Summary AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 1 Section A - Macbeth: Quotes
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Course
English
Institution
GCSE
This document contains an extensive list of key quotes from Macbeth, organised by character and by theme (including ambition, guilt, supernatural, kingship, loyalty/betrayal, appearance/reality, order/disorder, evil, manliness, femininity, violence, fate and free will). The techniques used in each ...
Quotations - Characters
Macbeth
• “He seamed him from the nave to the chops, / And fixed his head upon our battlements.” – A Captain (about Macbeth) A1
S2 L22-3
o Theme: Violence / War
o Technique: Violence imagery, Foreshadowing
• “What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.”
o Theme: Good and Evil
• “Why do you dress me / In borrowed robes?” – Macbeth A1 S3 L108-9
o Technique: Clothes Imagery Pattern
• “There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face; / He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute
trust.” – Duncan A1 S4 L11-4
o Theme: Deception
o Technique: Echoes (L. Macbeth A1 S5 L64-5), (Macbeth A3 S2 L34-5)
• “he [Macbeth] is so valiant, / And in his commendations I am fed; / It is a banquet to me.” – Duncan A1 S4 L54-6
o Translation: ‘Macbeth is so brave that I have a lot of praise for him’
o Theme: Kingship
o Technique: Dramatic Irony (We know Macbeth will betray Duncan)
• “I do fear thy nature, / It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” – L. Macbeth (about Macbeth) A1 S5 L15-6
o Theme: Good and Evil
• “Wouldst thou have that / 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?” – L. Macbeth A1 S7 L41-4
o Translation: ‘Do you wish to have the crown but not have the courage to take it, just like a cat who likes eating fish
but is afraid to get its paws wet’
o Theme: Ambition
o Technique: Simile; Comparison of Macbeth to a cat
• “I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er” – Macbeth A3 S4
L135-7
o Translation: ‘I am already so committed to this life of murder that it would be easier to continue than to give up now.’
• “Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.” –
Second Apparition A4 S1 L78
o Theme: The Supernatural
• “Then live, Macduff, what need I fear of thee? / But yet I’ll make assurance double sure. / And take a bond of fate – thou
shall not live.”
o Theme: Fate, Ambition
• “The castle of Macduff I will surprise; / Seize upon Fife; give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword / His wife, his babes, and all
unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line.” – Macbeth A4 S2 L149-52
• “the heart I bear, / Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear” – A5 S3 L9-10
o Theme: Ambition
• “I have almost forgot the taste of fears” – Macbeth A5 S5 L9
, 5
Quotations - Characters
Lady Macbeth
• “Look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t.” – L. Macbeth A1 S5 L64-5
o Theme: Deception
o Technique: Echoes (Duncan A1 S4 L11), (Macbeth A3 S2 L34-5)
• “Hie thee hither / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, / And chastise with the valour of my tongue / All that
impedes thee from the golden round.” – L. Macbeth A1 S5 L25-8
• “Come thick night, / And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, / That my knife sees not the wound it makes,” – L.
Macbeth A1 S5 L51-2
o Technique: Darkness Imagery, Echoes (Macbeth A1 S3), (Macbeth A3 S2)
• “Wouldst thou have that / 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?” – L. Macbeth A1 S7 L41-4
o Translation: ‘Do you wish to have the crown but not have the courage to take it, just like a cat who likes eating fish
but is afraid to get its paws wet’
o Technique: Simile; Comparison of Macbeth to a cat
• “What beast was’t then / That 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 would / Be so much more the man” – L.Macbeth A1 S7 L47-51
o Translation: ‘What ambition made you suggest this plan to me? When you suggested it, you were a man and if you
were to become a king, you would be even more of a man.’
• “My hands are of your [Macbeth’s] colour, but I shame / To wear a heart so white.” – L. Macbeth A2 S2 L64-5
o Translation: ‘My hands are bloody like yours, but I’d be ashamed if I was a coward like you’
o Technique: Contrasting Macbeth w/ L. Macbeth, Hand Imagery Pattern
• “T’is safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” – L. Macbeth A3 S2 L6-7
o Technique: Rhyming Couplet
• “Out damned spot! Out I say One, two: / why, then, t’is time to do’t.” –L. Macbeth A5 S1 L31-2
o Technique: L. Macbeth was very controlling in the previous acts – now she has lost all control
• “I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he/ cannot come out on's grave.” – L. Macbeth A5 S1 L61-2
• “What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, / to bed!” - L. Macbeth– A5 S1 L66-67
o Theme: Guilt
• “all the perfumes / of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” – A5 S1 L49-50
o Technique: Hand Imagery Pattern
o Theme: Guilt
• “this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,” – Malcolm A5 L9 S35
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