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Blood is always closely linked to violence, but over the course of Macbeth blood comes to symbolize something else: guilt. Death and killing happen in an instant, but blood remains, and stains. At the times when both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel most guilty, they despair that they will never be able to wash the blood—their guilt—from their hands.
Blood Quotes in Macbeth
The Macbeth quotes below all refer to the symbol of Blood. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1, scene 5
Quotes
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.
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.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Act 3, scene 4
Quotes
I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Blood Symbol Timeline in Macbeth
The timeline below shows where the symbol Blood appears in Macbeth. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1, scene 2
...of Lennox wait for news of the war. A captain enters, covered in so much blood he is almost unrecognizable. The captain tells them of the state of the battle against...
(full context)
Act 2, scene 2
Macbeth enters. He's killed Duncan. His hands are bloodstained and he's upset that when one of the attendants said "God bless us" in his...
(full context)
...terrifying Macbeth. He worries that not all the water in the world could wash the blood from his hands.
(full context)
Lady Macbeth returns, her hands now as bloody as Macbeth's. But she's calm, and identifies the 'mysterious' knocking as someone at the south...
(full context)
Act 3, scene 4
Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth: "Blood will have blood" (3.4.121), and asks what Lady Macbeth makes of the fact that Macduff does not appear...
(full context)
He says: "I am in blood / Stepped in so far" (3.4.135) that turning back is as difficult as continuing on.
(full context)
Act 5, scene 1
...the words: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him" (5.1.33-34)?
(full context)
