Appearance vs. Reality Theme
Act I
Witches: "Fair is foul, and fair is
foul," (I, I, 10)
Comment: This introduces the idea of
deceptiveness of appearances throughout the whole play.
King Duncan: "What [the Thane of Cawdor]
hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won." (I, II, 79)
Comment: King Duncan calls Macbeth
noble even though later he will become Duncan's murderer.
Macbeth: "So foul and fair a day I have not
seen." (I, III, 38)
Comment: Macbeth speaks of the weather
being foul and of winning the battles being fair.
Macbeth: "And nothing is but what is
not." (I, III, 155)
Comment: Macbeth has been thinking
about murdering the king and the picture of himself as the
murderer is so vivid that he is not capable of seeing anything
around him.
Macbeth: "The service and the loyalty in
doing it pays itself." (I, IV, 25-26)
Comment: Macbeth says that serving King
Duncan is its own reward, but he has already begun thinking about
murdering the king.
Lady Macbeth: "Look like the innocent
flower but be the serpent under't." (I, V, 76-78)
Comment: Lady Macbeth is instructing
Macbeth to look like he is innocent but underneath to be plotting
to kill King Duncan.
Lady Macbeth: "All our service, in every
point twice done and then done double, were poor and single
business to contend against those honors deep and broad,
wherewith Your Majesty loads our house." (I, VI, 18-22)
Comment: Lady Macbeth tells King Duncan
that doing all the past service for him twice does not compare
with the honor the he brings them with his visit, while in the
meantime, in her thought, she plans to murder him.
King Duncan: "And [Macbeth's] great love
(sharp as his spur) hath helped him to his home before us."
(I, VI, 28-30)
Comment: The king thinks that Macbeth's
love for his king and wife helped him speed home and arrive there
before the king, but the real reason he got there so quickly was
to talk to his wife about murdering King Duncan.
Macbeth: "False face must hide what the
false heart doth know." (I, VII, 95-96)
Comment: Macbeth's appearance must hide
that he will kill King Duncan.
Act II
Macbeth: "Being unprepared, / Our will became the
servant to defect, / Which else should free have wrought."
(II, I, 21-23)
Comment: Macbeth, with apparent modesty, claims to
have wanted to serve the king to his fullest. He says that a lack
of time did not allow him or lady Macbeth serve the King to their
desire. This is ironic Because Macbeth and Lady Macbeth did have
time to thoroughly think and prepare a plan to kill Duncan.
Macbeth: "... and withered murder, / Alarumed by
his sentinel, the wolf, / Whose howl's his watch, thus with his
stealthy pace, / With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his /
design" (I, I, 64-68)
Comment: In his imagination, Macbeth sees Murder as
a withered man who is called to action by his sentinel, the wolf.
In reference to ACT 1 sc. 7 lines 5 one would think of Macbeth as
the sentinel who would keep an eye out for danger, "should
against his murderer shut the door," and call out a warning
or hinder Duncan from any danger. However, here murderer's
sentinel or Macbeth bears "the knife" himself keeping
an eye out for the opportunity to kill Duncan like the murderous
rapist Tarquin; almost like a ghost.
Lady Macbeth:
"Go carry them and smear the sleepy grooms with blood"
(II, II, 63-64)
"If he do bleed, / I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
/ For it must seem their guilt." (II, II, 71-73)
Comment: Lady Macbeth wants Duncan's death to
appear to have been occasioned by the guards. She tells Macbeth
that she will stain the faces of the guards with Duncan's blood
to make them seem guilty because Macbeth will not do it.
Macbeth:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward
my hand?" (II, I, 44-45)
"I have thee not and yet I see thee still / Art thou not
fatal vision, sensible / To feelings as to sight?" (II, I,
47-49)
"A dagger of the mind, a false creation" (II, I, 50)
"I see thee yet, in form as palpable / As this which now I
draw." (II, I, 52-53)
"Mine eyes are made the fools o'the'other senses" (II,
I, 56)
"I see thee still, / And, on thy blade on dudgeon, gouts of
blood, / Which was not so before." (II, I, 57-59)
Comment: This parts of the soliloquy show how
Macbeth is so obsessed by thoughts of the murder that he starts
to hallucinate. He reaches for his imaginary dagger but of course
he can't grasp it; it is a "false creation." Like that
he realizes that he is seeing the dagger that he plans to use to
kill Duncan. This is the dagger that leads him toward King
Duncan's door and the dagger upon which appear thick drops of
blood. The drops of blood foreshadow Duncan's death.
Macbeth: "Who could refrain / That had a heart of
love, and in that heart / Courage to make's love known?"
(II, III, 135-137)
Comment: Macbeth wants to make it seem as if he was
very loyal to Duncan when Macduff asks him why he killed the
guards. He wants to depict himself as a man of love and courage
so that they will not suspect that he killed Duncan.
Act III
Macbeth:
"The table's full." (III, IV, 54)
"Which of you have done this?"
(III, IV, 59)
"Thou canst not say I did it: never
shake"/"Thy Glory locks at me." (III, IV, 61-62)
Comment: Macbeth sees the
ghost of Banquo sitting in his seat at the banquet that he was
supposed to attend. Banquo was just killed on the other scene,
and his ghost can only be scene by Macbeth. Others seem confused
about why he can't find his seat at the banquet and to why he is
saying the things hat he is saying.
Macbeth: "If I stand here, I
saw him." (III, IV, 89)
Comment: Macbeth is seeing
the ghost of Banquo appear and disappear, and nobody else can see
it. The ghost is pricking on Macbeth's mind, to drive him insane.
Though the ghost isn't there, he still insists that it was.
Macbeth: "Avaunt, and quit
my sight! let the earth hide thee!" (III, IV, 113)
Comment: The ghost of
Banquo reappears, and Macbeth announces his appearance out load,
to everybody else in the room. Macbeth is acting scared and
frightened at an empty seat from the point of view of the people
at the banquet.
Act IV
Second Apparition: " None of woman born
shall harm Macbeth" (IV, I, 91-92)
Comment: Macbeth takes this to mean no
one can kill him because everyone is born of women, but later we
find out Macduff is an exception to this.
Macbeth: "Then live, Macduff: what need I
fear of thee? / But yet I'll make assurance double sure, and take
a bond of fate. Thou shalt not live;" (IV, I, 93-95)
Comment: Macbeth has learned Macduff
cannot harm him but decides to kill him anyway to make sure he is
not harmed.
Third Apparition: "Macbeth shall never
vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood to Dunsinane Hill / Shall
come against him." (I, I, 105-107)
Comment: Macbeth will not be defeated
until Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane Hill , and Macbeth believes
this will never happen, but later Malcolm uses the branches of
the trees to conceal his army's numbers from Macbeth's spies.
Macbeth: "Infected be the air whereon they
ride, / And damned all those that trust them!" (IV, I,
157-159)
Comment: Macbeth believes what the
witches have told him but at this point does not believe he
himself is damned.
Lady Macduff: "When our actions do not, /
Our fears do make us traitors." (IV, II, 4-5)
Comment: Lady Macduff comments on the
fact that although her husband is not a traitor his fears may
make him act like a person who is a traitor.
Lady Macduff: "Fathered he is and yet he is
fatherless" (IV, II, 31)
Comment: Lady Macduff speaks of her
son, he does have a father but his father is not there.
Sirrah: "The liars and swearers are fools ;
for there / are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest / Men
and hang up them." (IV, II, 62-64)
Comment: Sirrah says that traitors
which lie and swear are fools because there are many more of them
than there are honest men and they could easily beat the honest
men and hang them up.
Lady Macduff: "I am in this earthly world,
where to do harm / Is often laudable, to do good sometime /
Accounted dangerous folly." (IV, II, 83-85)
Comment: Lady Macduff says that in this
world it is acceptable to be evil, and if you do good you are
considered a traitor.
Malcolm: "But I have none. The
king-becoming graces, / As justice, verity, temp'rance,
stableness, / Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, / Devotion,
patience, courage, fortitude, / I have no relish of them"
(IV, III, 107-111)
Comment: Malcolm says he does not have
any of the virtues that a king should have but he is only saying
this to test Macduff's loyalty.
Act V
Gentlewoman: "It is an accustomed action
with her to / seem thus washing her hands. I have known her /
continue in this a quarter of an hour." (V, I, 30-32)
Comment: To the gentlewoman it appears
as if Lady Macbeth's continuous action of washing her hands is a
custom. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, is trying to wash
Duncan's blood off of her hands.
Macbeth: "And be these juggling fiends
no more believed that palter with us in a double sense, that keep
the word of promise in our ear and brake it to our hope."
(V, VII, 23-25)
Comment: Macbeth realizes that the
witches lead him on to do evil by tempting him with false
promises
Malcolm: "Let every soldier hew him down
a bough / And hear't before him: thereby shall we shadow / The
numbers of our host and make discovery" (V, IV, 6-8)
Comment: Malcolm instructs his army men
to cut down some branches for each of them and to cover
themselves with them. That way they could hide themselves from
the view of Macbeth's troops and thus conceal the size of
Malcolm's army, making the appearance of a moving grove marching
towards Dunsinane. Remember the witches prophesy, "Fear not
till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane". Well, here is some
Birnam "wood" coming to Dunsinane.
Malcolm: "Now, near enough: Your leafy
screens throw down / And show like those you are" (V, VI,
1-2)
Comment: Malcolm's army reveals it's
self for what it really is, not a moving grove but an invading
army. Macbeth did have to fear the grove, but not for the grove
it's self but for what the grove hid from Macbeth's view.
Malcolm's army.
