symbols and context
making the green one red
nature versus supernatural
the south entry
candles
stars
sleep
blood
daggers
pathetic fallacy (weather)
omens
prophecies
the great chain of being
gunpowder plot
power and ambition
Two truths are told, as happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme.
Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe, top full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse…
I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition…
‘Gainst nature still. Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up thine own life’s means!
We will proceed no further in this business.
I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more, is none.
When you durst do it, then you were a man…
appearance and reality
Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.
There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.
Where we are, there’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, the nearer bloody.
Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.
The witches like to deceive and equivocate.
violence and tyranny
Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.
Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love.
Hang those that talk of fear.
supernatural and nature and religion
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence.
This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good.
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep.
I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”?
Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle towards my hand?
guilt and regret
O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
Macbeth shall sleep no more.
We will proceed no further in this business.
Out, damned spot. Out, I say! - One, two - why then, ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky.
What a sigh is there. The heart is solely charged… This disease is beyond my practice.
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.
Naught’s had, all’s spent where our desire is got without content.