Her conscience has been well and truly pricked, and she will die (offstage) shortly after this. Like Macbeth’s earlier complaint that all of Neptune’s oceans could not wash his bloody hand clean, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking mutterings betray her guilt: the blood on her hands may be metaphorical (or hallucinatory), but the guilt she feels is the same. Spoken by the Witches in Act 4, these incantations are among the most memorable lines in the whole play, with the air of magic and witchcraft contained within them (they are spoken by the Weird Sisters as they put various disgusting ingredients into their bubbling cauldron) embodying the general mood of the play. In this quotation from Act 3, Macbeth acknowledges that he has already committed so many vile deeds that he may as well continue: he is beyond redemption, and there’s no way back now. ![]() Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,Īs you may have gathered by now, many of the most memorable quotations from Macbeth involve blood. Spoken by Macbeth shortly after he has murdered Duncan in his bed, and his hands are still covered in the late king’s blood, this question is followed by an admission that nothing can wash the stain of this crime from his hand: ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood This speech also features the earliest known use of the word ‘assassination’. The words appear in act I scene VII of the play and see Macbeth, in a room in his castle, meditating on whether to go through with his (and his wife’s) plan to murder Duncan, the king, and seize the throne of Scotland for himself. So begins one of the most famous and revealing soliloquies spoken by Macbeth. ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well ![]() those qualities which make us part of humankind), drawing on early modern notions of milk-drinking as leading to softness and soppiness of temperament. In speaking these words, Lady Macbeth gave us a now ubiquitous phrase (‘milk of human kindness’, although Shakespeare may also have intended ‘milk of humankindness’, i.e. Spoken by Lady Macbeth to her husband, these lines reveal Lady Macbeth to be the more brutal and unfeeling of the pair, with no misgivings about murdering the king in order to achieve their aims. It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness’. ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me’ is often staged, and filmed, with the dagger suspended in mid-air. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. ![]() The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. So begins one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Macbeth – indeed, perhaps in all of Shakespeare.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |