MACBETH QUOTE LOG

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” 3 WITCHESSignificance: Theme 1 [Fair is Foul]
“What he hat lost, noble Macbeth hath won.” KING to ROSSSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F]
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” MACBETH to BANQUOSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F]
“All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!” FIRST WITCH to MACBETHSignificance: Stating information the audience AND Macbeth knows.
“All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!” SECOND WITCH to MACBETHSignificance: Dramatic irony
“All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” THIRD WITCH to MACBETHSignificance: Stating information none of us know, not even Macbeth; foreshadowing.
“Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear/Things that do sound so far?” BANQUO to MACBETHSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F]
“Lesser than Macbeth, and greater./Not so happy, yet much happier./Thou shalt get kings though thou be none.” FIRST WITCH, SECOND WITCH, AND THIRD WITCH to BANQUO and MACBETHSignificance: Prophetic, Banquo will have sons that will be kings.
“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 hair/And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,/Against the use of nature?/If chance will have me king, why,/chance may crown me,/without my stir. MACBETH asideSignificance: Showing his goodness, nobility, good reputation.
“He was a gentleman on whom I built/Absolute trust.” KING to MALCOLMSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F], betrayed trust.
“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.” MACBETH asideSignificance: Poetic, Theme 1 [F is F]
“Thou wouldst be great,/Art not without ambition, but without/The illness should attend it.” LADY MACBETHSignificance: You could be great, so have some balls and suck it up, basically.
“Your hand, your tongue: look like th’ innocent flower,/But be the serpent under’t.” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Theme 1 [F is F]
“Only look up clear./To alter favor ever is to fear./Leave all the rest to me.” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Keep quiet and let me do the talking; Theme 1 [F is F]
“Which 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?” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Wants the crown without getting her hands dirty.
“Who dares receive it other,/As we shall make our griefs and clamor roar/Upon his death?” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: WE’ll kill him but our cover will be so smooth no one will suspect.
“How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:/I would, while it was smiling in my face,/Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gum,/And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you/Have done to this.” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: She’ll follow through with her word, but since he won’t he’s no better than a woman. The whole child-ripped-from-her-boob-thing is just a metaphor to show the lengths she would go to to prove how solid her word is.
“I think not of them./Yet, when we can entreat…” MACBETH to BANQUOSignificance: He can’t stop thinking of the witches, but he denies it.
“My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,/I shall be counseled.” BANQUO to MACBETHSignificance: Covering his ass.
“And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,/Which was not so before./It is the bloody which informs/Thus to mine eyes.” MACBETH monologueSignificance: Starting to go crazy… hallucinating a dagger.
“Here not my steps, which way they walk, for fear/Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,/And take the present horror from the time,” MACBETH monologeSignificance: REALLY doesn’t wanna be heard; paranoid
“That which hath made them drunk hat made me bold;/What hath quenched them hath given me fire.” LADY MACBETH monologueSignificance: She had a little bit of the potion she gave to the guards, and is showing how the little bit strengthened her, but weakened them.
“It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,/Which gives the stern’st goodnight.” LADY MACBETH monologueSignificance: Owl and bellman are signs of death.
“Had he not resembled/My father as he slept, I had done’t.” LADY MACBETH monologueSignificance: She claims that she would have killed Duncan if he hadn’t looked like her father.
“List’ning their fear, I could not say, ‘Amen,’/when they did say, ‘God bless us!'””Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more.” MACBETH to LADY MACBETHSignificance: Both mean that he’s unholy now; he’s a different person, not worthy of sleep or holy words. Has been forgotten and overlooked by God.
“Go get some water,/And wash this filthy witness from your hand./Why did you bring these daggers from the place?””A little water clears us of this deed:/How easy is it then!” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: How can water wash off murder; he brought the guards’ daggers with him.
“Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead/Are but as pictures.” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: Lady MB is all talk; calling the dead ‘pictures’ only AFTER they’re dead.
“My hands are of your color, but I shame/To wear a heart so white.” LADY MACBETH to MACBETHSignificance: She’s just as much to blame for the crime, but she would never show it as much as he does.
“Here’s a farmer, that hanged/himself on th’ expectation of plenty.””Here’s an equivocator, that/could swear in both the scales against either scale;””Here’s an English tailor come hither for stealing/Out of a French hose.” PORTER monologueSignificance: All examples of men who tried to cheat their way up the scale and failed, Theme 1, Foreshadowing
1) “What three things does drink especially provoke?”2) “Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lech-/ery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the/desire, but it takes away the performance.” 1) MACDUFF to PORTER2) PORTER to MACDUFFSignificance: Drinking enhances desire but detracts from the performance.
“Who could refrain,/That had a heart to love, and in that heart/Courage to make’s love known?” MACBETH to LADY MACBETH, MACDUFF, DONALBAIN, MALCOLM, and BANQUO.Significance: He admits to killing the guards because, in his words, ‘how could you not kill them?’ As they are the closest suspects to the king’s death.
“‘Tis unnatural,/Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last/A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place,/Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.” OLD MAN to ROSSSignificance: Theme 2 [Unnatural Deeds Breed Unnatural Trouble] (UDBUT)
“Thine own life’s means! Then ’tis most like/The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.” ROSS to OLD MANSignificance: Macbeth has been named king.