Macbeth Blood Quotes

The merciless Macdonwald –
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him…
For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name!
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 2. The Captain tells King Duncan how the brave Macbeth led the Scots to victory against the King of Norway and executed the traitorous rebel Macdonwald. We see how Macbeth had the ability to defy fate and fortune with his sword. The quote shows that he is loyal to the King. We also witness his ruthlessness and propensity for gruesome violence. The battle “hero” is introduced as a bloodthirsty killer, who slices his opponent open from naval to jaw. This foreshadows Macbeth being a killer during the rest of the play. The passage uses metaphorical language to emphasize Macbeth’s heroic and bloody role in the battle – his sword “smoked with bloody execution.” We see simile and personification when Macbeth is likened to “valour’s minion” – the servant of courage. Macbeth is initially presented as a patriot in the play.

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5. This soliloquy spoken by Lady Macbeth after reading her husband’s letter is one of the most famous quotes in the play. The passage is an elaborate extended metaphor. Lady Macbeth appeals to the evil spirits from hell to fill her with cruelty and to metaphorically thicken her blood. She wants to block the flow of natural feelings of conscience and remorse, so that she can carry out the unthinkable deed of murdering the king. Calling on the spirits to strip her of her femininity and compassion, she desires to be transformed into the stereotypical ruthless male. Her ambition for power has set her on a course for evil.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7. In Macbeth’s second soliloquy he is plagued with self-doubt over whether he should kill King Duncan and the consequences for him if he does. If he carries out the assassination, he believes that it must be done quickly. But he fears the retribution he will face, both in this world and the next. The killing might not bring an end to the whole affair, his violent deed could return to haunt him and trigger a cycle of violence that could destroy him. Using the metaphor of a “poisoned chalice,” Macbeth foresees that justice could ensure that he drink from the same cup that he himself poisoned. In other words he may end up dead like Duncan. The dark imagery of “bloody instructions” and “poisoned chalice” suggests that Macbeth knows the King’s murder would unleash a dark and evil period in Scotland. And it does. The passage foreshadows that and Macbeth’s eventual death. An ocean metaphor is used to compare time to a bank or shoal (a shallow part of the ocean). Shakespeare uses another metaphor to compare the murder to bloody instructions being taught.

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. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal;
For it must seem their guilt.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. Lady Macbeth expresses disgust at Macbeth’s cowardice for failing to finish the job after murdering Duncan. She grabs the daggers used in the killing to place them with the sleeping guards, in order to frame them for the crime, a task she expected her husband to carry out. In a simile she compares the dead and sleeping to pictures. She accuses Macbeth of behaving like a child. Using a metaphor she says that she will gild the grooms’ faces with blood, so that they will appear guilty of the murder. While Macbeth’s conscience is troubled over the terrible thing that they have done, his wife’s is certainly not. Lady Macbeth is very dominating and manipulative in this scene, and basically wearing the pants in the marriage.

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 in incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. While Shakespeare decided against showing King Duncan being murdered in his bed, he wanted to convey the full horror of this terrible deed. He does this by showing Macbeth with bloody hands. A guilt-racked Macbeth looks down at his murderous hands and laments that all the waters in the ocean could not wash the blood away. His hands would turn the seas crimson, he says, recognizing how his spirit has been corrupted. This deep sense of guilt will follow Macbeth for the rest of the play.

My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. The audience doesn’t see the murder of King Duncan on stage, but Shakespeare employs dramatic genius to convey the horror of the murder to them. He cleverly does this through the use of blood. First Macbeth’s hands are covered in blood. In this passage Lady Macbeth’s are also smeared with it, having covered the faces of Duncan’s servants with blood to make them appear guilty. In contrast to her husband, she shows no remorse or guilt over the spilling of Duncan’s blood. Using a metaphor, she tells Macbeth that she would be ashamed to have a heart as pure as his.

There’s nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. We see dramatic irony as Macbeth puts on a pretence to his audience of mourning for Duncan, the King he has just murdered. Using metaphors, he describes how life is meaningless and “but toys,” and how the “wine of life” is poured away with only the dregs remaining. The last two lines are a metaphor for blood. There is also a strong thread of guilt in Macbeth’s words, as if he knows he has lost his own soul and his life is now meaningless.

Those of his chamber, as it seem’d, had done ‘t:
Their hands and faces were an badged with blood;
So were their daggers, which unwiped we found
Upon their pillows:
They stared, and were distracted; no man’s life
Was to be trusted with them.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. Lennox reveals how it looks as if Duncan’s guards were not trustworthy and killed him. They were covered with blood and the daggers were on their pillows. Just like Lady Macbeth meticulously planned it. How appearances can be deceptive.

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make ‘s love known?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. In his response to Macduff’s question why he killed Duncan’s guards, Macbeth betrays his capacity for deception, evil and the hunger for power. He weaves a fictitious tale of being so overcome by the sight of the murdered Duncan, that he could not restrain himself from slaying the King’s guilty guards. But we, and the audience, know that he was simply covering his tracks to ensure his own path to the throne. The arrogant and overweeningly ambitious Macbeth could not help but use metaphor and simile in his description of the dead Duncan: “His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature.”

We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow’d
In England and in Ireland, not confessing
Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers
With strange invention.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1. Macbeth, to divert suspicion from himself, accuses the “bloody cousins” Malcolm and Donalbain of patricide – the murder of their father King Duncan. Speaking to Banquo, he says that the brothers have been making up lies – “strange invention” – to deceive their hosts. However, the audience knows that it is Macbeth who is the deceiver, one of the play’s many examples of dramatic irony.

Thou canst not say I did it; never shake
Thy gory locks at me.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. A horrified and unnerved Macbeth speaks to the ghost of Banquo that he sees sitting in his seat at the coronation banquet. The bloody apparition, visible to no one else, is a hallucination of Macbeth’s mind and a sign of his guilt and growing mental instability brought on by the murders of Duncan and Banquo. He tells the ghost that no one can say he murdered Banquo. He seems to deceive himself into believing that since he didn’t carry out the deed but only ordered it he is somehow innocent. The ghost’s “gory locks” is a reference to the twenty gashes to Banquo’s head delivered by his murderer. Macbeth is losing his mind at this point.

Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ the olden time,
Ere human statute purged the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d
Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. Macbeth observes that from ancient times blood has been spilled and people have committed murder, despite human laws against it. But now the dead won’t stay dead, he says. An increasingly paranoid Macbeth believes that Banquo has risen from the dead, despite twenty gashes to the head, and has taken his seat at the banquet. The passage speaks to Macbeth’s guilt and deteriorating mental state.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. When Banquo’s ghost re-appears at the feast at Macbeth’s home, a paranoid Macbeth orders him to go away. He is trying to reassure himself that Banquo cannot be alive. Macbeth’s feeling of guilt at ordering his friend’s murder is so overwhelming that he cannot distinguish between reality and imagination, which has conjured up the ghost. A tormented Macbeth is losing his grip on sanity.

It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. Macbeth recalls an old saying about the murdered dead having their revenge. Haunted by guilt, he fears that his shedding of Banquo’s blood will lead to his own death. His murder of his friend may be discovered by supernatural means, he believes. Macbeth is aware that stones have moved, trees have spoken, birds have told secrets. All of these things have identified murderers like Macbeth – “the secret’st man of blood.” This is foreshadowing of Macbeth’s own violent death.

I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. Macbeth realizes that he has gone so far on the path of evil, that there is now no returning from it. He has been involved in so much murder that it is just as easy to carry on killing as to turn back. He has now become a tyrant. He compares his path to power to a river of blood that he wading through. This metaphor symbolizes Macbeth’s guilt.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1. The second apparition summoned by the Witches is that of a bloody child, urging him to be violent (“bloody”), courageous and determined. The apparition prophesies that no man born naturally of woman will be able to hurt Macbeth. This provides him with a false sense of security regarding any threat from Macduff. However, we later learn that Macduff was born through a C-section – “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.” So this passage turns out to be ironic, since Macduff is fated to be Macbeth’s eventual nemesis. The passage shows the deceptiveness of the Witches. Macbeth’s death is foreshadowed here.
    • 1
    • 2
Close