Macbeth: quotations to learn

You get one extract from Macbeth in the exam. Any other line you quote has to come from memory, because the exam is closed book: you cannot take your copy in.

These are the quotations to learn, grouped by character and theme. Learn the exact words, who says them, and the act and scene. A slash (/) shows where a new line of verse begins. Each line of Shakespeare’s verse starts with a capital letter, which is why some quotations have a capital in the middle.

We have copied the quotations from the Project Gutenberg text of the play. Editions spell a few words differently. For example, when Macduff says he was “Untimely ripp’d” in the Gutenberg text, the Folger edition prints “ripped”. Either is correct, so learn the spelling in your own copy.

The witches and the prophecies

• “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (the witches, Act 1 Scene 1). A paradox, which is a statement that seems to contradict itself. From the first scene, good and evil are turned upside down. The chant and the repeated f sound make the witches sound unlike anyone else on stage.
• “The instruments of darkness tell us truths” (Banquo, Act 1 Scene 3). Banquo warns that evil powers may tell the truth to win trust, then betray. This explains how every prophecy in the play comes true and still destroys Macbeth.

Macbeth’s ambition

• “brave Macbeth” (the Captain, Act 1 Scene 2). This is Macbeth’s reputation before we meet him. The Captain describes him cutting a man open from his navel to his jaw, and the court praises it. Violence is admired when it is loyal to the king.
• “Stars, hide your fires” (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 4). Macbeth has just heard that Malcolm will be the next king. He asks for darkness to hide his desires, even from heaven, which shows he knows they are wicked.
• “Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself” (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 7). Macbeth pictures his ambition as a rider who jumps into the saddle too hard and falls off the other side. He can see where ambition leads before he acts, and he still goes ahead.
• “Is this a dagger which I see before me” (Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 1). The first hallucination. Macbeth cannot tell if the dagger is real. The question shows his mind is already divided, and the dagger points him towards Duncan’s room.

Lady Macbeth

• “look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t” (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5). She tells her husband to hide his plan behind a welcoming face. The serpent recalls the Devil in the Garden of Eden, which links their plan to the first sin.
• “unsex me here” (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5). She asks evil spirits to take away what she sees as a woman’s softness, so that she can be cruel. The command shows how far she will go.
• “When you durst do it, then you were a man” (Lady Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 7). Durst means dared. She says Macbeth was a man when he dared to plan the killing, so backing out makes him less than one. The taunt works where argument failed.
• “A little water clears us of this deed” (Lady Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2). She treats the murder as a stain to wash off, and her calm is the opposite of Macbeth’s horror. The line comes back to haunt her: in Act 5 she cannot wash the blood away in her mind.
• “Out, damned spot! out, I say!” (Lady Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 1). Asleep, she tries to rub blood from her hands. The blood that a little water was going to clear will not go. Her short, broken commands are in prose, ordinary sentences instead of verse, and they show a mind that has fallen apart.

Guilt and fear

• “Macbeth does murder sleep” (a voice that Macbeth hears, Act 2 Scene 2). Straight after the murder, he hears a voice cry this. He killed Duncan in his sleep, and now he has killed his own sleep too. Neither Macbeth nor his wife will sleep in peace again.
• “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand” (Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2). Neptune was the Roman god of the sea. Macbeth imagines the whole ocean failing to clean his hands. This is hyperbole, which means deliberate exaggeration: the blood stands for guilt, and he knows it will not wash off.
• “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife” (Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 2). A metaphor: guilt and fear are stinging creatures inside his head. In the same scene he keeps his plan to kill Banquo from his wife. The marriage is breaking down.

Macbeth the tyrant

• “To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus” (Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 1). Macbeth is king, and it means nothing to him while Banquo lives. The prize of ambition turns out to be fear, and fear drives him to plan Banquo’s murder.
• “Blood will have blood” (Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 4). After the ghost has gone, Macbeth says that murder leads to more murder. Repeating the word blood makes it sound like a law of nature.
• “I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far” (Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 4). He pictures himself wading through a river of blood. Going back would be as hard as going on, so he goes on. This is the moment he gives up on his conscience.
• “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing” (Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5). Told that his wife is dead, Macbeth says that life means nothing. The metaphor of a story told badly shows how empty his victory has become.

Macduff and the ending

• “But I must also feel it as a man” (Macduff, Act 4 Scene 3). Malcolm tells Macduff to fight his grief like a man, and Macduff answers that a man also feels. This is the play’s reply to Lady Macbeth’s idea of manhood.
• “this dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen” (Malcolm, Act 5 Scene 8). The new king’s verdict on the Macbeths. A butcher kills without feeling, and a fiend is a devil. The audience has heard Macbeth’s doubts and despair, so they may feel the verdict is too simple.

Using them in the exam

Learn each quotation with its speaker and its act, so you can place it in the story. Then learn some in pairs that show change across the play. “A little water clears us of this deed” in Act 2 and “Out, damned spot! out, I say!” in Act 5 show Lady Macbeth falling apart. “brave Macbeth” in Act 1 and “this dead butcher” in Act 5 show how far Macbeth’s name has fallen. “When you durst do it, then you were a man” and “But I must also feel it as a man” give two different ideas of what a man is.

You can use part of a longer quotation, as long as every word you use is exact. For a way to make them stick, see How to learn quotations so they stay learned, and for the whole plot, Macbeth: the story, act by act.

Sources

• Project Gutenberg, William Shakespeare, Macbeth (ebook 1533)
• Folger Shakespeare Library, William Shakespeare, Macbeth: the entire play and Act 5, scene 8
• AQA, GCSE English Literature 8702 specification