Jonathan O'Neill’s Reviews > Macbeth > Status Update

Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 84% done
MACDUFF
He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite. All?
What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam
At one fell swoop?


MALCOLM
Dispute it like a man.

MACDUFF
I shall do so,
But I must also feel it as a man...

Always love this rebuke from Macduff for its strong contrast to the Macbeth's views of "manliness", particularly when the player snaps back, harshly, at Malcolm.
— 6 hours, 58 min ago
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)

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Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 34% done
MACBETH
[...]
What hands are here? Ha: they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green, one red.


LADY M
My hands are of your colour, but I shame
To wear a heart so white...
— Oct 09, 2026 03:55AM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 27% done
MACBETH
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
cont.
— Oct 08, 2026 05:07AM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 24% done
Lady M gives Macbeth a dressing down for his cold feet. This and all that precedes it is about as stone cold as it gets:

… I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.
— Oct 07, 2026 05:20AM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 16% done
LADY M
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 th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’effect and it... [cont..]
— Oct 06, 2026 06:12AM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 13% done
Hamlet's, 'One may smile and smile and be a villain, finds companionable thought, here, in King Duncan's, 'There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.'
— Oct 06, 2026 05:16AM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 8% done
Banquo to the witches:

... You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.


I'm disappointed I didn't start a catalogue of Shakespearean insults with Hamlet and Midsummer; they're an absolute treasure trove. Better late than never, I guess. No one roasts like the bard.
— Oct 05, 2026 09:25PM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


Jonathan O'Neill
Jonathan O'Neill is 3% done
For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished 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 unseamed him from the nave to th' chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.
— Oct 05, 2026 04:54AM
Macbeth (Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)


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Julie  G "Dispute it like a man!" Ha! Whatever that means.


message 2: by Jonathan (new) - added it

Jonathan O'Neill One could smirk at or parody this kind of thought today but it's more than reasonable enough in it's 11th century setting. Under the circumstances, though, I couldn't think of a colder or more tone deaf thing for Malcolm to have thought, let alone said out loud. :D


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