Macbeth Lennox Quotes

The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatch’d to the woeful time. The obscure bird
Clamour’d the livelong night: some say the earth
Was feverous and did shake.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. The Scottish nobleman Lennox remarks to Macbeth how stormy it was the night before, with chimneys blown down, cries of death, terrifying voices prophesying fire and chaos, and the earth shaking. These supernatural occurrences and havoc in nature show how the natural order has been upset by the murder of the lawful King Duncan during the night. The earth and weather are reacting to an unnatural crime. This is an example of pathetic fallacy. We also see foreshadowing of the discovery and announcement of Duncan’s murder.

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.

MACBETH: The table’s full.
LENNOX: Here is a place reserved, sir.
…MACBETH: Which of you have done this?
LORDS: What, my good lord?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. The themes of appearance vs reality, madness, and the supernatural are shown here. Macbeth is the only one at the gathering of Scottish nobility to see the ghost of Banquo at the banquet. He becomes so insanely paranoid that he imagines seeing the ghost of the friend he had murdered. The other lords are confused by Macbeth’s behavior.

Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan
Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:
And the right-valiant Banquo walk’d too late;
Whom, you may say, if ‘t please you, Fleance kill’d,
For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.
Who cannot want the thought how monstrous
It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain
To kill their gracious father? damned fact!
How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight
In pious rage the two delinquents tear,
That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?
Was not that nobly done?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 6. Lennox’s speech is dripping with sarcasm and irony, as he expresses the growing hostility among the nobility towards Macbeth. He draws comparisons between Fleance fleeing after his father’s death and King Duncan’s sons fleeing after their father’s murder. He says that men must not be out walking too late. He sarcastically speaks of the loyalty Macbeth showed by killing two guards who were drunk and asleep, and how Macbeth was sorry for Duncan only after he was dead.

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.
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