Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Macbeth Loyalty
and Betrayal
Quotes
- Loyalty
- 'The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it pays itself.'
- This could show that Macbeth
wants to be loyal with continuous
thoughts of treachery
- This is Dramatic
Irony
- This could show that Macbeth wants
Duncan to think he is still loyal but is
thinking about killing him
- This is further backed up because
he says it as soon as he enters
- Macbeth believes he does owe Duncan, so
before he kills him, he has to get rid of this
debt
- He does this by inviting Duncan to his castle
- 'He was a gentlemen on whom I built an absolute
trust'
- This shows Duncan has
trusted someone in the past
who has betrayed him
- As soon as Duncan says
this, Macbeth enters
- This foreshadows Macbeth being
Duncan's Hamartia (Downfall)
- Prolecptic Irony shows Macbeth is going to betray him
- From Abstract noun 'trust'
- This could tell us that Duncan expects
Macbeth to be a better Thane of Cawdor
- Betrayal
- 'Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under't'
- After the Gunpowder Plot, a medal was made to commemorate the
discovery. It pictured a Serpent under some flowers
- The Abstract noun 'Innocent' could show that
this innocence slowly disappears
- This is shown when Lady Macbeth starts
sleepwalking in Act 5 Scene 1
- 'That is a step on which I must fall down,
or else o'er leap, for in my way it lies
- Shows betrayal because it means Macbeth will have to break the Divine Right of Kings
- The Divine Right of Kings was heavily believed in at the time
- The Divine Right of Kings stated that a King or
Queen was chosen by God
- So to break it meant going against God
- Jacobean audiences would be shocked by this
- 'Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, Unsex me
here'
- Lady Macbeth is betraying her femininity
- This would have shocked the Jacobean audience of shakespeare's time
- The abstract noun 'Mortal' could
foreshadow when Macbeth thinks he is
immortal in Act 4 Scene 1