Macbeth Quotes (Acts 1 &2)

Quotes selected from Acts 1 to 2.2

WITCHES: 'Fair is foul and foul is fair.' - chanting, they like evil, alliteration of the soft by forceful 'f' sound.

• CAPTAIN: 'For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),' - The captain thinks highly of Macbeth after he defeats rebel Macdonwald and his Norwegian supporters.
• CAPTAIN: 'Carved out his passage' - sounds like a butcher, evil, murderer. First impression of Macbeth. Foreshadows his brutal acts.
• CAPTAIN:''fixed his head upon our battlements' - brutally displays his enemy's head. Shows his brutal ways.

• MACBETH: 'foul and fair a day' - repetition of 'foul and fair', shows that the witches have left an imprint in Macbeth's mind.
• MACBETH: 'Cannot be ill - cannot be good.' - The medial caesura shows how torn he is about the witches.

MACBETH: '[Aside] Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires!' - Rhyming (as if the witches have taken over him). Unity from the rhyming combines the language and shows confidence.// Fire is a connotation of hell, he desires could lead him to hell.// Alliteration.// Black is the absence of light.// He doesn't want people to know that he wants to be king - he's not proud of what he's going to do - he doesn't want God to see his sins - regicide - the great chain of being.// He wants to kill, and then forget - he doesn't really want to do it - he doesn't want to see what he's doing - he's torn - he doesn't want to see himself killing the king.

LADY MACBETH: 'unsex me here!' - CONTEXT, she's perceived as weak because she's a woman - she wants power - power hungry.

MACBETH: 'we will proceed no further in this business.' - Euphemism// we - 1st person plural pronoun.// will - strong modal verb, shows confidence (he's trying to regain control)// he's using a taboo because he doesn't want to say 'murder'.

MACBETH: 'i dare do all that may become a man-' - conscious of his status as a man (CONTEXT)// Lady Macbeth is agitating him and he is trying to fight his corner.

• BANQUO: 'There's husbandry in heaven:' - awareness of God (CONTEXT)
• MACBETH: 'Is this a dagger,' - double g, plosives present a sharp jagged sound & atmosphere.
• MACBETH: 'the handle toward my hand?' - h+h, handle belongs in hand// he's becoming tempted.// dagger like an arrow, showing the way.
• MACBETH: 'That summons thee to heaven or to hell.'  - Hell is deferred to the end, because he fears that that's where he's going - the rhyme to knell draws more attention to the word hell.
• There's lots of medial caesura - this shows uncertainty.
• Lots of question marks - this shows uncertainty and anxiety.

LADY MACBETH: '-Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had don't. - My husband!' - She does have a heart!!!

MACBETH: 'They pluck out mine eyes!' - monosyllabic, onomatopoeia, grotesque, plosives. Doesn't want to see what he's done. All the time he's been blaming his hands, and now their acting out on him.

MACBETH: 'What hands are here?' - Shows the split in his personality, he doesn't recognise what his bad side has done and how his conscience is duplicitous (split). He doesn't want to see what he's done. Links to 'the eye wink at the hand.' in Act 1, Scene 4.