1
Q
Explain the Theme of natural order and kingship in Macbeth.
A
- Contemporary beliefs in the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of Kings defined the hierarchical structure of Jacobean society and its relationship with the wider world.
- Macbeth’s regicidal act and usurpation of the throne breaks this natural order, and so the consequences he faces constitute a warning to the audience.
- Nature itself becomes disordered as a result of Duncan’s murder, mirroring and symbolising the unnatural act of regicidal treason.
2
Q
Quotes: Natural Order and Kingship - Act 1
A
- The merciless Macdonwald - / Worthy to be a rebel, for to that / The multiplying villanies of nature / Do swarm upon him. (Sergeant, 1:2)
- I have begun to plant thee, and will labour / To make thee full of growing. (Duncan to Macbeth and Banquo, 1:4)
- There if I grow, / The harvest is your own. (Banquo to Duncan, 1:4)
- This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air / Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself (Duncan, 1:6)
- The temple-haunting martlet, does approve. (Banquo, 1:6)
3
Q
Quotes: Natural Order and Kingship - Act 2, Scene 1 & 2
A
- Nature seems dead. (Macbeth, 2:1)
- There’s husbandry in heaven, / Their candles are all out. (Banquo, 2:1)
- Hark, peace; it was the owl that shrieked, / The fatal bellman. (Lady Macbeth, 2:2)
4
Q
Quotes: Natural Order and Kingship - Act 2, Scene 3
A
- The night has been unruly: where we lay / Ow chimneys were blown down, as they say, / Lamentings heard i t’air, strange screams. (Lennox, 2:3)
- The obscure bird / Clamour’d the livelong night. Some say, the earth / Was feverous and did shake. (Lennox, 2:3)
- Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! (Macduff, 2:3)
- His gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature (Macbeth, 2:3)
5
Q
Quotes: Natural Order and Kingship - Act 2, Scene 4
A
- By th’clock tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. (Ross, 2:4)
- On Tuesday last / A falcon towering in her pride of place / Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. (O man, 2:4)
- Duncan’s horses… Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls; flung out / Contending gainst obedience. (Ross, 2:4)
6
Q
Quotes: Natural Order and Kingship - Act 3
A
- Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown. (Macbeth, 3:1)
7
Q
Quotes: Natural Order and Kingship - Act 4
A
- This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, / Was once thought honest. (Macduff, 4:3)
8
Q
Explain the theme of Violence in Macbeth
A
- Macbeth’s violent streak is established from the start of the play: even when loyal to Duncan, he is ‘valour’s minion’ - easily enslaved to some other purpose, and capable of Biblically-epic acts of violence.
- Following the murder of Duncan, this ruthlessness manifests itself in Macbeth’s resolution to assert his kingship through tyrannical violence.
9
Q
Quotes: Violence - Act 1
A
- Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof. (Ross, 1:2)
- Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds / Or memorise another Golgotha. (Captain, 1:2)
- When in swinish sleep / their drenched natures lie as in death, / What cannot you and I perform upon th’unguarded Duncan? (Lady Mac, 1:7)
10
Q
Quotes: Violence - Act 2
A
- Where we are / There’s daggers in men’s smiles; the near in blood, / The nearer bloody. (Donalbain, 2:4)
11
Q
Quotes: Violence - Act 5
A
- I’ll fight, till from my bones the flesh be hacked. (Macbeth, 5:3)
- Why should I play the Roman fool, and die / On mine own sword? (Macbeth, 5:8)
12
Q
Explain the theme of Fate and the Supernatiral in Macbeth.
A
- Already torn by the conflict between Protestants and Catholics, the fabric of Jacobean religious belief was further rent by debate about predestination: was the ultimate fate of a person’s soul - heaven or to hell.
- This anxiety is reflected by the fluctuations in Macbeth’s confidence in the prophecies.
- Given the importance of the Witches, and contemporary attitudes towards them, it is interesting that they face no punishment at the end of the play.
13
Q
Quotes: Fate and The Supernatural - Act 1
A
- This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill; cannot be good. (Macbeth, 1:3)
- They have more in them than mortal knowledge. [Mac on witches, 1:4]
- Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem / To have thee crowned withal. (Lady Macbeth, 1:5)
- But in these cases, / We still have judgement here. (Macbeth, 1:7)
14
Q
Quotes: Fate and The Supernatural - Act 5
A
- What’s the boy Malcolm? / Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know / All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus. (Macbeth, 5:2)
- [I] begin / to doubt the equivocation of the fiend. (Macbeth, 5:5)
- Be these juggling fiends no more believed. (Macbeth, 5:7)
15
Q
Explain the theme of Ambition in Macbeth.
A
- Ambition is the quality that makes Macbeth (and Lady Macbeth) corruptible - it constitutes the protagonist’s hamartia: a fatal flaw that leads to their ultimate downfall.
- That Macbeth is conscious of this weakness - and seems to fight against it
- This lends his descent into tyranny considerable pathos: it allows the audience to sustain an empathetic connection with him despite his evil actions.
16
Q
Quotes: Ambition - Act 1
A
- The Prince of Cumberland: that is a step / On which I must fall down, or else o’er leap, / for in my way it lies. (Macbeth, 1:4)
- I have no spur / To prick the side of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itself, / And falls on th’ other. (Macbeth, 1:7)
- screw your courage to the sticking place, / And we’ll not fail. (Lady M, 1:7)
17
Q
Quotes: Ambition - Act 2
A
- Thriftless ambition that will raven up / Thine own life’s means. Then ‘tis most like / The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth. (Ross, 2:4)
18
Q
Quotes: Ambition - Act 3
A
- What man dare, I dare. (Macbeth, 3:4)
19
Q
Quotes: Ambition - Act 4
A
- Had I power, I should / Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, / Uproar the universal peace, confound / All unity on earth. (Malcolm, 4:3)
20
Q
Explain the theme of Sleep in Macbeth.
A
- Sleep represents an uncertain boundary between life and death - a vulnerable state of peace that is easily disturbed and ultimately corrupted in the lead-up to and aftermath of Duncan’s murder.
- It would have been significant for the contemporary audience that Duncan is murdered in his sleep because this means he has not been able to pray for forgiveness or be attended to by a priest.
21
Q
Quotes: Sleep - Act 2
A
- And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers, / Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose. (Banquo, 2:1)
- Wicked dreams abuse / The curtain’d sleep. (Macbeth, 2:1)
- I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep’. (Macbeth, 2:2)
- 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. (Macbeth, 2:2)
22
Q
Quotes: Sleep - Act 3
A
- You [Macbeth] lack the season of all natures, sleep. (Lady Macbeth, 3:4)
23
Q
Quotes: Sleep - Act 5
A
- A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once / the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching! (Doctor, 5:1)
24
Q
Explain the theme of Time and Reality in Macbeth
A
- At the start of the play, the power of supernatural foresight seems to promise that the linear, natural flow of time - and thus fate and reality - can be altered, and consequences avoided.
- Reality soon becomes confused and, following Lady Macbeth’s suicide, Macbeth begins to resign himself to the fact that this promise was nothing more than an illusion - comparable to the play which the audience watch - and that time, and life, are beyond his control.
25
Quotes: Time and Reality - Act 1
- If you can look into the seeds of time, / And say which grain will grow and which will not, / Speak then to me. (Banquo, 1:3)
- Come what come may, / Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. (Macbeth, 1:3)
- Thy [Macbeth] letters have transported me beyond / This ignorant present, and I feel now / The future in the instant. (Lady Macbeth, 1:5)
- That but this blow / Might be the be-all and end-all here, / But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, / We'd jump the life to come. (Macbeth, 1:7)
- Nothing is / But what is not. (Macbeth, 1:3)
26
Quotes: Time and Reality - Act 2
- A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain. (Macbeth, 2:1)
- Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant, / There's nothing serious in mortality. (Macbeth, 2:3)
27
Quotes: Time and Reality - Act 3
- This [Macbeth seeing Banquo's ghost] is the very painting of your fear. (Lady Macbeth, 3:4)
28
Quotes: Time and Reality - Act 4
- Boundless intemperance / In nature is a tyranny. It hath been / The untimely emptying of the happy throne / And fall of many kings. (Macduff, 4:3)
29
Quotes: Time and Reality - Act 5
- Our castle's strength / Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie / Till famine and the ague eat them [enemy soldiers] up. (Macbeth, 5:5)
- To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time, / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. (Macbeth, 5:5)
- Out, out, brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing. (Macbeth, 5:5)
- Let the angel whom thou hast served / Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb / Untimely ripped. (Macduff, 5:8)
30
Explain the theme of Blood in Macbeth.
- Blood should signify the stability of the kingdom through the support of loyal nobility - Macbeth as 'peerless kinsman' - and the dynastic succession of a rightful heir, Malcolm.
- However, Duncan's golden blood - the 'spring, the head, the fountain' of kingship - is unnaturally 'stopp'd',
- Blood instead becomes a symbol of guilt; it is a stain - a 'spot' - that cannot be removed, will turn multitudinous seas red, and is as irresistible as their tides.
31
Quotes: Blood - Act 2
- Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? (Macbeth, 2:2)
- The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood / Is stopped, the very source of it stopped. (Macbeth, 2:3)
32
Quotes: Blood - Act 3
- It will have blood they say: blood will have blood. (Macbeth, 3:4)
- I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er. (Macbeth, 3:4)
- Twenty trenched gashes on his [Banquo's] head. (Murderer, 3:4)
- Never shake thy [Banquo] / Gory locks at me. (Macbeth, 3:4)
- Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee / Thy [Banquo's] bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold. (Macbeth, 3:4)
33
Quotes: Blood - Act 4
- Cool it with a baboon's blood. (Sisters, 4:1)
- The blood bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me. (Macbeth, 4:1)
- Bleed, bleed, poor country! (Macduff, 4:3)
- [Scotland is a] Nation miserable. (Macduff, 4:3)
34
Quotes: Blood - Act 5
- Out, damned spot: out, I say. (Lady Macbeth, 5:1)
- Yet who would have thought the old man [the king] to have / had so much blood in him? (Lady Macbeth, 5:1)
- Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. (Lady Macbeth, 5:1)
- Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands. (Angus, 5:2)
- Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes / Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm / Excite the mortified man. (Menteith, 5:2)
English - Macbeth
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