Essay Test ​Macbeth
​ : Who’s to Blame for the
Tragedy?
Your Task​: Review the excerpts from the play and decide who is to blame for the tragedy. Is it
Macbeth himself? Are the Wyrd Sisters controlling Macbeth’s destiny? Or is it Lady Macbeth? Support your claim
using analysis of character development, motifs, and central ideas (themes).
Macbeth Is to Blame (Quotes)
Macbeth Is to Blame (Explanation)
The Wyrd Sisters Are to Blame (Quotes)
The Wyrd Sisters Are to Blame (Explanation)
Lady Macbeth Is to Blame (Quotes)
Lady Macbeth Is to Blame (Explanation)
After you collect evidence for these three arguments, select the​ one ​you feel you is the strongest claim.
Sample Thesis Format: ​ ​Although_______ played an important role in______, ______ was primarily responsible for the tragedy.
Thesis​:________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Remember:
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Introduction and Conclusion Paragraphs: ​So What?! How/Why is​ this play relevant today? Think ​theme!
Topic Sentences and Concluding Sentences​: Link your evidence back to the thesis.
Quotation Sandwiches: ​Surround quotations with your own words and ​cite the line numbers​. For example:
Macbeth is an unwilling murderer at first, wishing chance would crown him king “without [his] stir” (1.4.159). He
thinks of murdering the king but hopes he doesn’t have to get his hands dirty.
WITCHES
Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air. (1.1.12-13)
MACBETH
So foul and fair a day I have not seen. (1.3.39)
FIRST WITCH
All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
SECOND WITCH
All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
THIRD WITCH
All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter! (1.3.51-53)
MACBETH
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smother'd in surmise,
and nothing is but what is not. (1.3.52-55)
MACBETH [aside]
If chance will have me king, why, chance may
crown me,
Without my stir. (1.3.157-159)
MACBETH [aside]
The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (1.4.55-60)
LADY MACBETH
To beguile the time,
Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue. Look like th’ innocent flower,
But be the serpent under ‘t. (1.6.74-78)
MACBETH
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other— (1.7.25-28)
MACBETH
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use. (2.1.44-55)
LADY MACBETH
[…] The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry "Hold, hold!" (1.5.45-61)
LADY MACBETH
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. (2.2.68-73)
MACBETH
Whence is the knocking ?
How is‘t with me, when every noise appalls me?
What hands are here! Ha! They pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean was this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red. (2.2.74-81)
ROSS
Ha, good father,
Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threaten his bloody stage. By th' clock, 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the traveling 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? (2.4.6-12)
OLD MAN
'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A Falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. (2.4.13-16)
MACBETH
We have scorched the snake, not killed it.
She’ll close and be herself whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace. (3.2.15-23)
MACBETH
There's comfort yet; they are assailable.
Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister'd flight, ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note. (3.2.44-49)
MACBETH
For mine own good
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er. (3.4.167-170)
HECATE
Have I not reason, beldams as you are?
Saucy and overbold, how did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death,
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never call'd to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?
And which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you. (3.5.2-13)
ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. (4.1.10-11)
THIRD APPARITION
Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him. (4.1.103-107)
THE WITCHES
Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. (4.1.10-11)
LADY MACBETH
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky!... Yet who would have
thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. (5.1.37-42)
MACBETH
Thou wast born of woman.
But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
Brandished by man that’s of a woman born. (5.7.15-17)