Banquo Quotes

Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver - little difference.

My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.

I had hoped you might be my Banquo.

Darnley, who, like Banquo's ghost, seemed to play a much more effective part in Scottish politics once he was dead than when he was alive.

James looked up, looked right at me. He seemed surprised to see me standing there, though I didn’t know for the life of me why he should be. Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver—little difference.

It was as though Banquo had turned host.

Lesser than Macbeth and greater. Not so happy, yet much happier. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.

ni siquiera Macbeth, ante la sombra de Banquo, debió sentirse igualmente aterrado.

Today's theater-goer must live in dread of walking into a theater and discovering that some classic work has been given a modernized, socially relevant setting. Oedipus gouges his eyes with a spoon at a 1950's malt shop; Macbeth napalms Banquo in Viet Nam, Julius Caesar dies in Dallas in 1963. More and more, American theater is coming to resemble a season of Quantum Leap.

The detail of Macbeth throwing dinner rolls at Banquo’s empty chair comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2018 production of Macbeth, directed by Polly Findlay and starring Christopher Eccleston in the title role.

Banquo asked me how it felt to be alive when I saw so many of my comrades dead or dying, and I said that I had ceased to think of life or death because it seemed that I was destined to serve out the sentence of one for having delivered so well of the other, and that I saw the dead every night before I went to sleep as though they were still alive and standing before me.

And for the Doctor, time is literally running out. He knows that Compassion is dying. He’s aware that he has lost his own ability to regenerate. He’s worried by Fitz’s fake German accent.

MACDUFF Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ the building. MACBETH 235 What is’t you say? the life? LENNOX Mean you his majesty? MACDUFF Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon:—do not bid me speak; See, and then speak yourselves. [Exeunt MACBETH and LENNOX.] 240 Awake, awake!— Ring the alarum-bell:—murder and treason!— Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, And look on death itself! up, up, and see 245 The great doom’s image! Malcolm! Banquo! As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites, To countenance this horror!

Ink runs in their veins, immortal ink, the ink of song and story.” It was the voice of Andreus. “Ink can be destroyed,” cried Black, “and men who are made of ink. Name me their names!” They came so swiftly from the skies Andreus couldn’t name them all, streaming out of lore and legend, streaming out of song and story, each phantom flaunting like a flag his own especial glory: Lancelot and Ivanhoe, Athos, Porthos, Cyrano, Roland, Rob Roy, Romeo; Donalbane of Birnam Wood, Robinson Crusoe and Robin Hood; the moody Doones of Lorna Doone, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone; out of near and ancient tomes, Banquo’s ghost and Sherlock Holmes; Lochinvar, Lothario, Horatius, and Horatio; and there were other figures, too, darker, coming from the blue, Shakespeare’s Shylock, Billy Bones, Quasimodo, Conrad’s Jones, Ichabod and Captain Hook—names enough to fill a book. “These wearers of the O, methinks, are indestructible,” wailed Littlejack. “Books can be burned,” croaked Black. “They have a way of rising out of ashes,” said Andreus.

If Glenn related to anything outside of music, it was animals. When he bicycled through the countryside near his parents’ lakeside vacation cottage outside of Toronto, he sang to the cows. His pets included rabbits, turtles, a fully functioning skunk, goldfish named Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Haydn, and a parakeet named Mozart. There was also a series of beloved dogs: a big Newfoundland named Buddy, an English setter named Sir Nickolson of Garelocheed—or Nick for short—and, later, Banquo, a collie. One of Glenn’s childhood dreams was to someday create a preserve for old, injured, and stray animals on Manitoulin Island, north of Toronto, where he wanted to live out his old age by himself, surrounded by animals.

It is concluded:—Banquo, thy soul’s flight, If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.

The instruments of darkness tell us truths. Do you know the rest? No. A young, innocent little student. You didn’t memorize Macbeth. An oversight, that. Because Banquo warns that the truth will betray us.

Some time ago, I set out to adapt Macbeth for the screen and spent months dissecting the text, grappling with every line and word. While contemplating both the opening (the witches’ prophecy) and the conclusion (Malcolm’s ascent as king), I was struck by a realization: Macbeth is unfinished. The prophecy which initiates the play’s action proclaims first that Macbeth will be king and then that Banquo’s children will be kings. Macbeth indeed becomes Scotland’s king—and yet Banquo’s prophecy remains unfulfilled. The play ends, oddly, with Banquo’s seed nowhere in sight and with a third party, Malcolm, ascending to the throne.

Frowning, she considered this. “Was there a portent in Macbeth?” “Indeed, madam; there were several. Banquo’s ghost comes to mind.” “Aye—Shakespeare liked his ghosts.” “A useful literary device, madam. The ghosts were a form of foreshadowing.” “If you say so,” Doyle replied doubtfully

The foundation of Machiavellian philosophy and its deepest insight is a sense of proportion. It corresponds to the Grotian apprehension of the moral complexity of politics… This is the special picture of political life one gets from reading Machiavelli himself and ‘irony’ is a category of philosophical Machiavellians. The word is not, I think, found in Machiavelli, but political irony is in fact what he very lovingly studied. Irony is a Machiavellian category while tragedy is a Grotian category. ‘Tragedy’ implies a standpoint outside the political drama, in which we experience, for example, admiration for Othello's nobility, pity for his weakness, and terror at Iago's wickedness… Now, it is difficult to adopt a tragic standpoint about politics, because ‘politics’ implies a situation in which we are still involved, where we can still act and affect the outcome, and anyway where we do not know the outcome because the drama is unfinished. To become fully tragic, politics have to be dead politics, that is, history: the tragedy of Athens, and of the League of Nations… Irony is, so to speak, the factual skeleton of tragedy, stripped of its moral and transcendental clothing. In literature it is the warping of a statement by its context; a character means one thing by a statement but we know the context and outcome that he does not, and see it has a different meaning. As Banquo rides away to be murdered, as Macbeth has arranged, Macbeth says to him genially: ‘Fail not our feast’—‘My lord, I will not.’ This is Sophoclean irony and there are other kinds, more complex. Irony can be seen in politics when statesmen pursue ends that recoil upon them, and turn into their opposites. Hugh R. Wilson, in Diplomat between Wars, says that the policy of the USA was of ‘overwhelming importance’ to the League of Nations in the Manchurian crisis, which makes ironic America's fear of, commitment and involvement: however little she wanted to be committed she was certainly involved, and by refusing to commit herself at that time she made her involvement in the struggle with Japan all the more certain. It is equally ironical that Britain and France went to war in 1939 to restore the balance of power in Europe by destroying Nazi Germany, embraced the Soviet alliance for that purpose, and ended with Europe as badly unbalanced by Stalin's power as it had been by Hitler's.

The Edinburgh Festival began fifty years ago as a strange amalgam of cultural banditry, civic enterprise and idealism, an intriguing - even bizarre -but singularly effective combination.

MacBeth and Me Down below the twisted step, The tavern awaits night's Dark guests. Fires aglow hiss the emb'rous red, And Hell waits upon her most prized dead. A charmed man of thirty or so, Ambition's son who vaults so low. Tarries he now at table's dread, and drinks The draught of one Soul condemned. Lingers he so, o'er beef and wassail, Choicest portions of desires assailed. Presses he down lusts murd'rous and hard, A driving rain of the blackest of hearts. 'Prince of Cumberland,' he had to traverse, Or fall asunder, star-crossed to his curse. Sees shadows now and smiles slight at me, Knows he a kindred, in like debauchery. Eyes my spirit through cracked mirror. Banquo saw too and was butchered in Fear. The Lady also, unsexed, it seemed (Tended she cravings 'cided that King). Aye, locked below under tomorrow's step, He lies awaiting in damned inquest. Mortals what I am and to what I agree, Bids me to his table, Macbeth and me. --Poems on the Run, vol. I

ANDY: O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! We have scorched the snake, not killed it: the King is in his grave, but Malcolm, Banquo and Fleance are all still very much alive. I wish we’d never—   LISA: You must leave thinking like this! Things without all remedy should be without regard: what’s done is done.   ANDY: Danny knows. LISA: What are you talking about? ANDY: He knows what we did. LISA: How did he find out? Did you tell him? ANDY: No! He figured it out