduff” 

“none of woman born shall harm Macbeth”

“Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood, to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him” 

Macduff fled to England, when Macbeth finds out he says “give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line”- everything sorted out by murder now 

Scene 3: Macduff learns of the murder of his family.

Malcolm: Dispute it like a man.

Macduff: I shall do so, but I must also feel it as a man 

Scene 1: Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking “Out damned spot: out I say”

Scene 3;

“honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have”

“canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow?” for him and Lady Macbeth

Scene 5: Lady Macbeth commits Suicide.

“Life’s but a walking shadow… signifying nothing” Macbeth's murderous ways have left him cold and without a soul.

Scene 6: Macduff kills Macbeth (he was born through a cesearean)

Scene 7:Young Siward “The devil himself could not pronounce a title more hateful to mine ear” 

The rightful heir, Malcolm, is now King