macbeth extra detailed quotes - gcse aqa

banquos ghost TS

• banquo’s ghost = physical manifestation of M’s guilt

• he makes the threat to both Macbeth’s position as king + mental state tangible 

• he serves as a tool to expose M’s facade as deceptive + disrupts his composure/reputation

banquos ghost

witches topic sentence

M topic sentence

LM topic sentence

compare LM to the end of the play

• descends into insanity = polarisation of her character 

• she enters w/ a taper;

  • ironic that she was previously commanding darkness yet now cannot bear to abandon a source of light

compare the extent of macbeth's downfall

• transitions in language;

  • Act 5 'abhorred tyrant' in contrast to the role of a passive + obedient honourable soldier to a position of active, malicious power

  • = an aspect of his hamartia is his greed for power as he abuses it

  • his reputation; falls from a position of nobility to become abominable

• ++compared to a lion...

'calling home our exiled friends abroad that fled the snares of watchful tyranny’

• though in no position of power

• prioritises scotland as a true king would

• +condemns the 'watchful tyranny' that macbeth subjected scotland to

• malcolm has no ulterior motives;

  • focuses on the restoration of his beloved country

  • committed to creating a more fair/just society where ppl don’t live in fear of oppression

  • this highlights the importance of standing up for what is right to help prevent tyranny

• his patriotism is poignant + is a stark contrast to the leadership of macbeth

'a good + virtuous nature may recoil in an imperial charge'

• implies that the power that come with being king could distort his morals (as it did w/ M);

  • this awareness of the fatalities of ambition exacerbates Macbeth's recklessness + unchecked-ambition

• conveys a level of healthy skepticism: by testing macduff's morals = he ensures his subjects are morally sound to mirror himself

• juxtaposes against his father, Duncan, who is arguably too trusting w/ violent soldiers (M)

‘our safest way is to avoid the aim’

• antithesis of violence

• when duncan is murdered, his suggestion is not to combat w/ violence but pacify it through fleeing [not attending Macbeth’s coronation as he is suspicious]

‘our safest way is to avoid the aim'

• antithesis of violence

• when duncan is murdered, his suggestion is not to combat w/ violence but pacify it through fleeing [not attending Macbeth’s coronation as he is suspicious]

'O horror, horror, horror'

• repetition to emphasise the strength of macduff's devastated emotions + his loyalty to the late king

• as well as the magnitude of the crime M committed 

• thus foreshadowing the violence that will ensue as a result of Duncan’s murder, as the characters struggle to restore order/bring the perpetrators to justice

• macduff expresses grief + pain;

  • he is the most personable character who remains noble + honourable throughout

'most sacrilegious murder has broke the Lord's anointed temple'

• macduff ≠ put on a false facade, is entirely dedicated to the king

• hyperbolic language + reaction reinforces this + how he strictly abides to the religious moral code

• religious semantic field 'sacrilegious' + 'anointed' = image of sacredness + holiness;

  • reinforces macduff's extreme distress that the king, [divinely ordained by God as believed by the divine right of kings], has been callously murdered despite his sacredness

'here you may see the tyrant'

• macduff is the first character to explicitly brand macbeth as a tyrant - due to his motivated + ignited ambition to extinguish macbeth

• this is the last thing macbeth hears before dying

• the poignancy (affect) of macduff's words shine through, signifying an end to macbeth's destructions + the beginning of the restoration of order

'turn, hell-hound, turn'

• repetition of 'turn' emphasises the extent to which macbeth has turned order on its head

• epithet 'hell-hound' highlights the true nature of the tyrant king

• = ‘hell-hound’, strong symbol of darkness, evil which is associated w/ supernatural forces + the devil = M. is morally corrupt + consumed

• image foreshadows M. tragic end

• unlike M, he is not ambitious to make himself more powerful, but ambitious to restore justice + order in scotland

'bleed, bleed, poor country'

• his lamenting (express passionate grief) of scotland shows what fuels his ambition to restore order

• also suggest scotland is dying under macbeth's reign, captivating M's misanthrophic nature,

  • a quality which juxtaposes the role of a king

'i have no word; my voice is my sword'

• emphasises macduff's heroic qualities + draws on a key idiom [actions speak louder than words]

• macbeth's ungodly actions are not worthy of words anymore

• macduff believes that order can only be restored when terminating his tyranny

'let's make us medicines of our great revenge' 'to cure this deadly grief'

• 'medicines' + 'revenge' are alike in their outcomes = solving/curing something

• macduff uses this idea as the only way to solve/ cure his insurmountable grief;

• by making macbeth accountable for his sins

• thus his violence is justified + he still remains the archetype of the avenging hero (motivated for a just cause)

the heaven's 'candles are all out'

• he is the antithesis of deceitful;

• he is honest, sincere + 

• he is emblematic of Jesus as he confesses his temptation

• he comments on the lack of stars in the sky = he seeks solace from heaven

• opposed to confess, macbeth: 'stars hide your fires', this motif of stars exposes M and B as diametrically opposed in their aspirations:

  • M wants to hide his malicious intentions from God yet B was to confess + be FREE of them

[help] 'restrain in me the cursed thoughts'

• banquo understands the ludicrousness of plotting to kill the king based on unsubstantiated prophecies of supernatural beings

• this is the antithesis to LM who voluntarily calls the 'spirits' + supernatural forces

• banquo wants to blockade any corruption by unnatural force- he perceptively recognises them as 'cursed'

'i dream'd of the three weird sisters last night'

• still plagued by the thoughts of the witches' prophecies

• superstition is taking hold of him + trespassing on his unconscious

• in contrast to macbeth who claims 'i think not of them', banquo is honest, characterising him as moral = amplifies macbeth's dishonesty + deception

'look not like th'inhabitants o'th' earth'

• perceives their overt evil + dehumanises them in his description

• the witches' physiognomy (when appearances are believed to reflective of your true character) exposes them as inhumane + evil

• banquo is portrayed as perceptive as it was believed he was an ancestor of James I = thus a form of indirect flattery

[thunder and lightning]

• shakespeare couples their introduction w/ pathetic fallacy

• atmosphere; volatile, ominous + dangerous from the offset

• could foreshadow the violence that will ensue throughout the play

• disrupted/aggravated weather being nature's fury at this coming violence

'no man born of woman shall harm macbeth'

• each prophecy are equivocal (vague) and ambiguous

• appear to be giving macbeth pertinent (important) insight to his safety

• in reality they are only giving a ephemeral (temporary) sense of security + invincibility = they know his hubris obstructs him from seeing this

'fair is foul and foul is fair'

• in this chant they speak in paradoxes + oxymorons

• their speech is conflicting, what they appear to say does not correlate w/ reality;

• = this sets up the tone of the play which explores the theme of appearance vs reality

• consistent throughout play = reinforces their deceitful + duplicitous intentions

'eye of newt', 'fire burn, and cauldron bubble' and 'hell-broth, boil + bubble'

• witches amplify the theme of deception + equivocation (ambiguity) within this act as they speak in proverbial (common) supernatural phrases;

• they conform to the archetype (norm) of witches that the audience would fear

'the pit of acheron', meet me

• witches appear synonymous w/ wickedness + hell

• Acheron was 1 of the rivers that ran through Hades (hell in Greek mythology)

• as they were depicted as meeting there, it reinforces how the witches are inextricably linked w/ hell

banquo warns macbeth of their 'instruments of darkness'

• suggests their evil musicality, perhaps that their words are more hypnotic for macbeth

• in contrast to B who is skeptical of their intentions, perceiving them as agents of evil [who don’t act alone but are apart of a larger network of dark forces]

• suggesting he has awareness of the potential consequences of getting involved w/ the witches + dark magic

‘banquo warns macbeth of their 'instruments of darkness'

• suggests their evil musicality, perhaps that their words are more hypnotic for macbeth

• in contrast to B who is skeptical of their intentions, perceiving them as agents of evil [who don’t act alone but are apart of a larger network of dark forces]

• suggesting he has awareness of the potential consequences of getting involved w/ the witches + dark magic

'was the hope drunk wherein you dress'd yourself?'

• used to ridicule M 

• uses the rhetorical question as a calculated tool of her manipulation

• she gives him time to ponder + think abt his actions;

• clear she wants to exploit his emotions of embarrassment or shame

'pour my spirits in thine ear'

• she is a femme fatale as she is not only manipulative but rejects her woman/motherhood (a typical trope of a femme fatale)

• her manipulation is salient (prominent) in the quote as she wants to taint macbeth's mind with her spirits

'too full o'th'milk of human kindness'

• noun 'milk' is a symbol for femininity + maternal nurturing,

• milk = white = pure, blank slate = shows who he was b4 she manipulated him

• LM rejects notions of femininity

despite M being a brave warrior, he has a strong sense of compassion 

lady macbeth [enters with a taper (candlestick], sleepwalking

• [taper] provides light = emblematic of how LM is seeking light, hope + solace in her eternal mental darkness

• Jesus was seen to be the 'light' of the world, providing salvation for mankind;

• LM's dependency on the light could illuminate how hopeful she is for salvation + retribution for her sins

'out damned spot! out I say'

• the 'spot' emblematic of the scar the murder has created on her mind

• however, shakespeare's audience may interpret it;

  • madness was often perceived as a sign of being possessed by demons

  • believed demons/witches had a 'spot' on their body which identified them as evil = reinforced by 'damned' which has connotations of hell

'had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it'

• beginning exposes her guilty conscience coming to the service, exposing her inner cowardice + ingrained fear of patricide (killing of her father)

• LM is manipulative as she operates w/ a liminal gender;

• take advantage of alleged feminine weakness when it works in her favour

• yet brutally rejects it if it represses her

‘look like th' innocent flower, but be the serpent under't'

• biblical allusion to the 'serpent' seen in the fall of mankind in Genesis when the serpent tempts Adam + Eve;

• used to highlight how effective deception can be when executed w/ an 'innocent' facade

• emphasising how M should use his outward appearance as ‘brave’ ‘valiant cousin’ to his advantage 

'come, you spirits'

• yearns to rid of her femininity to encompass the inhumane + witch like role that would grant her power

• her androgynous (male+female) nature would be perceived to be supernatural in the Jacobean era as the gender roles were rigid

• imperative language

‘a little water clears us of this deed'

• over-powering ambition obstructs her from seeing the genuine distress of her husband

• uses litotes (under-exaggeration) to downplay the murder

  • (laced w/ irony as Lady M shifts to a melodramatic state of insanity + beings speaking in hyperbole as guilt takes over)

• euphemism hints at this- referring to murder as 'deed';

  • lady M fails to face up to the reality of it, must placate it into less heinous words in order to keep her (albeit temporary) composure

'dash'd the brains out'

• merciless act of rejecting maternal inclinations = characterises LM as violent + determined

• she effectively competes w/ macbeth who as a man of that era, could not be weaker than a woman

• ambitious to be a violent tyrant, 

• supernatural; amoral + feels an absence of guilt in the destruction of innocent life like the witches,

• appears to be a submissive feminine mother/women but is in reality barbaric

'stop up the access and passage to remorse'

• she wants to be entirely violent

• no remnants of femininity - aware this constrains her

• sees emotion synonymous with weakens

• by eradicating this she can ^unlock the barbaric tyrant she dreams of being

[ambitious to be a violent tyrant]

'coward'

• epithet (insult) which threatens his entire sense of being a soldier, not only is she questioning his masculinity but also his livelihood

'o, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!'

• 'scorpions' - poisonous, represents how macbeth's ambition has poisoned his mind = consequently plagued by guilt + remorse (entirely as highlighted by 'full')

• metaphor of a creature festering in his mind = his tyrannical nature is so omnipotent, he now resembles more of a savage creature > moral human

'the gory locks at me'

• gory - suggests that banquo's ghost is a physical manifestation of his violence

• structurally, the murderers enter the banquet before macbeth, exacerbating how his kingship is unnatural as he's disrupted the divine right of kings

'Macbeth does murder sleep - the innocent sleep'

• [heard a voice cry ‘’] after literally killed the sleeping Duncan

• he is so perturbed (unsettled) by guilt that he is imprisoned within a state of restlessness

• motif of sleep;

  • sleep synonymous w/ innocence; his lack of sleep explores his complete loss of innocence

calls the dagger an 'instrument'

• alluding to how the 'instruments of darkness' (the witches) w/ their dark musicality, have brought him to this point of sheer inner turmoil

threatens the witches with an 'eternal curse'

• ironic as we have seen their overt (apparent) supernatural power, he believes he can supersede this

• his ego is prevalent as the witches ambiguous apparitions provide him an ephemeral (lasting) sense of security + invincibility

threatens the witches with an 'eternal curse'

• ironic as we have seen their overt (apparent) supernatural power, he believes he can supersede this

• his ego is prevalent as the witches ambiguous apparitions provide him an ephemeral (lasting) sense of security + invincibility

'why do you dress me in borrow'd robes'

• suggests he has been awarded a title that doesn't belong to him (by supernatural)

• shows throughout the play as he moves through the hierarchal ranking;

  • it is superficial + transient (temporary), much like clothes

'so foul and fair a day I have not seen'

• echo the witches's paradox

  • (self-contradicting statement, they see themselves as good, tho they are not)

• slowly becoming a mouthpiece for the witches evil;

• he is a vessel for their misconduct

'he hath wisdom that doth guide his valour to act in safety' (about banquo)

• banquo is a foil to macbeth

• macbeth embodies reckless power whereas banquo has self-constraint + control

• macbeth is envious (7 deadly sin) of banquo's ability to restrain his ambition + refrain from over-indulgence into 'deep desires'

'with tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design'

• macbeth ambitiously wants to emulate Taqruin;

  • a roman tyrant whom raped his wife

• SO he will be a barbaric tyrant who feels no pity (his ambition + hubris obstructs his moral compass)

• he sees power synonymous with brutality and being a tyrant

'vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on th' other'

• verb 'vaulting' describes Macbeth's mammoth ego (his hamartia)

• personification makes ambition appear like a human-like force, controlling + plaguing his innocent mind

  • metaphor likens macbeth to a a jokey riding his ambition

  • his ambition is akin to a barbaric animal

'valour's minion'

• strongly abides to codes of honour

• or, noun 'minion' foreshadows his susceptibility to manipulation as we will soon be a marionette (puppet) of the witches

'before my body, I throw my war like shield'

• 'shield' connotes protection, shows macbeth desperately wants to protect + preserve his former noble image of him being a "worthy" + "valiant" soldier

• last words; contain violent semantic field = ambitious + violent nature has directly caused his fall from grace

'his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls'

• their murders are emblematic (symbolic) of Macbeth's excessive bloodthirst

• they presented no threat but he is now on an unstoppable trajectory of murder

• macbeth takes on the Godly role of deciding who has the right to live

'i am in blood/ stepp'd in so far’

• 'blood' was merely on his hands

• yet now it has enrobed his entire body + by extension his entire being

• feels he has no choice but to further indulge in his heinous acts

'in time will venom breed/no teeth for th'present'

• he acknowledges his tumultuous (overwhelming) fortune as a result of his violent nature

• yet his hubris (pride) blinds him into a false sense of security, suggesting that danger is not yet imminent

'disdaining fortune... smok'd w/ bloody execution'

• smok'd; connotes heat + hell, foreshadowing his evil

• disdaining fortune; disregard for his fate + his attempt to manipulate the natural order

the patriarchy link to play

• country led by a male monarch supported by male subjects

• lady macbeth consistently subverts patriarchal expectations of women

what is the patriarchy

• a social system in which men hold power + women face oppression from them

• great chain of being dictates men as superior = leads to patriarchal social system

• role of men more significant in S. period but even today; more

seven deadly sins link to play

• macbeth; guilty of pride, anger, envy, greed = death (punishment)

• lady macbeth; guity of pride, greed = punished for her actions against God (death)

religion + the 7 deadly sins

• James I; influential person in the Church of England thus S. depiction catered towards him tho likely S. was religious himself = a response to the prevalence of religion at the time 

• 7 deadly sins - group of vices (bad/undesirable trait):

  • pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth

  • committing any one considered to be straying away from God's will = creating distance between person + God (room for devil's influence)

daemonologie link to play

• scholars wonder if S. depiction of witches was a deliberate attempt to appeal the king;

• as they hit most of Jame's expectations: control weather, create potions + propensity for chanting

what is daemonologie

• a book written by James I to emphasise his disdain for witchcraft

• dictate the punishment that should be given for practising them

• consulted by people of the time as an educational (didactic) book

the great chain of being link to play

• Macbeth violates the great chain of being when he kills King Duncan

  • by betraying his superior = thus God

• on a smaller scale; when Lady M. emasculates him + forces him into regicide

what is the great chain of being

• belief that God created the world w/ a clear hierarchical structure encompassing all matter and life

• monarch at the top of human order = choices have religious/political significance

• men higher than women (expected to be subordinate)

• S.'s time, considered a fact of life ≠ a religious belief

the divine rights of kings link to play

• Shakespeare's time; an accepted aspect of the monarchy = reflected in S. writing

• could be argue; S.'s portrayal of Duncan's murder as 'an act against God' was intended to please his king + patron

what is the divine right of kings

• belief asserting that a monarch derived their authority from God (+ God's will is passed down thru royal family)

• thus any attempt to depose or murder the king is an attempt on God himself (blasphemy + treason)

• remnants seen in modern day; Pope rules over the Catholic church by divine appointment

King James I's link to play

• central themes tailed to fit his interest; treason, regicide, the supernatural + characteristics of power

• staunch believer in 'divine right of kings + great chain of being'

• like James, Banquo's characters is of scottish nobility thus emphasises Jame's ancient royal lineage

who is King James I

• Scottish born and raised

• first monarch to rule over England, Scotland + Ireland at the same time

• Patron (funded) of the King's Men, Shakespeare's company

• very religious

• staunchly against witchcraft + supernatural

act 1

1. 3 witches meeting + arrange to meet macbeth (first mention of macbeth) = establishes the witches having power over the events in the play/characters

2. captain gives report on the battle to duncan + praises macbeth (we learn he is to be given 'thane of cawdor's title)

3. witches meet on a heath, macbeth + banquo arrive = give both prophecies

   • macbeth wants to know more, told he is now thane of cawdow by ross + agnus

   • banquo skeptical

4. m + b return to palace to meet duncan who thanks them for their heroism + announces his son malcolm is next heir to throne

5. lady m reads letter from m explaining witches prophecies- doubts he is strong enough but determined to help him, they plan to kill duncan

6. banquo + duncan arrive at m's castle + describe it similarly to eden, lady m greets them

7. m doesn't want to kill duncan but lady m persuades him by insulting him + his masculinity

Describe how Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a ‘tragic hero’

• As he is brought down by his own actions

- Macbeth was once a ‘hero’

What is the quotation that shows Macbeth has commited murder?

• ‘I go, and it is done’

What is ‘ambition’ linked to?

• Witches and murder

What is ‘ambition’ in Macbeth?

• The dramatic catalyst

- It drives the plot and creates the character change

‘Macbeth’ being the title is what?

• Eponymous hero as it is the same name as title