Macbeth Metaphors and Similes Quotes

Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal;
For it must seem their guilt.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. Lady Macbeth expresses disgust at Macbeth’s cowardice for failing to finish the job after murdering Duncan. She grabs the daggers used in the killing to place them with the sleeping guards, in order to frame them for the crime, a task she expected her husband to carry out. In a simile she compares the dead and sleeping to pictures. She accuses Macbeth of behaving like a child. Using a metaphor she says that she will gild the grooms’ faces with blood, so that they will appear guilty of the murder. While Macbeth’s conscience is troubled over the terrible thing that they have done, his wife’s is certainly not. Lady Macbeth is very dominating and manipulative in this scene, and basically wearing the pants in the marriage.

My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. The audience doesn’t see the murder of King Duncan on stage, but Shakespeare employs dramatic genius to convey the horror of the murder to them. He cleverly does this through the use of blood. First Macbeth’s hands are covered in blood. In this passage Lady Macbeth’s are also smeared with it, having covered the faces of Duncan’s servants with blood to make them appear guilty. In contrast to her husband, she shows no remorse or guilt over the spilling of Duncan’s blood. Using a metaphor, she tells Macbeth that she would be ashamed to have a heart as pure as his.

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o’ the building!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. A shocked and emotional Macduff, after discovering the body of the murdered Duncan, announces that the worst thing imaginable has happened. In his speech we get a wonderful biblical metaphor comparing Duncan’s body to a temple anointed by God, which has been broken open and its contents stolen. The word confusion is personified in the passage to emphasize the disorder and bewilderment immediately caused by this unnatural crime.

There’s nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. We see dramatic irony as Macbeth puts on a pretence to his audience of mourning for Duncan, the King he has just murdered. Using metaphors, he describes how life is meaningless and “but toys,” and how the “wine of life” is poured away with only the dregs remaining. The last two lines are a metaphor for blood. There is also a strong thread of guilt in Macbeth’s words, as if he knows he has lost his own soul and his life is now meaningless.

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make ‘s love known?

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3. In his response to Macduff’s question why he killed Duncan’s guards, Macbeth betrays his capacity for deception, evil and the hunger for power. He weaves a fictitious tale of being so overcome by the sight of the murdered Duncan, that he could not restrain himself from slaying the King’s guilty guards. But we, and the audience, know that he was simply covering his tracks to ensure his own path to the throne. The arrogant and overweeningly ambitious Macbeth could not help but use metaphor and simile in his description of the dead Duncan: “His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature.”

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.

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.

They hail’d him father to a line of kings:
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1. Macbeth is now king but he doesn’t feel secure and is afraid of Banquo, as is evident in his soliloquy. In a metaphor, Macbeth says that the Witches gave him a “barren sceptre” with their prophecy that he would be king. He describes the sceptre as barren, because the witches also said that the throne would pass to Banquo’s descendants. Macbeth is angry and his ambition is frustrated, because he doesn’t have children to pass on the throne to, and it will go to Banquo’s sons.

For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murder’d;
Put rancours in the vessel of my peace
Only for them; and mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of man,
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1. An upset Macbeth realizes that he has sold his soul – “eternal jewel” (metaphor) – so that Banquo’s descendants will be kings. For that he has killed Duncan and destroyed his peace of mind. That is where his ambition has brought him to.

FIRST MURDERER: We are men, my liege.
MACBETH: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept
All by the name of dogs.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1. Macbeth is trying to persuade and manipulate the murderers into killing Banquo and his boy Fleance. Here he reduces the humanity of the murderers to the level of animals. In a metaphor he compares the different kinds of men to different types of dogs, each with its own skills.

We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it;
She’ll close and be herself, while our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2. The snake is a metaphor for the danger the Macbeths find themselves in after Duncan’s murder. Macbeth doesn’t feel safe on the throne and sees Banquo as a threat to his position as long as he is alive. This passage is ironic, since it was Macbeth who created the snake in the first place with his uncontrollable desire for power that pushed him to regicide.

O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2. The scorpions are metaphorical symbols of both Macbeth’s guilt and his evil desire to murder Banquo and Fleance, having already killed Duncan and framed innocent people for it. At this point he is consumed by confusion and fear. Banquo was once his best friend, but while he and his son are still alive he fears his throne is not safe because of the Witches’ prophecy that Banquo’s heirs will be kings.

Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood;
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2. Macbeth commands the night to come quickly in order to conceal his evil actions and facilitate the murder of Banquo and his boy. Both night and day are personified in the passage. A hawking metaphor is used to describe the night, seeling is stitching the bird’s eyelids shut for training. In another metaphor Macbeth calls on the night to use its “bloody and invisible hand” to destroy Banquo. In his speech there is much made of darkness and light, one representing evil and the other good. Macbeth is calling on the forces of darkness and evil to cancel out the good.

Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,
Without our special wonder? You make me strange
Even to the disposition that I owe,
When now I think you can behold such sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine is blanched with fear.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. Macbeth uses a simile to equate the strange appearance of Banquo’s ghost at his banquet to a summer thunderstorm. He questions himself in this speech to Lady Macbeth, because he assumes that she and the others have also seen the ghost and yet she isn’t struck pale with fear like him.

I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4. Macbeth realizes that he has gone so far on the path of evil, that there is now no returning from it. He has been involved in so much murder that it is just as easy to carry on killing as to turn back. He has now become a tyrant. He compares his path to power to a river of blood that he wading through. This metaphor symbolizes Macbeth’s guilt.

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.
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.

There’s no bottom, none,
In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up
The cistern of my lust, and my desire
All continent impediments would o’erbear
That did oppose my will: better Macbeth
Than such an one to reign.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Malcolm falsely describes himself to Macduff as an extremely lustful fellow. Using a metaphor, he says that all the women in the kingdom could not “fill up the cistern of my lust.” He suggests that Macbeth is a fitter person than him to reign. Malcolm is deliberately lying and describing himself as the worst possible candidate for the throne, in order to test if Macduff is still loyal to Macbeth.

But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
I have no relish of them, but abound
In the division of each several crime,
Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth.

– William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Malcolm pretends that he has none of the virtues that a good king should have, including courage. Listing out all the characteristics of an upright monarch, including justice and mercy, he is clearly not describing Macbeth. But Malcolm declares that he doesn’t have these virtues either. Using a metaphor, he declares that if he were on the throne, he would “pour the sweet milk of concord into hell” and replace it with disorder. This echoes Lady Macbeth when she refers to the “milk of human kindness” in Act 1. In this passage Malcolm is continuing his test of Macduff’s loyalty.
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