this document contains key quotes for every theme and key AO2 knowledge you need for the GSCE exam it; it also states which character said it and for somewhat it shows
AO2 – symbols and motifs:
Key vocabulary:
Macbeth - Blood: violence and guilt – Macbeth
is seen as great for his - Tragic hero: a character
Key themes: bloodthirstiness on the battlefield, who is great and
but this then changes to symbolise respected but suffers a
- Ambition downfall because of a
his guilt
- Kingship vs tyranny - Sleep: innocence, purity, and peace flaw in their character or a
- Guilt of mind – Macbeth cannot sleep mistake they make
- Masculinity vs femininity after murdering Duncan - Hubris: excessive pride or
- Fate - birds: warnings, ‘the raven himself self-confidence
- Nature and unnatural is a hoarse that croaks the fatal - Hamartia: a fatal flaw
- Order vs chaos entrance of Duncan under my which leads to the
- Appearance vs reality battlements’ – comments on downfall of tragic hero
characters and events, ‘a falcon,
towering in her pride of place, was
by a mousing owl hawk’d and kill’d’
Ambition:
- Art not without ambition but without the illness that should attend it – LM act 1
- Yet do I fear thy nature it is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness – LM act 1
- I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent but only vaulting ambition – Macbeth act 1
- To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo stick deep – Macbeth act 3
- Are you a man? – LM act 3
- Upon my head they place a fruitless crown – Macbeth act 3
- Why do I vield to that suggestion. Whose horrid images doth unfix my hair. And make my
seated heart knock against my ribs, against the use of nature? – Macbeth act 1
- If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir – Macbeth act 1
Tyranny:
- I fear thou played most foully for it – Banquo act 3
- All my pretty ones? Did you say all? – Macduff act 4
- Not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damned in evils to top Macbeth –
Macduff act 4
- Thou shall not live – Macbeth when he kills Macduff’s family
- Thou liest, abhorred tyrant – Macbeth killing young Siward
- If thou speaks false, thou shall be hanged – Macbeth intimidating his subjects
Duplicity:
- Stars hide your fires, let light not see my black and deep desires – Macbeth act 1
- This castle hath a pleasant seat – Duncan act 1 – dramatic irony
- Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it – LM act 1 – foreshadows
corruption of nature
- Here lay Duncan his silver skin laced in his golden blood – Macbeth act 2
- Where we are, there’s daggers in these men’s smiles – Donalbain act 2
- The fiend that lies like truth – Macbeth ab the witches
- None of woman born shall harm Macbeth – a white lie told by the witches
- These juggling fiends no more believed – when Macbeth finds out the witches deceived him
about Macduff
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