Macbeth Blood Quotes

Out, damned spot! out, I say! – One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do ‘t. – Hell is murky! – Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. The first sentence is one of most recognizable spoken by Lady Macbeth. It has to be one of the most striking images of guilt in literature. A sleepwalking Lady Macbeth wishes to wash an imaginery spot of blood from her hands. Her sleepwalking is a manifestation of her guilty conscience over her role in her husband’s murders. Her descent into madness, as she relives feelings of overwhelming guilt, are evident. Lady Macbeth is seeing things that aren’t there. She has collapsed emotionally and mentally. When she speaks about hell being murky, this suggests that she believes the sins she has committed, including regicide, are enough to damn her to hell. Her isolation and loneliness is very apparent in this passage.

The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? –
What, will these hands ne’er be clean?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. A hallucinating Lady Macbeth sees the blood of the murders committed by her husband on her hands. The Thane of Fife’s wife is Lady Macduff, whom Macbeth had murdered along with her children. As Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, she frantically goes through the motion of washing her hands and wonders if they will ever be clean. This is ironic, given that after goading Macbeth to murder Duncan, she was telling her husband the very opposite in her bid to control him: “A little water clears us of this deed.” Now the once ruthless and power-hungry manipulator is so overwhelmed by guilt that her carefully-constructed mask has slipped, her control has broken down and her mental state has deteriorated into madness.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. This is spoken by a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth as she imagines her hands stained with the blood of her and Macbeth’s innocent victims. She believes that her hand is forever fouled by the stench of murder, which no amount of perfumes can erase. Her words reflect an unredeemable guilt, so great that she hallucinates and shows signs of complete mental breakdown. Despite Lady Macbeth’s earlier call to “unsex me” as she plotted the murder of Duncan, we are reminded that she is still a woman. This passage with its reference to perfumes reflects that and displays her femininity. Full of guilt and paranoia, she presents a very isolated figure here.

Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 2. Angus uses a vivid blood metaphor to describe how Macbeth’s secret murders are “sticking on his hands.” This recalls the murder of Duncan when Macbeth was shocked by the sight of the blood on his hands. Macbeth’s diminishing popularity is seen in how his soldiers don’t fight for him out of love, while every minute he faces a new revolt against his treachery and breach of faith.

Or so much as it needs,
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
Make we our march towards Birnam.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 2. Like his fellow Scottish lord Menteith, Lennox also sees Duncan’s son as a healer for his country. He speaks of their soldiers giving as much blood as is needed to make “the sovereign flower” grow. He uses plant metaphors to compare the rightful king Malcolm to a royal flower and the Macbeths to “weeds” that have to be drowned in the blood of the soldiers.

I have no words:
My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8. When Macduff confronts the murderer of his family Macbeth on the battlefield, he shows himself to be a man of action rather than words. We see an example of personification, as Macduff vows to let his sword do his speaking for him. Branding Macbeth the very worst kind of evil blood-soaked villain, the stage is set for the play’s final battle between good and evil.
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