MacBeth - Oxymoron.

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MacBeth: Oxymoron

Act 1 Scene 1 Page 274 Line 12-13: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover

through the fog and filthy air."

 

This quote is interesting to me because it is an oxymoron. Its impossible how

fair can be foul when fair is equal or mild and foul is gross and rotten. Its

significance is that the witches delight in the confusion of good and bad,

beauty and ugliness.

 

Act 1 Scene 2 Page 279 Line 40: "So foul and fair a day I have not seen"

 

 This quote simply means that it's one of those days when fog is followed by

sunshine, then a thunderstorm, some hail, and more sunshine. In other words

nature is acting somewhat strange.

 

Act 1 Scene 3 Page 282 Line 174-175: "My dull brain was wrought / With things

forgotten"

 

Macbeth makes the lying excuse that he was thinking about something so

unimportant that he has already forgotten what it was. However, those things

are far from forgotten.

 

Act 1 Scene 4 Page 284 Line 13-47: "There's no art / To find the mind's

construction in the face"

 

I chose this quote because I thought it was pretty interesting how Duncan

tells us not that you can't tell a book by its cover. From him saying this I

compare it to Macbeth. Macbeth may look all innocent on the outside, but in

the inside who knows what he has going on in his mind.

 

Act 1 Scene 5 Page 286 Line 18-20: "Thou wouldst be great; / Art not without

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ambition, but without / The illness should attend it"

 

Lady Macbeth is like the witches, she also believes that foul is fair.

Ambition "should" be accompanied by "illness." Yet she does not believe that

Macbeth is really good.

 

Act 2 Scene 1 Page 295 Line 5-6:"There's husbandry in heaven; / Their candles

are all out"

 Banquo means that heaven has gone to bed, and has put out its "candles" (the

stars) for the night. Its significance is that the night stars will never be

as bright again because nature will now be in a state of ...

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