Equivocation in Macbeth

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Equivocation in Macbeth I) Prophecies and fatality i) The weird sisters : believable characters ? " you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so" (1.3.45-47). " Third Witch: Hail! First Witch: Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. Second Witch: Not so happy, yet much happier. Third Witch: Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo! " (1.3.64-68) ii) Shall Macbeth be king ? "All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter!"(1.3.50) "oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray's / In deepest consequence" (1.3.123-126) iii) Is Macbeth untouchable ? (apparitions) "Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth" (4.1.81) "Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until / Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him" (4.1.92-94) "the equivocation of the fiend / That lies like truth. 'Fear not, till Birnam wood / Do come to Dunsinane,' and now a wood / Comes toward Dunsinane" (5.5.42-45) II) Evolution of equivocation and its meaning through the play i) Macbeth doubts during the murder of Duncan "false face must hide what the false heart doth know" (1.7.82) "Is this a dagger, which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee"(2.1.33-34) ii) The Porter scene : an image of the apparition of chaos causes by Macbeth's ambition "here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven " (2.3.8-10). "provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery" (2.3.30-32) iii) Macduff's family : the cause of Macbeth's end "Why, one that swears and
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