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Lady Macbeth - Quotes

Lady Macbeth is a pivotal character in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', showcasing immense ambition and influence over her husband, ultimately leading to her downfall due to guilt. Key quotes highlight her manipulation, the deterioration of her relationship with Macbeth, and her eventual descent into madness. The document provides insights into her character development and the thematic significance of her words throughout the play.

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Tom Broderick
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48 views3 pages

Lady Macbeth - Quotes

Lady Macbeth is a pivotal character in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', showcasing immense ambition and influence over her husband, ultimately leading to her downfall due to guilt. Key quotes highlight her manipulation, the deterioration of her relationship with Macbeth, and her eventual descent into madness. The document provides insights into her character development and the thematic significance of her words throughout the play.

Uploaded by

Tom Broderick
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lady Macbeth – Important Quotes

Although she actually appears in around a third of Macbeth, Lady


Macbeth’s influence looms large across the text.

She is shown as a strong and ruthless woman, with vaulting ambition and
courage, able to push her husband, “brave Macbeth” to do anything for her
(including murder Duncan), yet she ends the play, and her life, as a broken
figure, destroyed by the guilt she has fought so hard to suppress.

The character frequently appears in exam questions, often based on the


range of her influence upon Macbeth or the presentation of her as a
“fiendlike queen”.

As one of Shakespeare’s most powerful and active female characters


Macbeth’s “dear wife” provides rich material for essay responses.

Lady Macbeth quotes


“Come you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.”
(Act I, Scene V, lines 38-9)

Although oft-quoted, this can be used to kick-start an intriguing discussion


over the difference between Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters. Just as
they do in their Witches’ Prophecy, Lady Macbeth also calls on evil spirits –
it is only the matter of social class that separates them?

“And when goes hence?”


(Act I, Scene VI, line 58)

This subtle and apparently innocuous response to Macbeth’s statement


that Duncan is to stay in their castle is a signal to Macbeth that she is
thinking exactly the same thing that he is about the opportunity that this
visit brings him.
“Look like th’innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t”
(Act I, Scene VI, lines 64-5)

Another much used quotation, but less well-known is that it refers to a


medal James I had struck after the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot – the
head side features a flower and the underside a serpent. This adds more
depth to the contextual historical links the play has.

“What beast was’t then, That made you break this enterprise to me?”
(Act I, Scene VII, lines 35-6)

Here Lady Macbeth begins the fierce attack on Macbeth’s masculinity that
will batter him into changing his mind over his decision not to kill Duncan.

The key point in this quotation is that it marks the point at which she no
longer uses the intimate ‘thou’ with her husband, but the more distant ‘you’
– the first sign of a break in their relationship.

“Tis the eye of childhood, That fears a painted devil.”


(Act II, Scene II, lines 64-5).

After calling Macbeth a coward before the murder, she accuses him of
acting like a child after it.

“What’s to be done?”
(Act III, Scene II, line 45)

In contrast to her earlier scenes with Macbeth in which she dominated and
drove their conversation with long, complex speeches, in this scene she is
reduced to short sentences comprised of monosyllabic words. She is losing
control of him and he no longer confides in her.
“Yet who would have the thought the old man to have so much blood in
him?”
(Act V, Scene I, lines 35-7)

A rare hint of compassion from Lady Macbeth, an unconscious moment


that shows her guilt and regret at their actions and perhaps a subtle link
back to her statement in Act 2 that “Had he not resembled, My father as he
slept, I had done’t.” (Act II, Scene II, lines 14-5).

She speaks in prose in this scene, slipping from the iambic pentameter of
earlier in the play. Prose was traditionally used in the Elizabethan era to
express madness; the ordered structure of the iambic rhythm is broken
down by the troubled mind of the speaker.

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