Key quotes from the play
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Quotes linked to the theme of ambition/power
Macbeth
• He talks about his ‘black and deep desires’ to be King.
• By the end of the play he is not afraid to die and has gained
confidence, ‘I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be
hack’d.’
• ‘Lay on, Macduff, and damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold,
enough!’ Macbeth’s final words, showing his false feelings
of invincibility and sheer ambition not to give up.
Lady Macbeth
• ‘But screw your courage to the sticking place / And we’ll not fail.’ Lady Macbeth tells
Macbeth to stop being a coward about killing Duncan.
Banquo
• ‘What, can the devil speak true?’ His reaction when he hears Macbeth has been named
Thane of Cawdor.
Quotes linked to the theme of deception
Macbeth
• He knows he needs to be two-faced ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth
know.’
Banquo
• ‘Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promised, and I fear
thou play’dst most foully for’t.’ Alone, Banquo reflects on Macbeth’s rise to the throne.
Quotes linked to the theme of guilt/paranoia
Macbeth
• ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?’ Macbeth
hallucinates and sees a dagger on his way to kill Duncan.
• After he has killed Duncan, he becomes paranoid about what he has done, ‘How is’t
with me, when every noise appals me?’
• ‘Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep!’ After
killing Duncan, Macbeth fears he will never sleep again from the guilt.
• ‘It will have blood they say: blood will have blood.’ After Banquo’s ghost has gone,
Macbeth feels that his crime is pursuing him.
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Key quotes from the play
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Lady Macbeth
• ‘Nought’s had, all’s spent, where our desire is got
without content. / ’Tis safer to be that which we
destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.’
Lady Macbeth finds that getting what you want doesn’t
bring peace.
• ‘Out damned spot! Out, I say!’ Lady Macbeth
hallucinates blood on her hands before her death.
Quotes linked to the theme of religion
Macbeth
• He cannot say ‘Amen’ after the murder, showing he has a conscience.
Quotes linked to the theme of good versus evil
Macbeth
• He becomes more evil as the play progresses and even
mimics the witches when he says ‘so fair and foul a
day I have not seen.’
• ‘I am in blood / Stepped in so far that should I wade
no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
Macbeth reflects on the fact that there is no way
back from the evil he has started.
The Witches
• ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’. The witches’ philosophy on life, showing that nothing is
ever what it seems.
• ‘Something wicked this way comes’. The witches predict Macbeth’s arrival before he
arrives to see them the second time.
• ‘None of woman born shall harm Macbeth’. The second apparition delivers this
deceptive prophecy which makes Macbeth feel invincible.
Quotes linked to the theme of the supernatural
Macbeth
• ‘And with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond which
keeps me pale!’ Macbeth summons help for Banquo’s death.
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Key quotes from the play
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Quotes linked to subverting expectations of gender at the time
Lady Macbeth
• ‘yet do I fear thy nature, / It is too full o’th’milk of
human kindness / To catch the nearest way.’ After
receiving her husband’s letter about the witches’
prophecy, expresses her fear that he isn’t bad enough.
• She tells Macbeth to ‘Leave all the rest to me.’
• ‘Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me from
the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty’ Upon hearing that King Duncan is to stay
the night in her castle, Lady Macbeth builds herself up to kill him.
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