Macbeth: references to blood

Here are the results of a word search for ‘blood’ in Macbeth:

What bloody man is that? He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.

For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name —
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements.

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 the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The 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!’

Will it not be received,
When we have mark’d with blood those sleepy two
Of his own chamber and used their very daggers,
That they have done’t?

There’s blood on thy face.

Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ the olden time,
Ere human statute purged the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d
Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!

 It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood. What is the night?

All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er:
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
Which must be acted ere they may be scann’d.

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten
Her nine farrow;

[Thunder. Second Apparition: A bloody Child]

Second Apparition

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.

For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me,
And points at them for his.

Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature

DONALBAIN To Ireland, I; our separated fortune Shall keep us bot h the safer: where we are, There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, The nearer bloody.

MALCOLM This murderous shaft that’s shot Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way Is to avoid the aim.

MACBETH Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back; my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.


MACDUFF I have no words:
My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out!

 

Advertisement