Every card in Shakespeare, Year 10: Banquo, Macduff and the witches (Macbeth option)
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- The witches tell Banquo in Act 1 Scene 3: “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.” What are they promising him?
That his descendants will be kings, although he will not be one himself
Hint“Get” here means to father.
WhyBanquo hears a prophecy as tempting as Macbeth's and does nothing to make it happen. That is why he is often called Macbeth's foil: the same test, the opposite response.
- “Thou hast it now, king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, / As the weird women promis'd; and, I fear, / Thou play'dst most foully for't”. Who says this at the start of Act 3?
Banquo
HintThe only other person who heard the prophecies.
WhyHe says it alone on stage, so the audience knows he suspects Macbeth of murder. He does not act on it, and is killed two scenes later.
- Who escapes when Banquo is murdered in Act 3 Scene 3?
His son, Fleance
HintA boy carrying a torch.
WhyBecause Fleance lives, the prophecy about Banquo's line can still come true. Macbeth's reaction, at the banquet in Act 3 Scene 4, is “Then comes my fit again”: he can never feel safe.
- Who finds Duncan's body and cries “O horror, horror, horror!”?
Macduff
HintThe Thane of Fife.
WhyIt happens in Act 2 Scene 3. From the start Macduff is tied to honest, open feeling, the opposite of the Macbeths' acting.
- In Act 4 Scene 3 Macduff learns that his wife and children are dead. Told to take it like a man, he answers: “But I must also ____ it as a man”.
feel
HintThe opposite of bottling it up.
WhyThe play keeps asking what it means to be a man. Lady Macbeth says it means being ready to kill; Macduff says it includes grief.
- The witches' chant in Act 1 Scene 1: “Fair is ____, and foul is ____”.
foul; fair
HintTwo short opposites beginning with f, swapped round.
WhyThe line says good and bad are about to change places. It sets up a play in which nothing is what it looks like.
- Macbeth's first line in the play is “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” Whose words from the opening scene does it echo?
The witches'
HintThey chanted the same two adjectives.
WhyHe has not met them yet. One reading is that he is already tuned to their way of thinking before they speak to him.
- Do the witches ever tell Macbeth to kill Duncan?
No
HintLook at what they actually say in Act 1 Scene 3.
WhyThey only greet him with titles. The idea of murder is his: within lines he speaks of a “horrid image” that makes his hair stand on end. How far they are to blame is something the play leaves open.
- “The instruments of darkness tell us truths; / Win us with honest trifles, to betray's / In deepest consequence.” Who gives this warning in Act 1 Scene 3?
Banquo
HintMacbeth's fellow general, standing beside him on the heath.
WhyHe means that evil powers offer small truths to win trust and then betray you over something that matters. It describes exactly what happens to Macbeth.
- The witches' cauldron chant in Act 4 Scene 1: “Double, double, toil and ____”.
trouble
HintIt names what the witches are brewing for Scotland.
WhyThe witches speak in short rhyming lines with a heavy beat, quite unlike the verse the human characters use. It makes them sound like people casting a spell.
1★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0024
2★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0025
3★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0026
4★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0027
5★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0028
6★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0029
7★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0030
8★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0031
9★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0032
10★ GCSE-ENLI-SHA-0033
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