Macbeth Good vs Evil Quotes

What you have spoke, it may be so perchance.
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
Was once thought honest: you have loved him well;
He hath not touch’d you yet. I am young; but something
You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom
To offer up a weak poor innocent lamb
To appease an angry god.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Malcolm is not yet sure if he can trust Macduff or count on his loyalty. Here he tells him that he was once a Macbeth loyalist and he might sacrifice Malcolm to appease Macbeth. Using metaphors, Malcolm compares himself to an “innocent lamb,” and Macbeth to an “angry god.” At this point Malcolm and his brother Donalbain are in exile in England and Ireland, because they have been blamed on their father Duncan’s murder. In this passage Macbeth’s evil is emphasized, being described as a tyrant whose “name blisters our tongues.”
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell - Malcolm in Macbeth

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Malcolm isn’t yet ready to place his complete trust in Macduff. Macduff appears to be good, he concedes, but everything evil tries to wear the disguise of good. However, Malcolm says that looking good doesn’t mean you are evil, because good people also look good. The “brightest” is a metaphor for Lucifer, the once brightest angel who rebelled against God and became the Devil. Throughout this scene Malcolm test Macduff’s loyalty and intentions.

It is myself I mean: in whom I know
All the particulars of vice so grafted
That, when they shall be open’d, black Macbeth
Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state
Esteem him as a lamb, being compared
With my confineless harms.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Malcolm plays a little game of deception with Macduff as a test of his loyalty and to ensure that he is not working with Macbeth. So Malcolm lies, saying he himself is so full of vices that the “black Macbeth” would seem as white as snow, an example of simile. Using another simile, Malcolm says that poor Scotland would think of Macbeth as a lamb, in comparison to him and his limitless wickedness.

Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure
The taints and blames I laid upon myself,
For strangers to my nature. I am yet
Unknown to woman, never was forsworn,
Scarcely have coveted what was mine own,
At no time broke my faith, would not betray
The devil to his fellow and delight
No less in truth than life.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Earlier in the scene Malcolm listed out the numerous vices he claimed to have, in order to test Macduff’s loyalty. Here he reveals the truth, that he is none of the despicable and sinful things he said earlier. Instead of being a womanizer he is a virgin, he has never broken a vow, and far from coveting other people’s possessions he barely wants his own. Malcolm is an innocent compared to the evil Macbeth.

Come, go we to the king; our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave; Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may:
The night is long that never finds the day.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Malcolm speaks the last lines of the play’s longest scene. The only scene outside Scotland, it takes place before the King’s palace, England. Malcolm tells Macduff that he wants to go back to Scotland and seize the crown from Macbeth. Backed by an army of ten thousand soldiers, Malcolm says that the time is right with God and right on their side – “the powers above put on their instruments.” In the last line, he expresses the hope that the light of day (goodness) will soon put an end to Macbeth’s reign of darkness (evil).

She has light by her continually; ’tis her command.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. In this scene Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking and carrying a candle. A woman explains to the doctor that Lady Macbeth is so afraid of the dark she keeps a lighted candle with her all the time. This symbolizes Lady Macbeth’s fear of evil. She needs the light, a symbol of goodness, to protect her from it. Her sleepwalking is also a sign of the guilt she feels over the murders carried out by her husband.

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.

To bed, to bed! there’s knocking at the gate: come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. – To bed, to bed, to bed!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. In this passage from Lady Macbeth’s final scene before she takes her own life, many important themes are shown. Among them guilt, madness, good vs evil, isolation and appearance vs reality. Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and hears an imaginery knocking at the gate and rushes off to bed. This recalls the actual knocking at Macbeth’s castle by Macduff after Duncan was murdered by Macbeth. When she speaks the line, “give me your hand,” it is her husband’s hand she is referring to. But he is not there. The imagined image of Macbeth’s hand and her words convey an air of longing, desperation and isolation. Her statement “What’s done cannot be undone” actually reverses her earlier one in Act 3, “what’s done is done.” When she made that last comment to Macbeth the hard-hearted Lady Macbeth was suggesting that Duncan’s murder was part of the past and was of no further concern. But now the past has caught up with her and it haunts her present. At this stage Lady Macbeth has gone mad and her conscience is overwhelmed by the sins of her past. These are Lady Macbeth’s final words in the play.

Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets;
More needs she the divine than the physician.
God, god forgive us all!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. The Doctor has witnessed the disturbing scene of a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth ranting and raving about invisible bloodstains she cannot wash from her hands. Realizing the shocking truth of what she has disclosed, he speaks of the evil rumors going around. He then makes the knowing comment that unnatural actions lead to unnatural troubles. People with guilty consciences will confess their secrets to their pillows, he says. The Doctor, clearly in no doubt about the meaning of what Lady Macbeth has said, believes that she is more in need of a priest than a doctor. Only God can help her now, he feels, as he begs the heavens for forgiveness.

I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in ‘t: I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5. Macbeth has committed such horrendous slaughter and vile crimes that he has become desensitized to evil. After women’s screams are heard from within the castle to signal Lady Macbeth’s suicide, he shows no reaction or emotion. Using a dining metaphor, he admits that he has feasted on so much horror that his conscience and emotions no longer function. Another metaphor “taste of fears” likens fear to an edible object. At this point Macbeth has become completely dehumanized.

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.

Despair thy charm,
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripp’d.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8. In this final scene, we learn from Macduff that the Witches’ prophecy that no one born of woman could hurt Macbeth was correct. Macduff was born through Caesarean section and so is a threat to the usurper king. Macbeth’s fate is sealed. Macduff uses verbal irony as he mockingly refers to the Witches that Macbeth has served as “angels.”

What’s more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
We will perform in measure, time and place.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8. Malcolm in his final speech at the end of the play ushers in the beginning of a new era after the fall of Macbeth. The rightful heir to the throne promises to call home all those who fled Macbeth’s tyranny. He also commits to finding those cruel attendants who helped the “butcher” Macbeth and his “fiend-like” queen. Good has triumphed over evil. In “fled the snares of watchful tyranny” we see an example of metaphor (“snares”) and personification (“watchful tyranny”)
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