| Duncan | The King of Scotland (c. 1034). He is presented as a true and gracious monarch – the embodiment of the Elizabethan belief that a king was appointed as God’s deputy on earth and was himself almost divine. |
| Malcolm | Duncan’s elder son. Early in the play ____ is named as Duncan’s heir, the next king of Scotland – and consequently he becomes the prime suspect when Duncan is murdered. |
| Macbeth | A mighty and ambitious warrior, one of the leaders of Duncan’s army. A witches’ prophecy leads him to murder Duncan so that he himself can be king – but conscience afterwards will never let him rest. |
| Lady Macbeth | ____ is even more ambitious than her husband, and has fewer moral scruples (reservations). ____ urges Macbeth to kill Duncan, and refuses to understand his doubts and hesitations. Gradually ____’s close relationship with Macbeth crumbles into nothing. |
| Banquo | Macbeth’s co-commander in Duncan’s army. He also hears the witches’ prophecies, but resists their temptation. |
| Fleance | Banquo’s son |
| Macduff | A Scottish thane (nobleman) who comes to prominence after the murder of Duncan and leads the opposition to Macbeth. |
| Ross | A Scottish thane. He is a valuable commentator on the action of the play and its effects in the wider world outside of Macbeth’s castle. |
| The Witches | Three witches, or supernatural phenomena. Called the ‘weird sisters’ in Shakespeare’s historical source-book, they are related to the three Fates in classical mythology. Productions have represented them very differently: as grotesque and frightening; comic and ridiculous; young and beautiful; or masked and hideous. |
| The Witches | Fair is foul, and foul is fair,Hover through the fog and filthy air. |
| Macbeth | Two truths are told,As happy prologues to the swelling actOf the imperial theme. –I thank you, gentleman.–This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,Why hath it given me earnest of success,Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,Whose horrid image doth unfix my hairAnd make my seated heart knock at my ribs Against the use of nature? Present fearsAre less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is, But what is not. |
| Macbeth | The Prince of Cumberland: that is a step On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires, Let not light see my black and deep desires,The eye wink at the hand. Yet let that be,Which the eye fears when it is done to see. |
| Lady Macbeth | The raven himself is a hoarseThat croaks the fatal entrance of DuncanUnder my battlements. Come you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe topfullOf direst cruelty; make thick my blood,Stop up th’access and passage to remorseThat no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose nor keep peace betweenTh’effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,Wherever in your sightless substancesYou wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,And 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,To cry, ‘Hold, hold’. |
| Lady Macbeth | As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have thatWhich thou esteem’st the ornament of life,And live a coward in thine own esteem,Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’,Like the poor cat i’th’adage? |
| Macbeth | Prithee, peace.I dare do all that may become a man;Who dares do more is none. |
| Lady Macbeth | What beast was’t thenThat made you break this enterprise to me?When you durst do it, then you were a man.And to be more than what you were, you wouldBe so much more the man. Nor time nor placeDid then adhere, and yet you would make both.They have made themselves and that their fitness nowDoes unmake you. I have given suck and knowHow tender ’tis to love the babe that mils me;I would, while it was smiling in my face,Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gumsAnd dash’d the brains out, had I so swornAs you have done to this. |
| Macbeth | Is this a dagger which I see before me,The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:I have tee not, and yet I see thee still.Art thou not, fatal vision, sensibleTo feeling as to sight? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation,Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?I see thee yet, in form as palpableAs this which now I draw.Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,And such an instrument I was to use.Mine eyes are made the fools o’th’other senses,Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,Which was not so before. There’s no such thing: It is the bloody business which informsThus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-world |
| Macbeth | Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more:______ does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,Chief nourisher in life’s feast….. [______] What do you mean?Still it cried, ‘Sleeps no more’ to all the house;’Glamis hath murder’d sleep,’ and therefore CawdorShall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more. |
| Macbeth | Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this bloodClean from my hand? No: this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine,Making the green one red. |
| Lady Macbeth | At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber;A little water clears us of this deed.How easy it is then! Your constancyHath left you unattended. |
| Macbeth | There’s comfort yet, they are assailable;Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flownHis cloister’d flight, ere to black Hecate’s summonsThe shard born beetle with his drowsy humsHath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be doneA deed of dreadful note. |
| The Witches (Second Witch) | By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes; |
| Second Appartation | Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scoreThe power of man, for none of woman bornShall harm Macbeth. |
| Malcolm | That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose;Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,Yet grace must still look so. |
| Macduff | Not in the legions Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’dIn evils to top Macbeth |
| Malcolm | I grant him bloody,Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sinThat has a name. But there’s no bottom, none,In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,Your matrons, and your maids could not fill upThe cistern of my lust, and my desireAll continent impediments would o’erbearThat did oppose my will. Better Macbeth,Than such an one to reign. |
| Lady Macbeth | Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, more lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, whennone can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood inhim? |
| Lady Macbeth | Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes ofArabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O. |
| Macbeth | She should have died hereafter;There would have been a time for such a word.Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrowCreeps in this petty pace from day to dayTo the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candler,Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more. It is a taleTold an idiot, full of sound and furySignifying nothing. |
| Macduff | Hail, king, for so thou art. Behold where standsTh’usurper’s cursed head. The time is free.I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,That speak my salutation in their minds;Whose voices I desire aloud with mine.Hail, King of Scotland. |
| 1606 | In what year was Macbeth first preformed? |
| James I | For which English royal was Macbeth preformed? |
| Banquo | Which monarch was related to which of the following characters in the play? |
| Henry VIII (the eighth) | Which English ruler established the Church of England some 75 years prior to the performance of Macbeth? |
| the Renaissance | The time period in which Shakespeare lived is known as: |
| Iambic Pentameter | lines of 10 syllables |
| Alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds |
| Consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds in the middle or at the end of a word |
| Assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds (in the middle of words) |
| Rhyme | The witches use this device continually throughout the play (where other characters do so only sporadically) |
| Paradox | The line, “Not so happy, yet much happier” is an example of |
| Metaphor | The line, “tis day and yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp” is an example of |
| Alliteration | The following line – so Well thy Words become thee as they Wounds – is an example of |
| Elision | In the following line – that is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap – o’erleap – is an example of |
| Vegetation/Plant life | When Duncan says to Banquo and Macbeth at the start of the play, ” I have begun to plant thee and will labour to make thee full of growing,” we hear which motif? |
| The “march” of Birnam wood to Dunsinane hill | The vegetation motif reaches its culmination, high point, zenith, or apex in |
| False faces | The line, “Look like th’innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t,” is an example of which theme? |
| Deception/ False faces | When Malcolm says, “But there’s no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters, your matrons and your maids could not fill up the cistern of mu lust,” we see/hear which theme at work? |
| an alliteration and a paradox | The following – So fair and fair a day I have not seen – is an example of |
| Soliliquy | An extended speech in which a character expresses his or her inner thoughts and feelings, but is heard only by the audience (not by the other characters) |
| Aside | A brief remark made by a character which is heard only by the audience |
| Masculinity | The line, “Bring forth men-children only, for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males” is an example of which theme? |
| Thane of Cawdor | When the play begins, Macbeth is awarded a title that formerly belonged to a noble man who betrayed the king. What is this title? |
Macbeth
September 11, 2019