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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Macbeth Ross Quotes

Every one did bear
Thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3. Duncan’s messenger and cousin Ross tells Macbeth how pleased the King is with his patriotic defense of Scotland against the rebellion. His praise will later turn out to be ironic when Macbeth betrays and murders Duncan and Scotland needs to be defended against Macbeth.

And, for an earnest of a greater honour,
He bade me, from him, call thee thane of Cawdor:
In which addition, hail, most worthy thane!
For it is thine.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3. Ross has been sent by King Duncan to award Macbeth the title Thane of Cawdor as a reward for his defense of Scotland in war.

Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threaten his bloody stage.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 4. Ross uses a theatrical metaphor to describe how the disapproving heavens and God look down angrily at man’s “bloody stage” following Duncan’s murder.

By the clock, ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is ‘t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 4. Scottish nobleman Ross speaks to the Old Man about the unnatural events that occurred at the time of King Duncan’s murder. They include darkness strangling the light of the sun during the daytime. This symbolizes the evil part of human nature overpowering the good side. Personification and metaphor are used effectively to illustrate how the skies reflect the upset in the natural order caused by the King’s murder.

Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up
Thine own life’s means!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 4. Ross comments on the wasteful ambition that would cause sons to kill the father who gave them life. He is talking about Duncan’s sons’ supposed involvement in their father’s murder. He is right about ambition being the cause of Duncan’s murder, but it was Macbeth’s ambition and not that of Malcolm and Donalbain.

He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows
The fits o’ the season.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 2. Ross defends Macduff’s character against his wife’s criticism of him for being cowardly and a traitor for quitting Scotland and his family. In contrast to his wife, he sees Macduff as a noble and wise figure who knows best how to act in the current troubled political climate. The honorable Macduff is the antithesis to everything the corrupt and evil Macbeth is.

But cruel are the times, when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 2. Ross speaks of how under Macbeth’s tyranny, people are denounced as traitors and they don’t even know why. The final line of the passage is a metaphor for the uncertainty and brutality Macbeth’s reign has brought to Scotland. Comparing the havoc and turmoil Scotland is suffering to a violent sea is also an example of pathetic fallacy.

Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstacy.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. When Ross meets up with Macduff in England, Macduff asks how things are going in Scotland. Ross offers this grim report on the state of affairs back home under Macbeth’s rule. Ross can no longer think of Scotland as his motherland, but his grave. He uses personification to convey how his suffering country, afraid to know itself, has been turned from a joyful place of smiles into one of “groans and shrieks.”

The dead man’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Ross says that Macbeth has turned Scotland into a country of death. When the funeral bells sounds, people no longer ask who died, and men’s lives are cut shorter than the time it takes for the flowers in their caps to wither.

Would I could answer
This comfort with the like! But I have words
That would be howl’d out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not latch them.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Ross is understandibly hesitant to give Macduff the dreadful news about the murder of his family. He has words that should be howled out into the desert air where nobody could hear them, he says.

Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
That ever yet they heard.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Ross asks Macduff for forgiveness for the terrible news he is about to deliver: the slaughter of Macduff’s family. He asks Macduff not to despise him for being the messenger. Personification of ears is used to good effect here.

Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter’d: to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer,
To add the death of you.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Ross has the unenviable task of delivering the news to Macduff about the slaughter of his family in Scotland. At first he is unable to do so, twice lying that they are well when Macduff asks about them. Here he eventually tells Macduff that his wife and babies were murdered in their home. In this passage deer is a metaphor for Macduff’s family.

MACDUFF: My children too?
ROSS: Wife, children, servants, all
That could be found.
MACDUFF: And I must be from thence!
My wife kill’d too?
ROSS: I have said.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Macduff is in a state of absolute shock and disbelief at the news that his family has been murdered. He repeatedly asks Ross if it is true, despite having been told already by Ross.

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:
He only lived but till he was a man;
But like a man he died.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8. Ross delivers the news of Young Siward’s death to his father Siward. He lived long enough to become a man, he says, and died nobly as a man would die. A metaphor describes Young Siward is paying “a soldier’s debt.”