Lady Macbeth Quotes
A03: Jacobean society – patriarchal – women should be obedient,
subservient and submissive to their husbands – Lady Macbeth subverts
our expectations.
AC Bradley calls her ‘the most awe-inspiring figure that Shakespeare
drew’.
Lady Macbeth is a femme fatale – seductive women who tempts men
and leads them to harm.
Macbeth calls her ‘my dearest partner in greatness’
He praises her wife
Shows their obsession with power
‘That I may pour my spirits in thine ear…with the valour of my tongue’
Metaphor – shows she’s manipulative
Indoctrinates her husband for the ‘golden round’
‘Tongue’ – controls Macbeth with her mouth
A03: femme fatale
Calls on evil spirits to consume her
A03: In the Jacobean times, anyone associated with witches were
burnt publically – Advocate of the Devil
‘Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/And dashed the brains
out, had I so sworn to you’
Highlights how utterly ruthless she is
Juxtaposition of innocent child to her violent promises highlights
this – makes her actions seem so extreme
Verb ‘smiling’ suggests infant is innocent, happy, unaware
Adjective ‘boneless’ suggests that the infant is harmless, weak,
vulnerable, dependent on mother
Violence emphasised by verbs ‘plucked’ and ‘dashed’
‘dashed’ is almost an example of onomatopoeia – creates a
painfully real image of the violence
‘plucked’ creates an image of a mother violently, painfully and
harshly grabbing the child
Shocking for both modern and Jacobean audiences
A03: In a Jacobean society, women were confined to the
domestic sphere. Lady Macbeth’s choice of imagine being a
A03: Jacobean society – patriarchal – women should be obedient,
subservient and submissive to their husbands – Lady Macbeth subverts
our expectations.
AC Bradley calls her ‘the most awe-inspiring figure that Shakespeare
drew’.
Lady Macbeth is a femme fatale – seductive women who tempts men
and leads them to harm.
Macbeth calls her ‘my dearest partner in greatness’
He praises her wife
Shows their obsession with power
‘That I may pour my spirits in thine ear…with the valour of my tongue’
Metaphor – shows she’s manipulative
Indoctrinates her husband for the ‘golden round’
‘Tongue’ – controls Macbeth with her mouth
A03: femme fatale
Calls on evil spirits to consume her
A03: In the Jacobean times, anyone associated with witches were
burnt publically – Advocate of the Devil
‘Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/And dashed the brains
out, had I so sworn to you’
Highlights how utterly ruthless she is
Juxtaposition of innocent child to her violent promises highlights
this – makes her actions seem so extreme
Verb ‘smiling’ suggests infant is innocent, happy, unaware
Adjective ‘boneless’ suggests that the infant is harmless, weak,
vulnerable, dependent on mother
Violence emphasised by verbs ‘plucked’ and ‘dashed’
‘dashed’ is almost an example of onomatopoeia – creates a
painfully real image of the violence
‘plucked’ creates an image of a mother violently, painfully and
harshly grabbing the child
Shocking for both modern and Jacobean audiences
A03: In a Jacobean society, women were confined to the
domestic sphere. Lady Macbeth’s choice of imagine being a
