I would forget consequences afterlife, but even in life there would be punishment. Conclusions This quote is talking about skipping over time, which means that Macbeth is beginning to lose his ability to reason. He is talking about how he would never face his afterlife, which is irrational because the afterlife is a reward or a punishment that nobody can escape. Were you drunk when you agreed to kill Duncan? Are you suddenly waking up and realizing what you happily promised then? Conclusions
Lady Macbeth is saying that from this time forward, their love for each other is finite because she says “From this time such I account thy love”, which means that she is counting his love for her. By counting his love, Lady Macbeth is making the love finite since it’s pointless to count something infinite. This suggests that in this quote Lady Macbeth is using time as a restriction. By using time as a restriction, it shows us that Lady Macbeth believes that order is a restriction in getting to her goal, which is true because her goal is to become the queen.
This is similar to the last quote where Macbeth wanted to jump over time as if it was an obstacle or a restriction. That means that at the beginning, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have similar opinions on time and order. To be greater than you are, you would be a greater man. Time and place did not work out then, but you still would have done it. Now everything’s all set for the murder to take place. Conclusions Time is one of God’s rules. It is an existence that mortals cannot change. Lady Macbeth is telling Macbeth not to follow this rule and that he should instead create his own kingdom that he can rule.
This shows that Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to overthrow God and take his place in the great chain of being. In this quote, time represents God because it is one of his rules. This builds on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s attitude towards time: that it is an obstacle. I have decided to do it and put everything into it. Let’s go and wait until I can kill him. I will contain my expression within myself. Conclusions This quote is saying to mock the fair time, meaning to mock God and order by killing King Duncan. Macbeth has finally admitted to himself what his true intentions are and so he says that he will mock the time.
This means that Macbeth will not allow God and his order to restrict his greed and ambition. Fleance:The moon is down and I haven’t heard the clock. Banquo:The moon goes down at midnight. Fleance:I think it’s later than that. Conclusions In this quote, we find that time represents the godly order of things. This quote comes just before Macbeth kills the king and it is foreshadowing a disorderly time because Banquo and Fleance don’t know what the time is. This is the way that godly people react to the disorder that Macbeth is causing.
Macbeth is lying to Banquo and telling him that he has not thought of the witches and what they had said since that last spoke. He then asks for a chance to try to gain Banquo’s allegiance when he kills Duncan. Conclusions In this quote, time represents power. Banquo’s later refusal to give Macbeth any time withholds power from Macbeth. Banquo is denying the seed of evil in himself from growing by denying Macbeth’s offer. This also shows how Banquo is rejecting evil while Macbeth is welcoming it. And take the evil from this moment which is full of horror. Conclusions
In this quote, time is the carrier of fate in that Macbeth is using a passive voice and blaming time for the horror of this regicide. This was said by an irrational man, so this is actually an example of the opposite: time just takes the blame for the deed when Macbeth is the only one at fault. Also time and horror are coming together. Macbeth says “horror from the time, \ which now suits with it” meaning that time is suiting to become horror, but the two are still separate. This shows how twisted Macbeth has become that he blames God and fate for his evil. He doesn’t seem to realize that he is the evil in this situation.
I heard a voice say “You will no longer sleep. You have killed gentle sleep that cares for you, ends your days, relaxes your body and mind, and nourishes you Conclusions In this quote, Macbeth is talking about how time in life is finite because he says “the death of each day’s life”, which means that lives end the same way that days end. He also calls sleep death, which means that he is romanticizing death, which is the end of a life’s time. This may be because he has just killed Duncan and so he is trying to make up a sort of euphemism for death by comparing it to sleep. In this quote, Macbeth sees time as pain.
He seems to be afraid of it. The way he talks about sleep and death, he seems to want to be dead or asleep so that he is not forced to face his actions. “the death of each day’s life” could also mean that Macbeth is tired of living and wants to be away from the stress of time going on. This quote is different from Macbeth’s other quotes because he seems to be afraid of time instead of hateful of it. Who’s there in the name of the devil? There was a farmer who hanged himself because he thought that he would make a fairly large sum of money but ended up with next to nothing.
I hope you brought napkins because you’ll sweat for it here. Conclusions In this quote, the porter is calling time death and saying that there will be a great amount of death in Macbeth’s castle. He says to have enough napkins and that time will sweat, meaning that death will be having a feast and working hard. He asked me to wake him early and I almost woke him up too late. Conclusions In this quote, time is slipping in the beginning of Macbeth’s rule because it says “timely on him: \ I have almost slipp’d the hour”, meaning that time is almost slipping in the hour that Duncan has been dead.
The night has been wild: chimneys were blown down and I heard screams of death and disorderly times. There was an owl that was making noise all night. The earth seemed sick. Conclusions Time is holy and was broken by the evil prophecy of witches. That prophesy represents disorder because not only did it break the constant of time, but it also told of confusion and chaos. This seems to be where Macbeth starts to rule because woeful time has just hatched, with Macbeth’s power represented by the bird. If I had died an hour ago, I would have lived a life that was blessed by God but from now on, there’s nothing to live for.
Conclusions In this case, Macbeth is still a bit remorseful and so time is holding him captive. For this reason, time is evil in this quote. He is also saying that an hour, meaning time, died before the king and cursed Scotland as it died. This is leading up to the time when Macbeth says that life is pointless because he has just committed an awful crime that will begin his horrid transformation. Macbeth is going back to hating time instead of fearing it, with just a small hint of regret still there because he is wishing for death.
I remember seventy years. In all of the evil I have seen before, I have never seen a night as restless as this one. Conclusions Threescore and ten is allusion to the bible, it is meant to be a regular lifetime. This means that the man is saying that he has had an overall happy life until this day. He also says that this night has ruined his memories, meaning that it wrecked the timeline or the logic that binds his past together. You see God is angry at us. It should be day, but the Sun is covered and so it is dark.
Is it night’s strength or day’s weakness that is causing this darkness to cover the Earth? Conclusions This quote is talking about how the night has taken over the day. It is speaking about a lack of godly time, switched for confusion, fear, and the rule of dark power. It says that the devil is killing the earth’s, which, by consequence, kills time because death is the end of an individual’s time. In Act II, Macbeth refers to time the most often. During this act, Macbeth’s use of time mostly has to do with how he would like to hide from time.
This is probably because he has just killed Duncan and so no he’s stuck: he can’t die or else he’ll face the afterlife, but he can’t live because he is so afraid of life. Other characters treat time as if it has been ruined. Macbeth is the only character who doesn’t seem to see how time is coming to a halt. All of the characters see Duncan’s death as evil, but Macbeth sees the evil mostly in how it reflects on himself, not in how it’s reflected on Scotland as a whole. Overall, time affects Act II because it shows how God loses control of Scotland when time slips off
