Leaving Cert Macbeth: Essential Quotations

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Is this a dagger which I see before me?
(Imagery of violence)

There’s daggers in men’s smiles.
(Appearance vs reality, Imagery of violence)

The instruments of darkness tell us truths, 
Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s 
In deepest consequence.
(Appearance vs reality, Disturbing imagery)

Leaving Cert Macbeth quotes
Marcus Bale as Macbeth in Cyclone Rep‘s “The Macbeth Session” (Photo by Stas Bernasinski)


All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter
(Theme of power, Macbeth as a gullible man)

Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution…

Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.

(Imagery of violence – you can learn just part of this quotation)


Fair is foul, and foul is fair

(Appearance vs reality)

Eye of newt…
Liver of blaspheming Jew…
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips…

(Disturbing imagery)

Leaving Cert Macbeth quotes
A poor little newt

I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.

(Imagery of violence, Theme of ambition, Macbeth as a not so gullible man – this quotations shows that Macbeth makes his own decisions)

You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.

(Appearance vs reality, Disturbing imagery)

Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.
(Role of Lady Macbeth, Theme of ambition)

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

(Theme of ambition, Role of Lady Macbeth, Disturbing imagery, Macbeth as a gullible man – you can learn just part of this quotation)

unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty…
take my milk for gall

(Disturbing imagery, Role of Lady Macbeth)

Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

(Imagery of darkness, Disturbing imagery, Theme of ambition, Appearance vs reality – you can learn just part of this quotation)

look like th’ innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t

(Appearance vs reality, Macbeth as a gullible man, Role of Lady Macbeth)

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
(Appearance vs reality, Macbeth conflicted)

So clear in his great office

(Macbeth conflicted: he speaks of Duncan’s excellent kingship)

That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap

(Macbeth conflicted)

Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires

(Imagery of darkness, Macbeth conflicted – this is a point of no return)

For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind
(Macbeth conflicted)

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him

(Appearance vs reality, Macbeth as a gullible man, Theme of fate)

Vaulting ambition
(Theme of ambition)

Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs
(Theme of ambition – Macbeth hates the thought of Banquo’s descendant’s ruling)

When the battle’s lost and won
(Appearance vs reality, Theme of fate)

give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls

(Imagery of violence)

New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
(Theme of kingship, Divine right of kings)

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.

(Theme of fate – Macbeth reflects on everything he has done and how it has been futile)

In addition

Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

(Divine right of kings)

A falcon, towering in her pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawked and killed.
(Unnatural imagery, Pathetic fallacy)

If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence…
We’d jump the life to come.”
(Macbeth’s lack of morals)
this supernatural soliciting 
Cannot be ill, cannot be good.
(Macbeth’s deliberation over how to handle the Witches prophecy)

Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be feared.

(Macbeth admits his own lack of honour compared to Banquo)

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?

(Macbeth’s moral struggle and fear)
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going
(Macbeth speaks to the dagger)
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath 
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.
(Macbeth contemplating suicide)
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