Donalbain Quotes

What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. After their father Duncan’s murder, Donalbain suggests to his brother Malcolm that it is no time for talking as they are both in danger. Using a metaphor, he describes how their fate in hidden in a drill hole ready to rush out and seize them. Fearing for their lives the brothers escape that “fate” and flee Scotland – Malcolm to England and Donalbain to Ireland.

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.
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