Macbeth Act II Quotes

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1. I dreamt last night of three weird sisters:
To you they have showed some truth.
Speaker: Banquo
Audience: Macbeth
Meaning/Significance: Since Banquo is the only who knows of Macbeth’s desires, he is both beneficial to Macbeth as someone to talk to and dangerous to Macbeth because he knows that Macbeth was the one that killed Duncan. Macbeth is starting to become uneasy that Banquo knows that he is the assassin, and quickly replies to Banquo that he does not care what the witches think, even though he really does.
Location: Act II, Scene i, Line Numbers 20–21

2. Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Speaker: Macbeth
Audience: Himself
Meaning/Significance: This is another foreshadowing of Macbeth’s assassination of Duncan. Because the handle is pointed at Macbeth, it represents that he will do the killing. Macbeth has moral guilt over whether or not he should do it because he is imagining that he has a dagger and he is talking to it. Macbeth’s last sentence is a paradox, alluding to how the witches speak. The paradox suggests that while Macbeth hasn’t committed the crime yet, he still has in a way because he is going through with the conspiracy.
Location: Act II, Scene i, Line Numbers 33–35

3. I go and it is done: the bell invited me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.
Speaker: Macbeth
Audience: Himself
Meaning/Significance: It was customary for a bell to be rung at midnight outside a con-demned person’s cell on the night before the execution. This foreshadows Duncan’s assas-sination because Duncan is like a condemned person because the witches prophesized his death. Also, the bells symbolize Macbeth’s later death. He will be “condemned” because he will have killed Duncan. He further symbolizes Duncan in his last sentence because Duncan’s assassination can be interpreted as either beneficial or sinful.
Location: Act I, Scene i, Line Numbers 62–64

4. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;
What hath quenched them hath given me fire.
Speaker: Lady Macbeth
Audience: Herself
Meaning/Significance: Lady Macbeth is now completely mad from the conspiracy. She ex-presses her craziness in two paradoxical phrases. The first one is paradoxical because some-thing that makes someone drunk would never back someone bold. The second one is also because something that quenches someone cannot give someone fire. Her paradoxical style relates her to the witches.
Location: Act II, Scene ii, Line Numbers 1–2

5. Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep”…
Speaker: Macbeth
Audience: Lady Macbeth
Meaning/Significance: Macbeth is so jittery and paranoid after the murder that he begins to hear voices, showing the guilt he has. However, the lines will foreshadow how the charac-ters in the play will eventually find out that Macbeth was the one who killed Duncan. The last line can be interpreted as Macbeth kills people in their sleep, or Macbeth is a coward who chooses to kill people when they are defenseless, or Macbeth will be unable to go as-leep now that he has the guilt from the murder in him.
Location: Act II, Scene II, Line Numbers 34–35

6. Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
Speaker: Lady Macbeth
Audience: Macbeth
Meaning/Significance: Lady Macbeth officially now gets blood on her hands. She believes that the sleeping and the dead are defenseless, showing how she believes that they are in-capable of harming someone. However, the moral guilt from a dead person can be enough to mentally kill a person. Macbeth is in a way the painted devil because he appears to be tough but emotionally he is weak.
Location: Act II, Scene II, Line Numbers 51–54

7. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes
the desire, but takes away the performance...makes him stand to and not
stand to; in conclusion equivocates him in a sleep, and
giving him the lie, leaves him.
Speaker: Porter
Audience: Macduff and Lennox
Meaning/Significance: The porter speaks in paradoxical riddles, alluding to the witches and the acts of the previous scene. The porter’s humor provides comic relief from the murders in the previous scene. His paradoxes suggest confusion, mirroring Macbeth’s confusion of whether or not he did the right thing by killing Duncan. The porter does not speak in iambic pentameter like the noble characters, nor are his lines capitalized. This suggests that what he says is not important, but it foreshadows and shows dramatic irony.
Location: Act II, Scene iii, Line Numbers 29–31 35–37

8. …Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible…Some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.
Speaker: Lennox
Audience: Macbeth
Meaning/Significance: Lennox says that he heard disturbance last night that sound like the witches. The witches were most likely in a frenzy after Duncan’s death, and their screams and prophesies could be heard by other people. Also, the strange screams of death can mean the “screams” of Duncan’s death and the horror that follows a leader’s assassination. It is also dramatic irony because the audience knows that Macbeth killed Duncan, yet Len-nox says that he heard screams of death but does not know those were from Duncan.
Location: Act II, Scene iii, Line Numbers 57–58 61–62

9. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o’ th’ building.
Speaker: Macduff
Audience: Macbeth and Lennox
Meaning/Significance: Macduff finds the body of the king first besides Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Because he was the first to discover him, he is the leading suspect. However, this foreshadows Macduff’s later killing of Macbeth to revenge Duncan. The similarity between Macduff and Macbeth’s names shows how alike and unalike they really are. Macbeth killed Duncan to become King of Scotland, whereas Macduff killed Macbeth to revenge the late king. However, they both killed another person. The use of the word “life” is used to de-scribe both the atmosphere of the gathering and how Duncan is now dead.
Location: Act II, Scene iii, Line Numbers 67–70

10. Our separate fortune
Shall keep us both the safer. Where we are
There’s daggers in men’s smiles; the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.
Speaker: Donalbain
Audience: Malcolm
Meaning/Significance: Rather than become king because he is the heir, Malcolm chooses to flee along with his brother. He is not as assertive as a king should be, foreshadowing the rise of someone else as king. Donalbain, like other characters suspects that things are not right in the castle and believes that future killings may occur. His suspicions are right; if they were to stay then Malcolm would be assassinated next. Donalbain’s repetition of “blood” suggests that there will be more killings later on.
Location: Act II, Scene iii, Line Numbers 139–142

11. Whence is that knocking?
How is ‘t with me, when every noise appalls me?
What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes!
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No: this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Speaker: Macbeth
Audience: Himself
Meaning/Significance: A simple knock is enough to cause a panic attack to Macbeth. Mac-beth wishes to gouge his eyes out because he thinks he will be revealed. Because Macbeth has killed an innocent man, he feels that he cannot pray to the Christian God anymore, so he chooses to pray to the pagan Neptune. Neptune was the god of water in Rome, and Macbeth thinks that not even all of his water can wash away the crime he has done. Mac-beth states that his hands have turned from green to red, meaning that he has changed from being envious of Duncan’s title to now having bloody hands that can never be washed clean.
Location: Act II, Scene iii, Line Numbers 56–62

12. O gentle lady,
‘Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:
The repetition, in a woman’s ear,
Would murder as it fell.
Speaker: Macduff
Audience: Lady Macbeth
Meaning/Significance: This is dramatic irony because the audience knows that Lady Mac-beth is capable of hearing and doing evil acts and repeating. The irony highlights how Lady Macbeth uses this double standard. Shakespeare purposefully has the men in the play think little of Lady Macbeth to accentuate her characteristics. Macduff says that the word “mur-der” itself is able to scare a woman very much; however, Lady Macbeth is accustomed to murder, as she was the leader in the conspiracy.
Location: Act II, Scene iii, Line Numbers 84–87