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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shakespear’s genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion.

—William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth completes William Shakespeare’s great tragic quartet while expanding, echoing, and altering key elements of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear into one of the most terrifying stage experiences. Like Hamlet, Macbeth treats the consequences of regicide, but from the perspective of the usurpers, not the dispossessed. Like Othello, Macbeth centers its intrigue on the intimate relations of husband and wife. Like Lear, Macbeth explores female villainy, creating in Lady Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most complex, powerful, and frightening woman characters. Different from Hamlet and Othello, in which the tragic action is reserved for their climaxes and an emphasis on cause over effect, Macbeth, like Lear, locates the tragic tipping point at the play’s outset to concentrate on inexorable consequences. Like Othello, Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, achieves an almost unbearable intensity by eliminating subplots, inessential characters, and tonal shifts to focus almost exclusively on the crime’s devastating impact on husband and wife.

What is singular about Macbeth, compared to the other three great Shakespearean tragedies, is its villain-hero. If Hamlet mainly executes rather than murders, if Othello is “more sinned against than sinning,” and if Lear is “a very foolish fond old man” buffeted by surrounding evil, Macbeth knowingly chooses evil and becomes the bloodiest and most dehumanized of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists. Macbeth treats coldblooded, premeditated murder from the killer’s perspective, anticipating the psychological dissection and guilt-ridden expressionism that Feodor Dostoevsky will employ in Crime and Punishment . Critic Harold Bloom groups the protagonist as “the culminating figure in the sequence of what might be called Shakespeare’s Grand Negations: Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth.” With Macbeth, however, Shakespeare takes us further inside a villain’s mind and imagination, while daringly engaging our sympathy and identification with a murderer. “The problem Shakespeare gave himself in Macbeth was a tremendous one,” Critic Wayne C. Booth has stated.

Take a good man, a noble man, a man admired by all who know him—and destroy him, not only physically and emotionally, as the Greeks destroyed their heroes, but also morally and intellectually. As if this were not difficult enough as a dramatic hurdle, while transforming him into one of the most despicable mortals conceivable, maintain him as a tragic hero—that is, keep him so sympathetic that, when he comes to his death, the audience will pity rather than detest him and will be relieved to see him out of his misery rather than pleased to see him destroyed.

Unlike Richard III, Iago, or Edmund, Macbeth is less a virtuoso of villainy or an amoral nihilist than a man with a conscience who succumbs to evil and obliterates the humanity that he is compelled to suppress. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s greatest psychological portrait of self-destruction and the human capacity for evil seen from inside with an intimacy that horrifies because of our forced identification with Macbeth.

Although there is no certainty in dating the composition or the first performance of Macbeth, allusions in the play to contemporary events fix the likely date of both as 1606, shortly after the completion and debut of King Lear. Scholars have suggested that Macbeth was acted before James I at Hampton Court on August 7, 1606, during the royal visit of King Christian IV of Denmark and that it may have been especially written for a royal performance. Its subject, as well as its version of Scottish history, suggest an effort both to flatter and to avoid offending the Scottish king James. Macbeth is a chronicle play in which Shakespeare took his major plot elements from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), but with significant modifications. The usurping Macbeth’s decade-long (and largely successful) reign is abbreviated with an emphasis on the internal and external destruction caused by Macbeth’s seizing the throne and trying to hold onto it. For the details of King Duncan’s death, Shakespeare used Holinshed’s account of the murder of an earlier king Duff by Donwald, who cast suspicion on drunken servants and whose ambitious wife played a significant role in the crime. Shakespeare also eliminated Banquo as the historical Macbeth’s co-conspirator in the murder to promote Banquo’s innocence and nobility in originating a kingly line from which James traced his legitimacy. Additional prominence is also given to the Weird Sisters, whom Holinshed only mentions in their initial meeting of Macbeth on the heath. The prophetic warning “beware Macduff” is attributed to “certain wizards in whose words Macbeth put great confidence.” The importance of the witches and the occult in Macbeth must have been meant to appeal to a king who produced a treatise, Daemonologie (1597), on witch-craft.

The uncanny sets the tone of moral ambiguity from the play’s outset as the three witches gather to encounter Macbeth “When the battle’s lost and won” in an inverted world in which “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Nothing in the play will be what it seems, and the tragedy results from the confusion and conflict between the fair—honor, nobility, duty—and the foul—rank ambition and bloody murder. Throughout the play nature reflects the disorder and violence of the action. Opening with thunder and lightning, the drama is set in a Scotland contending with the rebellion of the thane (feudal lord) of Cawdor, whom the fearless and courageous Macbeth has vanquished on the battlefield. The play, therefore, initially establishes Macbeth as a dutiful and trusted vassal of the king, Duncan of Scotland, deserving to be rewarded with the rebel’s title for restoring peace and order in the realm. “What he hath lost,” Duncan declares, “noble Macbeth hath won.” News of this honor reaches Macbeth through the witches, who greet him both as the thane of Cawdor and “king hereafter” and his comrade-in-arms Banquo as one who “shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Like the ghost in Hamlet , the Weird Sisters are left purposefully ambiguous and problematic. Are they agents of fate that determine Macbeth’s doom, predicting and even dictating the inevitable, or do they merely signal a latency in Macbeth’s ambitious character?

When he is greeted by the king’s emissaries as thane of Cawdor, Macbeth begins to wonder if the first predictions of the witches came true and what will come of the second of “king hereafter”:

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.

Macbeth will be defined by his “horrible imaginings,” by his considerable intellectual and imaginative capacity both to understand what he knows to be true and right and his opposed desires and their frightful consequences. Only Hamlet has as fully a developed interior life and dramatized mental processes as Macbeth in Shakespeare’s plays. Macbeth’s ambition is initially checked by his conscience and by his fear of the unforeseen consequence of violating moral laws. Shakespeare brilliantly dramatizes Macbeth’s mental conflict in near stream of consciousness, associational fashion:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success: that but this blow Might be the be all and the end all, here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other.

Macbeth’s “spur” comes in the form of Lady Macbeth, who plays on her husband’s selfimage of courage and virility to commit to the murder. She also reveals her own shocking cancellation of gender imperatives in shaming her husband into action, in one of the most shocking passages of the play:

. . . 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 my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this.

Horrified at his wife’s resolve and cold-blooded calculation in devising the plot, Macbeth urges his wife to “Bring forth menchildren only, / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males,” but commits “Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”

With the decision to kill the king taken, the play accelerates unrelentingly through a succession of powerful scenes: Duncan’s and Banquo’s murders, the banquet scene in which Banquo’s ghost appears, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, and Macbeth’s final battle with Macduff, Thane of Fife. Duncan’s offstage murder contrasts Macbeth’s “horrible imaginings” concerning the implications and Lady Macbeth’s chilling practicality. Macbeth’s question, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” is answered by his wife: “A little water clears us of this deed; / How easy is it then!” The knocking at the door of the castle, ominously signaling the revelation of the crime, prompts the play’s one comic respite in the Porter’s drunken foolery that he is at the door of “Hell’s Gate” controlling the entrance of the damned. With the fl ight of Duncan’s sons, who fear for their lives, causing them to be suspected as murderers, Macbeth is named king, and the play’s focus shifts to Macbeth’s keeping and consolidating the power he has seized. Having gained what the witches prophesied, Macbeth next tries to prevent their prediction that Banquo’s descendants will reign by setting assassins to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. The plan goes awry, and Fleance escapes, leaving Macbeth again at the mercy of the witches’ prophecy. His psychic breakdown is dramatized by his seeing Banquo’s ghost occupying Macbeth’s place at the banquet. Pushed to the edge of mental collapse, Macbeth steels himself to meet the witches again to learn what is in store for him: “Iam in blood,” he declares, “Stepp’d in so far that, should Iwade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The witches reassure him that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will never be vanquished until “Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.” Confident that he is invulnerable, Macbeth responds to the rebellion mounted by Duncan’s son Malcolm and Macduff, who has joined him in England, by ordering the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children. Macbeth has progressed from a murderer in fulfillment of the witches predictions to a murderer (of Banquo) in order to subvert their predictions and then to pointless butchery that serves no other purpose than as an exercise in willful destruction. Ironically, Macbeth, whom his wife feared was “too full o’ the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way” to serve his ambition, displays the same cold calculation that frightened him about his wife, while Lady Macbeth succumbs psychically to her own “horrible imaginings.” Lady Macbeth relives the murder as she sleepwalks, Shakespeare’s version of the workings of the unconscious. The blood in her tormented conscience that formerly could be removed with a little water is now a permanent noxious stain in which “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.” Women’s cries announcing her offstage death are greeted by Macbeth with detached indifference:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a nightshriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t. Ihave supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

Macbeth reveals himself here as an emotional and moral void. Confirmation that “The Queen, my lord, is dead” prompts only the bitter comment, “She should have died hereafter.” For Macbeth, life has lost all meaning, refl ected in the bleakest lines Shakespeare ever composed:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Time and the world that Macbeth had sought to rule are revealed to him as empty and futile, embodied in a metaphor from the theater with life as a histrionic, talentless actor in a tedious, pointless play.

Macbeth’s final testing comes when Malcolm orders his troops to camoufl age their movement by carrying boughs from Birnam Woods in their march toward Dunsinane and from Macduff, whom he faces in combat and reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d,” that is, born by cesarean section and therefore not “of woman born.” This revelation, the final fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies, causes Macbeth to fl ee, but he is prompted by Macduff’s taunt of cowardice and order to surrender to meet Macduff’s challenge, despite knowing the deadly outcome:

Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

Macbeth returns to the world of combat where his initial distinctions were honorably earned and tragically lost.

The play concludes with order restored to Scotland, as Macduff presents Macbeth’s severed head to Malcolm, who is hailed as king. Malcolm may assert his control and diminish Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as “this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,” but the audience knows more than that. We know what Malcolm does not, that it will not be his royal line but Banquo’s that will eventually rule Scotland, and inevitably another round of rebellion and murder is to come. We also know in horrifying human terms the making of a butcher and a fiend who refuse to be so easily dismissed as aberrations.

Macbeth Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's Macbeth . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Macbeth: Introduction

Macbeth: plot summary, macbeth: detailed summary & analysis, macbeth: themes, macbeth: quotes, macbeth: characters, macbeth: symbols, macbeth: literary devices, macbeth: quizzes, macbeth: theme wheel, brief biography of william shakespeare.

Historical Context of Macbeth

Other books related to macbeth.

Full Title: The Tragedy of Macbeth
When Written: 1606
Where Written: England
When Published: 1623
Literary Period: The Renaissance (1500 - 1660)
Genre: Tragic drama
Setting: Scotland and, briefly, England during the eleventh century
Climax: Some argue that the murder of Banquo is the play's climax, based on the logic that it is at this point that Macbeth reaches the height of his power and things begin to fall apart from there. However, it is probably more accurate to say that the climax of the play is Macbeth's fight with Macduff, as it is at this moment that the threads of the play come together, the secret behind the prophecy becomes evident, and Macbeth's doom is sealed.

Extra Credit for Macbeth

Shakespeare or Not? There are some who believe Shakespeare wasn't educated enough to write the plays attributed to him. The most common anti-Shakespeare theory is that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and used Shakespeare as a front man because aristocrats were not supposed to write plays. Yet the evidence supporting Shakespeare's authorship far outweighs any evidence against. So until further notice, Shakespeare is still the most influential writer in the English language.

Macbeth: Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Macbeth is, along with the character of Iago in Othello and his earlier portrayal of Richard III, William Shakespeare’s most powerful exploration and analysis of evil.

Although we can find precursors to Macbeth in the murderer-turned-conscience-stricken-men of Shakespeare’s earlier plays – notably the conspirator Brutus in Julius Caesar and Claudius in Hamlet – Macbeth provides us with a closer and more complex examination of how a brave man with everything going for him might be corrupted by ambition and goading into committing an act of murder.

It’s worth examining how Shakespeare creates such a powerful depiction of one man persuaded to do evil and then wracked by his conscience for doing so. What follows is a short analysis, but one which attempts to address some of the key – not to mention the most interesting – aspects of Macbeth . You can read our summary of Macbeth here .

The sources for Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Macbeth was a real Scottish king, although he was somewhat different from the ambitious, murderous creation of William Shakespeare. His wife was real too, but Lady Macbeth’s real name was Gruoch and Macbeth’s real name was Mac Bethad mac Findlaích.

The real Macbeth killed Duncan in battle in 1040 and Macbeth (or Mac Bethad) actually went on to rule for 17 years, until he was killed and Macbeth’s stepson, known as Lulach the Idiot, became king (though he only ruled for less than a year – then Malcolm, as Malcolm III, took the crown). Where did Shakespeare get the story from, then, and what did he change?

The plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a combination of two stories: the story of Macbeth and the story of the murder of King Duffe by Donwald and his wife, which Shakespeare read about in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles . The Three Witches appear in Holinshed, but as ‘nymphs or fairies’, suggesting beautiful young women rather than old, ugly hags.

Holinshed’s King Duncan is a weak and feeble ruler, who has unfairly named his own son Prince of Cumberland (and thus heir to the throne), thwarting Macbeth’s own (just) claim to the throne, through his wife’s previous marriage and her son by her first husband.

In Holinshed, then, Macbeth has every reason to have a grievance against Duncan, rather than being motivated solely by ‘vaulting ambition’. When Duncan proclaims Malcolm his heir and Prince of Cumberland, Macbeth does not see it as a slight on him and his claim to the throne – for he appears to have no genuine claim. Instead, he sees it as the turning point: if he is to become King then he must take the crown by force.

What’s more, in Holinshed’s chronicle, Banquo actually helps Macbeth to murder Duncan. Shakespeare altered the character of Banquo because his King, James I of England (James VI of Scotland, of course) claimed descent from Banquo. This explains the scene in Macbeth with the mirrors displaying Banquo’s descendants – eventually culminating in King James himself. Banquo will certainly ‘get’ (i.e. beget) kings, all right.’

This is what led the critic William Empson to regard Shakespeare’s version of Macbeth as a ‘Just-So Story’, like ‘How the Elephant Got Its Trunk’: it explains how James came to be King, over half a millennium after the events of Macbeth .

The other story from Holinshed, detailing the murder of King Duffe, is much closer to the plot of Shakespeare’s play. In the tenth century, a century before the real Macbeth lived, Donwald, egged on by his wife, murders King Duffe (although in this version Donwald gets the servants to commit the murder rather than bearing the knife himself). Donwald and his wife get Duffe’s personal attendants drunk, and then to divert suspicion Donwalde blames them for their master’s murder, killing them in pretend rage.

Themes of Macbeth

Macbeth is a play that begins with the Weird Sisters discussing their future meeting, and ends with Macduff and the other survivors preparing to go and see Malcolm crowned King.

Even the soliloquies in Macbeth seem unusually focused on not just the contemplation of a future course of action (for that’s a common feature of many soliloquies in many other plays) but on the displacement of time that the play is preoccupied with: ‘If it were done, when ’tis done’, begins one of Macbeth’s most famous speeches, while he greets the news of Lady Macbeth with his celebrated meditation on ‘tomorrow’:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.

The first words Lady Macbeth speaks to her husband in the play show how her ambitions for her and her husband are already making her mind leap from the present into the future:

Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant.

But the glue that keeps all of these future meditations in place, and acts as the main device in Macbeth linking present to future, is the role of prophecy.

It’s worth stopping to consider and analyse the role of prophecy in Macbeth . It’s true that the Witches are clearly meant to be supernatural, and their prophecies are supposedly founded on – well, on their witchcraft. One of the reasons Shakespeare may have been drawn to the story of Macbeth is that, as well as speaking to King James I’s Scottish blood, it also played to his interest in witchcraft, black magic, and the supernatural.

Indeed, the King even wrote a book about it, Daemonologie , which had been published in 1597, six years before he came to the English throne. But the clever thing about the prophecies is that we are left to decide how much what happens in the play was foretold in the Witches’ prophecy and how much was a result of the course of action Macbeth decided on, once he had knowledge of the prophecy.

We talk of ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’, and Macbeth as a piece of drama leaves us in some doubt as to the relationship between Fate and free agency. If Macbeth had never been told by the Witches that he would be Thane of Cawdor, he would still have been made Thane of Cawdor. But would he still have become King?

For Macbeth to become King, he needed to know that it was ordained that he would one day sit on the throne, so he could then murderously take it from the current incumbent. If Macbeth had not acted upon the prophecy, it may not have come true.

A similar ambiguity surrounding the role of fate and the role of individual agency governs the plot of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex ; although Shakespeare’s tragic model was more Senecan than ancient Greek, Macbeth is perhaps the play in his oeuvre which comes the closest to following the model for a good tragedy set out in Aristotle’s Poetics .

Similarly, Banquo starts to take his prophecy seriously once he sees Macbeth’s coming true. Nevertheless, the idea that no man of woman born being able to harm Macbeth isn’t ever tested to the full: Macbeth may simply be unusually lucky in combat, and Macduff, regardless of his caesarean section, may just have proved lucky; at the same time, believing that having been ‘from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped’ made him invincible against the tyrannical Macbeth may have given him the self-belief that he could bring the usurper down. The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, and our destinies, shape what we do.

Ambition – or ‘vaulting ambition’ as Macbeth himself puts it – is another central theme of the play. Hearing the prophecy from the Witches convinces Macbeth that he could be King. Indeed, more than that, the prophecy suggests that he is meant to be King. Although Duncan has ‘honour’d [him] of late’, and Macbeth knows that to kill the king who had raised him to the title of Thane of Cawdor would be, among other things, an act of supreme ingratitude, Macbeth is driven to commit murder so he can seize the crown.

Everything that happens afterwards – his dispatching of the hired killers to murder Banquo, the attempted murder of Fleance, the killing of Macduff’s wife and children, and the final battle at Dunsinane – is a result of this one act, an act that was inspired by both Macbeth’s private ambition and his wife’s lust for power.

It’s worth remembering that Macbeth was almost certainly written shortly after the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605. (There are a number of local allusions to this recent attempt at politically and religiously motivated terrorism: the numerous instances of the word ‘equivocation’ in the play refer to the Jesuit Father Garnet, who knew of the Plot and consorted with the conspirators.)

The ‘moral’ of Macbeth , if we can run the risk of reducing the play to an ethical message in this way, is that to usurp the ruler of a kingdom is usually a Bad Idea, at least if the ruler is generally thought to be a good one and your motivation for wanting to kill and replace them is your own grasping ambition to be monarch yourself. Which brings us to the last major theme of Macbeth worth mentioning in this short analysis (before the analysis becomes somewhat less than short)…

It would be inaccurate to say Macbeth feels remorse for the murder of Duncan. Even Claudius, the ‘smiling villain’ of Hamlet who killed a king so he could take the throne for himself, expresses something approaching a pricking of conscience for murdering his own brother, acknowledging that he cannot very well appear penitent before God if he doesn’t relinquish everything he’s gained by his murderous deed.

But Macbeth’s guilt over the murders of Banquo and Duncan is less remorse than it is fear of being discovered, and one bad deed gives birth to another, each of which has to be carried out to make Macbeth and his wife ‘safe’, to use the word that recurs throughout the play (a dozen times, including ‘safely’, ‘safety’, and other variants).

Even when Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth at the banquet, and appears to him alone, suggesting it is a manifestation of his own guilty conscience, he is terrified that the ghost’s presence will betray his secret, rather than wracked with remorse for killing his friend. Angus’ wonderfully vivid image of Macbeth’s guilt (‘Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands’) reminds us that ‘hands’ and ‘eyes’ and other body parts are often somewhat disembodied in this play, as numerous critics have acknowledged.

From Macbeth’s bloody hand (‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?’) to Lady Macbeth’s feverish somnambulistic hand-washing, to Macbeth’s early words in an aside, signalling his deadly ambition (‘The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see’), eyes and hands are at odds in this play, as if the eye countenances the evil carried out by the hand, with the wielder of the dagger turning a blind eye.

But as Angus’ words and Lady Macbeth’s night-time mimed ablutions demonstrate, one cannot so easily remove one’s mind from the hand that does a terrible deed.

One final piece of Macbeth trivia…

Macbeth is supposed to be cursed. The idea of the ‘curse’ of Macbeth has a complicated origin, though it was certainly given a leg up in 1898 when the novelist and wit Max Beerbohm put about the idea that the play was unlucky.

That said, it has had its fair share of tragedies and disasters: in a 1942 production starring John Gielgud, four people involved in the production died, including two of the Witches and the man playing Duncan. If you say ‘Macbeth’ in a theatre, you are meant to walk three times in a circle anti-clockwise, then either spit or say a rude word.

In 1849, Macbeth even caused a riot in New York . The Astor Place Riot was caused by two rival actors arguing about whose portrayal of Macbeth was better. American actor Edwin Forrest and English thespian William Charles Macready were both playing the role of Macbeth in different productions at different theatres on the same night, and a longstanding rivalry erupted.

Another notable nineteenth-century production of the play (featuring acting rivalry) involves the so-called ‘worst poet in the English language’, who once played Macbeth on stage – and refused to die at the end.

As we revealed in our selection of interesting facts about Scottish poet William McGonagall , when McGonagall – who has a reputation for being the worst poet in English – played the role of Macbeth in a stage production, he was so annoyed at being upstaged by his co-star, who was playing Macduff, that when Macduff went to kill Macbeth at the end of the play, he found his foe mysteriously unvanquishable.

6 thoughts on “Macbeth: Analysis and Themes”

Eqivocation: Shakespeare (whose father was a friend of William Catesby, the father of Robert Catesby, one of the leaders in the alleged Gunpowder Plot) may well have been drawing attention to his own loyalist credentials when he shows the Porter admitting ‘an equivator’ to Hell. On the other hand he may have been doing a bit of equivocating himself. It depends how you say the line “who committed treason enough for God’s sake” it can simply be an exclamation “for God’s sake!” or mean “he committed treason enough for God’s sake…” he was one of ‘God’s traitors’ as John Shakespeare almost certainly, and William very probably were.

To create a breach of time hundreds of years in each direction: The Scotland that the historical Macbeth occupied was a tough, violent place demanding that a monarch be capable of meeting all challenges. If a monarch could be bested, deposed, all the better for the kingdom. Duncan’s nobility, a soft virtue, requires Bellona’s bridegroom succeed on the battlefield, and he doesn’t realize how dangerous such a warrior can be, especially with an ambitious woman goading him on. Now rocket forward hundreds of years to see the philosophical realization predicted in the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech Macbeth ruminates upon hearing of Lady Macbeth’s death. (N.B. She dies off stage like most of the deaths in the play which conform to Aristotle’s Poetics which holds that violence on stage “but teaches bloody instruction.”) What does life signify? Nothing. Macbeth’s speech anticipates the 20th C. philosophy of existentialism. We come from nothing and we go to nothing. Any performance of the Scottish play in which the Three Sisters are performed exceedingly well enters the dreamscape of all the audience. The play is bloody, yes, and eerie too, as it travels in time.

I will refrain from the kind of lofty comments already given on here and just say your last story made me snort out loud :D

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Macbeth Summary and Analysis

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Introduction to Macbeth

Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare. One of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Macbeth tells a tale of greed and lust for power and how the pursuit of such things inevitably leads one to their ultimate downfall. Macbeth is a Scottish general who has managed to lead his army to defeat invaders. Near the beginning of the play, a chorus of witches prophesize that Macbeth will eventually be made king of Scotland. Intrigued by the prophecy, Macbeth writes to his wife to tell her about it. She becomes consumed with thoughts of power and control and pushes Macbeth to commit unthinkable crimes in order to make the prophecy come true.

Literary Elements of Macbeth

Type of Work: Drama

Genres : Tragedy

Published Date: First performed in 1606

Setting: 11th century Scotland

Main Characters: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth. See full characters list .

Protagonist/Antagonist: Protagonist – Macbeth (he is considered a tragic hero); Antagonist – every other character acts to threaten Macbeth and therefore almost every other character can be considered the antagonist. Macbeth vs. the world. See character descriptions .

Major Thematic Elements: Corruption and unchecked ambition, cruelty and masculine authority, guilt, the loss of children. See major themes .

Motifs: Hallucinations, acts of violence, prophecy

Exposition: Macbeth is a military general who has recently seen significant success in battle. As he returns home, he encounters three witches who deliver a prophecy.

Conflict: Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth to resort to murder to make the prophecy come true. Once Macbeth has been made king, political mistrust adds another layer of conflict.

Plot: Linear; chronological

Major Symbols: Blood, dark/gloomy/stormy weather. See major symbols .

Climax: The assassination of King Duncan

Literary Significance of Macbeth

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest and most violent play that speaks to Scottish bravery. It is a complex and emotionally intense play that gained wide popularity when it was first performed. To this day, Macbeth remains a wildly popular drama. Macbeth differs from Shakespeare’s other tragedies which explore intellectually complicated dilemmas by exploring the rapid descent into madness that results from greed and power. Because it is so jarring and fascinating, it has shocked audiences for centuries and is likely not going out of rotation any time soon.

Summary of Macbeth

Macbeth Act 1 Summary

As Macbeth and Banquo make their way back to the king’s palace in a storm, they encounter the three witches who reveal that Macbeth is about to discover that he has been appointed thane of Cawdor. Macbeth asks for more information and they declare that he will also one day be king of Scotland. As for Banquo, they say that he is “lesser than Macbeth, and greater” and although he will never hold the throne, a long line of his descendants will. The witches vanish, leaving Macbeth and Banquo stunned.

Back at the palace, King Duncan announces the changes and reveals that he intends to make his son, Malcom, heir to the throne. Macbeth notes that Malcom stands between himself and the throne. Learning her husband’s prophecy, Lady Macbeth is wild with lust for her husband to become king and resolves that murder is the best course of action. She informs her husband of her intentions and begins planning. When Macbeth later reveals that he does not wish to murder King Duncan, Lady Macbeth verbally berates him until he complies. Lady Macbeth devises a plan to frame King Duncan’s chamberlains by smearing the king’s blood all over them as they drunkenly sleep.

Macbeth Act 2 Summary

After briefly running into Banquo and his son, Macbeth has a vision of a dagger floating before him in the air. The tip of the dagger is aimed towards King Duncan. Macbeth tries in vain to grasp the dagger and he has trouble discerning if it is real or imagined. He gazes at the dagger in wonder and realizes that there is blood on the blade. He decides it is a figment of his imagination and Macbeth resolves to follow through with his wife’s plan.

Lady Macbeth ponders about the event that is about to take place, feeling bold. Soon after, Macbeth returns, covered in blood, and informs her that the deed is done. He is badly shaken.

In the early morning hours, a knocking comes at the door of the Macbeth castle. It is fellow military men Macduff and Lennox who request to speak with the king. Macbeth says that the king is still asleep but agrees to take them to him. Macduff discovers the king’s murdered body. Macbeth says that the chamberlains must have done it. However, Macduff grows suspicious. King Duncan’s sons become concerned for their own safety and flee the castle. This causes suspicion to fall on the sons.

Macbeth Act 3 Summary

Macbeth is preparing for his coronation as king. Banquo is pondering the witches’ prophecy and thinks that since everything else has come true, his descendants will probably wind up as heirs to the throne. He feels ambitious but makes no plans of action. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth invite Banquo to attend the feast they will be throwing later that night.

Once alone, a servant informs Macbeth that some men have come to meet with him. The servant leaves to get the visitors and while alone, Macbeth delivers a soliloquy about Banquo and how his friend has turned into someone he fears. He worries that if the witches’ prophecy is true, he will not have any heirs to whom he will be able to leave the crown. The murder of King Duncan weighs heavily on his conscious and his suspects that may be his undoing. The men who were waiting to meet with Macbeth are two murderers who he has hired to murder Banquo and his son. Later, the murderers ambush Banquo and his son on their way to the feast and manage to kill Banquo, but his son escapes.

At the feast, Macbeth is outraged to learn that Banquo’s son escaped. He returns from speaking with the reporting murderer and sees the ghost of Banquo seated in his chair at the table. Macbeth begins speaking to him, but none of the other guests understand what he was doing. Lady Macbeth makes an excuse, and everyone decides to ignore Macbeth. Concerned, Macbeth plans to try and meet with the witches once more.

Elsewhere in Scotland, Lennox is meeting with other lords and it is revealed that Macbeth is starting to be seen as a usurper and is believed to be responsible for the murders of King Duncan and Banquo. Macbeth is preparing to fight to defend his role as king and Lennox and the lord hope that the King Duncan’s son, Malcolm, and Macduff can successfully save Scotland.

Macbeth Act 4 Summary

Macbeth finds the witches and asks them to reveal more information to clarify their prophecies for him. The witches provide confusing visions for him. Later, Lennox informs Macbeth that Macduff has left for England. Macbeth decides to have Macduff’s family murdered to prevent any meddling. In her home, Lady Macduff and her son are assaulted by a group of murderers. Her son is stabbed, and Lady Macduff flees with the killers chasing after her. Elsewhere, Malcom and Macduff worry about the future of Scotland.

Macbeth Act 5 Summary

Lady Macbeth is descending into madness, seeing visions of blood all over herself that can never be washed off. The English army approaches the Macbeth castle and Macbeth prepares by donning his armor. Macbeth soon learns that Lady Macbeth has died but he refuses to believe the news. Macbeth goes into battle to defend his castle and court. Macbeth and Macduff engage in battle, until Macbeth is slain by Macduff who carries Macbeth’s head back to the castle to announce victory in overthrowing the tyrant. Malcom is declared King of Scotland

William Shakespeare

Literature Notes
Essay Questions
Macbeth at a Glance
Play Summary
About Macbeth
Character List
Summary and Analysis
Act I: Scene 1
Act I: Scene 2
Act I: Scene 3
Act I: Scene 4
Act I: Scene 5
Act I: Scene 6
Act I: Scene 7
Act II: Scene 1
Act II: Scene 2
Act II: Scene 3
Act II: Scene 4
Act III: Scene 1
Act III: Scene 2
Act III: Scene 3
Act III: Scene 4
Act III: Scene 5
Act III: Scene 6
Act IV: Scene 1
Act IV: Scene 2
Act IV: Scene 3
Act V: Scene 1
Act V: Scene 2
Act V: Scene 3
Act V: Scene 4
Act V: Scene 5
Act V: Scene 6
Act V: Scene 7
Act V: Scene 8
Act V: Scene 9
Character Analysis
Lady Macbeth
Character Map
William Shakespeare Biography
Critical Essays
Major Themes
Major Symbols and Motifs
Macbeth on the Stage
Famous Quotes
Film Versions
Full Glossary
Practice Projects
Cite this Literature Note

Study Help Essay Questions

1. Agree or disagree with the following statement: " Macbeth is a play about courage, which asserts the triumph of good over evil." In answering this question, you should remember that courageous acts are not always motivated by virtue.

2. Examine to what extent Lady Macbeth is to blame for her husband's downfall. Discuss the relationship between the couple as the play develops.

3. Discuss whether Macbeth is truly a tragic figure.

4. Some people suggest that the porter scene is included only so that the actor playing Macbeth has time to wash the blood off his hands. Do you agree? Or do you think the scene serves other purposes? Explain your answer.

5. From your reading, explain what Shakespeare imagined to be the qualities of a good king. How do Duncan and Macbeth fit this role? How might Malcolm do so?

6. Consider the use that Shakespeare makes of supernatural elements in this play. Be sure to include the Witches, the dagger, Banquo's ghost, the apparitions, and the Old Man's observations in your assessment.

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Introduction to Macbeth

Macbeth is one of the well-known tragedies of William Shakespeare that was performed with the full title of The Tragedy of Macbeth. It is one of the plays written during the reign of James I to please him as he was the patron of Shakespeare’s acting troupe. The play was first performed in 1606. It was first published in the First Folio in 1623. Interestingly, Macbeth is also the shortest tragic play by Shakespeare, with no subplots . It was inspired by the story of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan from the historical record found in Holinshed’s Chronicles, published in1587. The historical Macbeth is very different from Macbeth in the play. It dramatizes the psychological and physical impacts of the ambition a thane of Scotland harbors in his heart and then wreaks havoc with the appearance of order. Thus, creating chaos and disorder.

Summary of Macbeth

The play begins with the witches quickly appear and disappear. They plot and predict about meeting Macbeth, who would return after winning the battle against Thane of Cawdor.

King Duncan receives the testimonies of his conquering generals, Banquo and Macbeth, and the surrender of the rebel from a wounded soldier. His appreciation for both generals increase, and he decides to give all his land and the new title to Macbeth. As foretold in the beginning, after the battles, both the generals meet the witches when crossing the moor. Macbeth listens and believes when the witches predict that he will be the next Thane of Cawdor and eventually become the king. They address Macbeth Glamis, Cawdor, and the King of Scots. They also prophesy that Banquo’s descendants will become future kings. Their prophecy is filled with a puzzle as they call Banquo ‘lesser than Macbeth and greater’ and confuse him further by saying ‘Not so happy, yet much happier’. Macbeth demands answers for their prediction because Thane of Cawdor and King Duncan were still alive who held the title. However, the witches disappear without answering.

When Macbeth and Banquo discuss these prophecies, King Duncan’s representatives, Ross and Angus, arrive with the news. They tell that Macbeth is given the title of the Thane of Cawdor as a reward for winning the battle. Banquo and Macbeth are stunned as they see the witches’ first prophecy come true and wonder about the rest.

Later, they meet King Duncan at his castle, who praises both Macbeth and Banquo for their courage and devotion. King Duncan informs Macbeth about his plans to stay at his place at Iverness and also proclaims his son Malcolm as Prince of Cumberland. King Duncan, at that time, indirectly declares Malcolm as the next king of Scotland. Macbeth’s loyalty is replaced with the greed for the crown as he recalls the prophecies of the witches. He excuses himself to make arrangements for King Duncan’s visit Iverness.

Before King Duncan’s visit, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s wife, learns about the prophecy. She resolves to be the queen and recalls the idea of killing King Duncan. She disapproves of Macbeth’s gentle nature and loyalty as a weakness. However, she does understand that Macbeth has always been ambitious with the desire to be the king. His mind is filled with excitement at the thought of killing the king. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth begin to plot, and she decides to murder King Duncan believing that Macbeth does not have enough courage.

King Duncan arrives with his sons, Banquo, Macduff, Lennox, and few more envoys. Banquo senses the ‘ moral decay’ at Macbeth’s place. Lady Macbeth greets the king and everyone else, and they hear King Duncan praise Macbeth once more. When Macbeth’s alone , he worries about his afterlife, wondering what kind of punishment he would receive for killing the king, who is a good man. At that moment, Lady Macbeth manipulates him emotionally and convinces him to murder King Duncan.

Surprisingly, Banquo feels uneasy during his stay. When he tries to talk to Macbeth about the witches’ prophecy, Macbeth refuses to discuss. Macbeth hallucinates a bloodied dagger as they drug the guards. While trying to commit the act, Lady Macbeth hesitates as King Duncan looks like her father. After killing the guards, Macbeth returns to kill the king. He hears someone cry out these final words ‘ Glamis hath murther’d sleep: and therefore Cawdor/Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more! ‘. Though restless, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth pretends to sleep.

The next morning, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are composed and come to greet the others as if nothing happened. Macduff goes to the king’s chamber first and tells the others. Macbeth kills the guards before they can speak to maintain his innocence and push the blame on them. However, King Duncan’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain, know that their lives are in danger and run away from Scotland. Later, Malcolm goes to England and Donalbain goes to Ireland. Surprisingly the others believe that King Duncan’s sons were behind the murders as they have fled the crime scene. At the end of Act 2, Macbeth is crowned as the king.

After the coronation, Macbeth still lingers to the witches’ prophecies. He remembers that Banquo’s sons or descendants were meant to be the future kings. So, Macbeth hires assassins to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. Now , Macbeth has completely become evil by nature and willing to do anything to secure the throne. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth is overcome with guilt over the murders. When the assassins return, they inform him that Banquo is killed when but his son had escaped.

During a banquet, Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth, leaving him startled. The guests see Macbeth talking to an empty chair. Lady Macbeth tells the guests that he is suffering from a lack of sleep. Macbeth is back to self once the ghost disappears. However, during the stay, Banquo’s ghost reappears, making Macbeth hallucinate again. Lady Macbeth believes, Macbeth is going insane. There is a brief reappearance of witches where they further plot to fool Macbeth. They want him to be overconfident and proud of his evil nature.

Meanwhile, Lennox, one of the thanes under King Duncan and the lord, begins to suspect that Macbeth had murdered the king and Banquo. He, Macduff, along with King Edward, decides to support Malcolm.

The witches summon Macbeth and show him the future again. At first, they warn him about Macduff returning to Scotland. Next, they tell him that only a child not born from a woman can kill him. Finally, they show him a child wearing a crown and holding a tree. They tell him that unless the Great Birnam wood (forest) moves, Macbeth will not be killed. Though Macbeth’s confidence is restored, he asks the witches about the prophecy on Banquo’s descendants. During his confrontation with the witches, Banquo’s ghost is present, and the witches leave without giving him the answer. Lennox meets Macbeth at the cave and informs the alliance between Malcolm and Macduff with the English. Macbeth, in the fit of rage, decides to kill Macduff himself. Though the messenger tries to save Macduff’s family, at Macduff’s castle, Lady Macduff is killed, and his son tries to escape. Ross, one of the noblemen, informs Macduff about his family’s murder. As Macduff grieves over the death of his family, Malcolm, King Duncan’s son, asks Macduff to turn his sorrow into revenge.

Macbeth begins to prepare for the battle. Lady Macbeth is left alone and hallucinates, filled with guilt. Her maid brings a doctor, who advises her to get divine help. While Macbeth is prepared at the royal palace for the attack, Lennox rebels against him and waits for the English army.

Macbeth believes in the witches’ prophecy and remains overconfident. Recalling the first apparition shown by the witches, that nobody born of a woman could kill him, he remains anxious but unmoved. He worries about his wife, Lady Macbeth’s failing mental health.

On the other side, Malcolm asks the soldiers to cut the branch from the Birnam Wood to hide themselves. Later, Macbeth comes to know that the forest is moving towards his fort. Despite the growing tension, Macbeth remains arrogant and unmoved. Lady Macbeth commits suicide (which is shown off-stage).

Now , Macbeth heads to the battle with no choice. He learns that Macduff that he was born early by cesarean birth instead of natural birth. Hence the witches’ prophecies flash before his eyes. He realizes that the witched deceived him and doomed his life. He resolves to die and his beheaded by Macduff. In the end, Malcolm declares himself the king and invites the nobilities to Scone to crown him.

Major Themes in Macbeth

Ambition: At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is loyal. However, his over-ambitious nature leads him to lust for power . Macbeth, along with his wife, Lady Macbeth, murders King Duncan, Banquo, guards, and Macduff’s family. Their deaths are avenged by Malcolm and Macduff. So, they also lose their lives because of their ambition to take over the crown of Scotland. Shakespeare was inspired by 1605’s rebellion again King James 1 in England.
Supernatural Elements: The witches and their manipulating prophecies are the supernatural elements in Macbeth. The three witches are the harbinger of chaos and death. They corrupt overly ambitious Macbeth when they prophesy about him and Banquo. They declare that he will be king and Banquo’s descendants will be future kings. The prophecies change Macbeth and his wife and turn them into monstrous people. They kill the competitors for the throne. While the lead characters do not experience anything supernatural throughout the play, the incantation by witches sets the series of murders, suicide, and betrayals in the play.
Treachery and Betrayal: The play also displays betrayal and treachery. At first, Macbeth was a trustworthy general of King Duncan. He is corrupted by the witches and chooses to be treacherous and betrays King Duncan, who comes to Macbeth’s home as a guest. He kills the king and his friend, Banquo, as he gives in to the selfish desires. He betrays the family of Macduff too. Macbeth is also betrayed by his general, Lennox.
Crime: The witches’ prophecies manipulate Macbeth and his wife and turn them to criminals. Though they are bestowed with luxury and royalty, they commit heinous crimes because of their never-ending greed. Macbeth commits the first crime by killing his guest, King Duncan. Then he betrays his friend, Banquo, gets him killed and later target’s Macduff’s family. Hence, the play shows the world of crime until justice is done at the end, and Macbeth is beheaded.
Violence: The eerie atmosphere the play demonstrates, in the beginning, leads immediately to violence when Macbeth falls upon his guest, King Duncan, and then hires killers for his friend Banquo and his son. Even Lady Macbeth joins hands with him in these killings. The final assault of Macduff and Malcolm ends Macbeth and his treacherous fellows when he comes out of his fortress to fight them.
Conflict between Good and Evil: Macbeth and his wife represent evil, while King Duncan, his generals, Banquo, and Macduff represent the good. Shakespeare has shown that Lady Macbeth is schemer, just like the witches without magical powers. While her attempts to kill the king fails, Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to do the job by taunting him when he hesitates. However, ‘good’ is always victorious as the play ends when Macduff and his forces behead Macbeth as a punishment for his crimes.
Loyalty: When the play begins, Macbeth and Banquo show their loyalty to King Duncan by fighting for him. While Macbeth begins to corrupt his loyalty after the witches’ prophecies, Banquo resolves to ignore them to stay loyal to King Duncan. The play also shows Macduff’s and Malcolm’s loyalty to the people of Scotland and the dead king.
Guilt: Guilt is one of the major internal conflicts that move the play further. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth suffer from guilt until their last breath. Lady Macbeth suffers from paranoia, hallucinations, and mental illness after King Duncan is murder. Macbeth feels guilty at first, and he is haunted by the past. He also sees Banquo’s ghost, which is the result of his guilt.
Statecrafts: It means government or control. The deaths of King Duncan, Banquo, guards, Macduff’s family were perfectly planned murders by power-hungry Macbeth and his wife. This shows that statecraft is an important theme of the play. Macbeth did not know the statecraft though he becomes a king. Hence he faced a rebellion by Lennox at the end. At the same time, Macduff and Malcolm, with the help of the King of England, defeat Macbeth and take over the kingdom.
Trust: In Macbeth, King Duncan trusts his generals, Macbeth, and Banquo. Sadly, his trust is broken when Macbeth and his wife plot and murder him. Banquo trusts Macbeth as they fought wars together. However, Macbeth kills him after he loses his mind over witches’ prophecies. On the other hand, Malcolm trusts Macduff, and together they win against Macbeth in the end.

Major Characters in Macbeth

Macbeth: At first, Macbeth, a Scottish army general. He and Banquo defeat the Thane of Cawdor. King Duncan bestows the title ‘Thane of Cawdor’ to Macbeth, just when he meets the three witches who cast a spell on him. The witches’ fake prophecies also turn him into a despicable person making him make terrible decisions to fulfill them. He is also manipulated by his wife and kills King Duncan. Once he becomes the king, he goes on a killing spree after revisiting the witches. As Macbeth was fooled and cursed by the witches, we can call him an anti-hero , with the qualities of both hero and a villain. At the end of the play, he receives the punishment for all the crimes he had committed when Macduff beheads him.
King Duncan: King Duncan is shown as one of the most generous kings. Sadly, King Duncan is stabbed to death by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth when they are cursed by the witches. He is a fatherly figure who was kind and caring for the Scottish. However, his gruesome murder shows his trusting nature cost him his life and many others.
Lady Macbeth: She is villainous by nature with immense strength. She mostly influences Macbeth’s decisions without worrying about the consequence. She also shows extraordinary femininity when she pushes Macbeth to kill anyone who comes in his ways of becoming the king. She even takes part in the killing of King Duncan. Eventually, she feels immense guilt for King Duncan’s death and becomes insane. She begins to sleepwalk and hallucinates bloodstains on her hand. When she could not bear the guilt, she commits suicide just before Macbeth is killed.
Malcolm and Donalbain: They are sons of King Duncan. They are forced to flee their separate ways after their father is murdered by Macbeth at his castle. At first, they do not retaliate immediately but suspect that Macbeth had intentionally killed their father. Since their life was also under threat, they leave Scotland, Malcolm goes to England and Donalbain takes refuge in Ireland.
Banquo: Banquo is a capable and trustworthy general of the Scottish army. He is also Macbeth’s friend, who fought with him against the Thane of Cawdor. Banquo is with him when the witches prophecy and curse Macbeth. Banquo discards his temptation of his descendants being the king and leaves the witches’ prophecies behind. He remains faithful to the kingdom. Sadly, Banquo is killed by the assassins hired by Macbeth. His Fleance escapes at the last minute.
Macduff: Macduff is one of Thanes of Scotland (Thane of Fife) and a loyal servant to King Duncan. He discovers King Duncan’s dead body and also suspects the foul play. Sadly, Macbeth kills his wife and son. He helps Malcolm get to reclaim the throne, along with Lennox and King Edward. Macduff reveals that he had a cesarean birth. Hence, as prophesied by witches, he kills Macbeth to avenge the deaths of his family and King Duncan.
Siward: Old Siward is the Earl of Northumberland, King Duncan’s brother, and Malcolm’s uncle. He lends his army to Malcolm to take the throne of Scotland back. Sadly, young Siward is killed by Macbeth just before the war ended.
Three Witches: The witches appear twice in the play to account for prophecies and set the ball of the action rolling. On both occasions, they have encouraged Macbeth to take the next step, involving him in a vicious cycle. This created mayhem in the orderly world of Scotland until Macbeth himself is killed.
Ross: He is Macduff’s cousin and a loyal noble of the Scottish Kingdom. Ross delivers Macbeth’s and Banquo’s victory of the war again, the King of Norway. After the witches’ first prophecy, Ross delivers the news of Macbeth’s new title. He is one of the thanes who leave Macbeth when Malcolm and Macduff arrive with the army.
Lady Macduff: Macduff’s wife, Lady Macduff, is the opposite of Lady Macbeth. She is loyal, kind, and has a family. When Macbeth becomes the king, he sends his army to kill her and her family. She displays her innocence by refusing to run away and is killed along with her son. Macduff avenges her death in the end.

Writing Style of Macbeth

The play, Macbeth, shows the language of magnificence, irony , and fluency through the dialogue of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. However, the language becomes mysterious, halting, and somewhat cryptic by the end of the play. When the play starts, the language is highly charged, and the readers/ audiences are given the foreshadowing of future events. Using diverse literary devices , Shakespeare has exquisitely demonstrated that even a villain could be win sympathy and become a hero of the play.

Analysis of Literary Devices in Macbeth

1. Alliteration : A play written in blank verse ; Macbeth shows many examples of the use of alliteration such as:

That will be ere the set of the sun. (Act-I, Scene-I, Line, 05)
That seems to speak things strange. (Act-I, Scene-II, Line, 46)
She should have died hereafter. (Act-V, Scene V, Line, 16)

The above lines taken from different acts show the use of alliteration, which means the use of consonant sounds in quick succession in a line. For example, /th/, /s/ and /s/ sounds are repeated in quick successions in the above lines.

2. Allegory : Macbeth is an allegory that shows how good and evil resides within men. It shows that when people believe in witchcraft or similar evil practices, they do not think about consequences. Here Macbeth shows that evil resides in man, and all he needed was a curse and a prophecy. Macbeth’s ambition turns to greed, and he kills King Duncan. However, goodness prevails by the end when Malcolm and Macduff kill Macbeth together with the assistance from England.

3. Assonance : The play, Macbeth, shows good use of assonance. For example,

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought (Act-I, Scene-II, Line, 4)
So well thy words become thee as thy wounds. (Act-I, Scene-II, Line, 44)
I’ll drain him as dry as hay (Act-I Scene-III, Lines, 19)

In the above examples, vowel sounds appear after some pauses in such a way that they create a sort of melodious impacts in the verses. The sounds of /oo/, /ee/ and /a/ are used in the above lines showing good use of assonance.

4. Antagonist : If Macbeth is taken as the protagonist , the play seems to revolve around him. Then every other character like Banquo and even Macduff are antagonists, stopping his progress. However, we see that Macbeth becomes an antagonist, the main villain of the play, after he is cursed by the witches.

5. Allusion : These lines show good use of allusions.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? . (Act-II, Scene-II, Lines, 78, 79)
Approach the chamber and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon. (Act-II, Scene-III, Lines, 82-83)

These lines show a reference to the earliest mythical figures. The first is a reference to Neptune, the Roman God of the seas, while the second refers to Medusa.

6. Conflict : There are two types of conflicts in Macbeth. The first one is the external conflict that goes on between Macbeth and his enemies, such as Fleance, Malcolm, and Macduff, after he murders King Duncan. The second is the internal conflict that goes on in the mind of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

7. Consonance : The play shows the use of consonance at various places such as;

Outran the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan, his silver skin lac’d with his golden blood; and his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature for ruin’s wasteful entrance. (Act-II, Scene-III, Lines, 114-116)
Fair is foul and foul is fair. (Act-I, Scene-I, Lines, 12)

In both examples, consonant sounds /s/ in the first and then /g/, /l/ and /f/ in the second reference has been repeated in the above lines.

8. Dramatic Irony : Dramatic Irony occurs at several places in Macbeth. For example, when Macbeth receives prophetic predictions from the witches, and King Duncan is unaware of this fact. Similarly, Macbeth is unaware that witches had cursed him and poured fuel to his greed.

9. Deus Ex Machina : Deus Ex Machina means the appearance of some supernatural elements. It happens at the beginning of the play that three witches appear to predict the future course of action for Macbeth. Later they prophesy about his death and defeat with strings of tricky conditions making Macbeth overconfident and a monster.

10. Foreshadowing: The first example of foreshadowing occurs in the very first action where the bloody battle continues. It shows that another somber murder is going to take place. Another example is when Macbeth hears some voices about losing his sleep when stabbing Duncan. It shows that he and his wife are going to face psychological issues.

11. Imagery : Imagery means to use vivid and descriptive language so that the reader can visualize the depth of the text. For example,

For brave Macbeth–well he deserves that name– Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, Which smoked with bloody execution. . (Act-I, Scene-II, Lines 16-19)
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. (Act-IV, Scene -I, Line -I)
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. Is ’t night’s predominance or the day’s shame That darkness does the face of Earth entomb When living light should kiss it? (Act-II, Scene-IV, Lines 8-11)

These three examples show sensory images, showing the use of the sense of sight and sense of hearing.

12. Metaphor : Macbeth shows the regular use of various metaphors . For example,

“There’s nothing serious in mortality. All is but toys. (Act-II, Scene-III, Lines, 92-93)
The wine of life is drawn and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of. (Act-I, Scene-II, Lines, 192-5).

These are two beautiful metaphors among various other metaphors. The first one shows life compared with toys and second with wine.

13. Mood : The entire play of Macbeth shows different moods according to the situation. When the play opens, the appearance of supernatural elements and witches herald bloodshed and foul play. When it moves forward, it transforms into bloody fights and assassinations followed by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s psychological conflict that leads to suicide and death.

14. Protagonist: Macbeth is the main protagonist of the play as he causes not only envy for his position but also arouses pity and fear for his fall, though, he uses devious ways to achieve his goal.

15. Pun : Macbeth shows the use of the pun. For example,

We should have else desired your good advice, Which still18 hath been both grave and prosperous In this day’s council. (Act-III, Scene-I, Lines, 20-22)
Who did strike out the light? (Act-III, Scene-III, Line, 18)

In the first example, the king plays upon the word “grave” while in the second, the murderer plays upon “strike.”

16. Paradox : The play, Macbeth, also shows the use of paradoxes. For example,

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? (Act-I, Scene-I, Lines, 1-2)
When the battle’s lost and won. (Act-I, Scene-I, Lines, 4)

Paradox means to use contradictory ideas in the same statement. For example, the first statement shows it in the second line as lightning and rain, and the second statement shows in using lost and won simultaneously.

17. Rhetorical Questions : The play, Macbeth, has several rhetorical questions. For example,

What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” (Act-V, Scene-I, Line, 46)
as the hope drunk Wherein you dressed yourself ? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely?” (Act-III, Scene-IV, Line, 106)

These examples show the use of rhetorical questions mostly posed by the character of Lady Macbeth. They also show Shakespeare’s expertise in using rhetorical devices and couple them with other literary devices.

18. Simile : The play, Macbeth, shows the excellent use of various similes such as;

For brave Macbeth–well he deserves that name– disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, which smoked with bloody execution, like valor’s minion carved out his passage. (Act 1, Scene 2)

Here Macbeth’s ambitious character is compared to a puppet as he was cursed by the witches and did what they had been plotting before they curse him.

19. Soliloquy : The play shows some memorable soliloquies such as;

Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme. This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor: (Act-I, Scene-III, Lines, 240-247)
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips.” (Act-I, Scene-VII, Lines, 474-485)
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. (Act-II, Scene-I, Lines, 612-621)

These are some of the memorable soliloquies of Macbeth. The first two were delivered by Macbeth on different occasions to show how he is ready to act upon the prophecies. However, the third one sheds light on the Macbeth’s after he commits the crime of killing the king.

20. Verbal Irony : The play, Macbeth, shows verbal irony. For example,

There is no art To find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust. (Act-I, Scene-IV, Lines, 10-14)
Sirrah, your father’s dead. And what will you don now? How will you live?” (Act-IV, Scene-II, Lines, 30-31).

This use of verbal irony is apparent as the King says that he has absolute trust in Macbeth, and yet he has rebelled against him. In the second, Lady Macduff tells her son that her father is killed without showing that she has sensed the danger.

Macbeth Quotes
Macbeth Themes
Macbeth Characters
Macbeth Motifs
Song of the Witches: Double, Double Toil and Trouble
Speech: “Is this a dagger which I see before me
Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
10 Examples of Irony in Shakespeare
Twelfth Night Quotes
Twelfth Night Characters
Twelfth Night Themes
William Shakespeare
The Tempest Themes
The Tempest Quotes
The Tempest Characters
Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
Sonnet 55: Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments
Twelfth Night
Julius Caesar Quotes
Julius Caesar Themes
King Lear Characters
King Lear Themes
King Lear Quotes
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Taming of the Shrew
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Sonnet 11: As Fast As Thou Shalt Wane, So Fast Thou Grow’st
Sonnet 12: When I Do Count The Clock That Tells The Time
Sonnet 14: Not From The Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck
Sonnet 15: When I Consider Everything That Grows
Sonnet 10: For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any
Sonnet 16: But Wherefore Do Not You a Mightier Way
Sonnet 17: Who Will Believe My Verse in Time to Come

Introduction

Welcome to the bewitching world of “Macbeth” 🎭, a masterpiece penned by the legendary William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, often hailed as the greatest writer in the English language, has given us a treasure trove of plays that delve deep into the human psyche, society, and the intricate play of destiny vs. free will. “Macbeth” stands tall among his works, not just for its dark and thrilling plot, but also for its profound exploration of ambition, guilt, and morality.

Set against the backdrop of medieval Scotland, “Macbeth” belongs to the genre of tragedy, and it’s one of Shakespeare’s most intense and powerful plays. Written in the early 17th century, around 1606, this play was crafted in a period when the Elizabethan Era was giving way to the Jacobean Era, reflecting societal transitions and the deepening interest in psychology and the supernatural. Shakespeare, through “Macbeth,” delves into the dark corridors of the human heart, revealing what ambition can do to a person’s moral compass. This timeless piece not only entertains but also serves as a cautionary tale that resonates with audiences even today. Let’s embark on this fascinating journey through mist-covered highlands and the shadowy realms of ambition and power. 🏰✨

Plot Summary

“Macbeth” is a riveting tale of ambition, power, and the devastating consequences of overreaching desires. Here’s a detailed walkthrough of its plot:

Exposition — The play opens with thunder and lightning, setting a tone of turmoil and foreboding. We meet the three witches, who plan to confront Macbeth. Meanwhile, Macbeth, a Scottish general, along with Banquo, encounters the witches as they return from battle. The witches hail Macbeth with prophetic titles: Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and future King. Banquo is told his descendants will be kings, though he won’t be one himself.

Rising Action — The first prophecy quickly comes true when Macbeth is made Thane of Cawdor, spurring him to ponder the possibility of becoming king. Encouraged by his ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth, he murders King Duncan and takes the throne. However, guilt and fear of losing power begin to haunt both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Climax — The climax occurs when Macbeth, now king, feels threatened by Banquo and his son, Fleance, due to the witches’ prophecy about Banquo’s lineage. He hires murderers to kill them, succeeding in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth’s actions lead to increased instability in the kingdom and within his mind, as he seeks out the witches again for reassurance.

Falling Action — The witches give Macbeth three new prophecies, making him believe he is invincible. However, Macbeth’s tyranny prompts rebellion. Lady Macbeth, overwhelmed with guilt, descends into madness and eventually dies. Macbeth, in his hubris, ignores signs of his impending doom.

Resolution — The rebellion, led by Duncan’s son, Malcolm, and Macbeth’s former ally, Macduff, advances on Macbeth’s castle, using branches from Birnam Wood to disguise their numbers, fulfilling one of the witches’ prophecies. Macduff confronts Macbeth, revealing he was born by cesarean section (“not of woman born”) and kills him. Malcolm is hailed as the rightful king, restoring order and justice to Scotland.

This tale, rich in treachery, supernatural elements, and psychological complexity, illustrates the perilous path of unchecked ambition and its ripple effects on the human soul and society.

Character Analysis

In “Macbeth,” Shakespeare presents a cast of complex characters, each contributing to the depth and moral lessons of the tragedy. Here’s a closer look at the main characters and their development throughout the story:

Macbeth — Initially a valiant and loyal Scottish general, Macbeth’s character undergoes a dramatic transformation. Seduced by the prophecy of becoming king and spurred by his wife’s ambitions, he descends into paranoia, tyranny, and madness. His journey from hero to villain is marked by his increasingly reckless attempts to secure his power and his descent into guilt and despair.
Lady Macbeth — A pivotal figure, Lady Macbeth is the ambitious wife who challenges Macbeth’s hesitation and steels him to murder Duncan. Her initial strength and cold calculation eventually give way to guilt, leading to sleepwalking episodes and her eventual suicide. Her tragic arc highlights the destructive power of ambition unchecked by moral considerations.
Banquo — Macbeth’s friend and a fellow general, Banquo’s character serves as a moral foil to Macbeth. He is also prophesied great things by the witches, yet he does not act dishonorably to achieve future greatness. His murder by Macbeth’s order marks a turning point, showing Macbeth’s willingness to kill friends to secure his power.
King Duncan — The benevolent and virtuous king of Scotland, whose murder by Macbeth sets off the tragic events of the play. Duncan’s trusting nature and untimely death underscore the betrayal and the unnatural upheaval of order within the kingdom.
Macduff — Thane of Fife, Macduff emerges as the hero who challenges Macbeth’s tyranny. His loyalty to Scotland and his quest for vengeance after Macbeth has his family murdered highlight themes of justice and retribution. His confrontation with Macbeth leads to the tyrant’s death, restoring order.
The Three Witches — Mysterious and supernatural, the witches instigate the central conflict by prophesying Macbeth’s rise to power. Their ambiguous and manipulative predictions play a crucial role in Macbeth’s decisions, symbolizing the forces of fate and the dark side of ambition.

Character Analysis Summary

This array of characters, each with their distinct traits and arcs, weaves a complex narrative about ambition, morality, and the human condition.

Themes and Symbols

“Macbeth” is rich with themes and symbols that resonate through its dark narrative, offering insights into human nature and the consequences of ambition. Here’s an exploration of the major themes and symbols in the play:

Ambition and Power — The driving force of the play, ambition, is portrayed as a potent and dangerous desire. Macbeth’s ambition to become king leads him down a dark path of murder and tyranny, illustrating the corrupting influence of unchecked power.
Fate vs. Free Will — The witches’ prophecies spark the central conflict of the play, blurring the line between destiny and choice. Macbeth’s actions raise questions about whether characters are fated to follow their paths or if they have the agency to change their destinies.
Guilt and Conscience — The psychological torment of guilt haunts both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, serving as a constant reminder of their heinous acts. Their descent into madness reflects the heavy toll of a guilty conscience and the inescapable nature of their crimes.
The Supernatural — Witches, visions, and ghostly apparitions infuse “Macbeth” with an eerie supernatural element that drives the plot and symbolizes the disruption of the natural order. The supernatural acts as both a catalyst for action and a reflection of the characters’ inner turmoil.
Order and Chaos — The murder of King Duncan disrupts the natural and social order, plunging Scotland into chaos and tyranny. The restoration of order with Malcolm’s ascension to the throne underscores the play’s concern with the importance of rightful rule and stability.
Blood — Symbolizing guilt and murder, blood is a recurring motif that visually represents the violence and guilt that stain Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. “Blood will have blood,” Macbeth remarks, indicating the inevitable consequences of their actions.
The Dagger — The vision of a bloody dagger that Macbeth sees before killing Duncan symbolizes the act of murder that sets off the tragic events of the play. It serves as a tangible manifestation of Macbeth’s guilt and ambition.
Darkness — Predominant scenes of darkness in “Macbeth” symbolize evil, fear, and the unknown. Darkness envelops the characters’ deeds and the moral decay of Scotland under Macbeth’s rule.
The Weather — Stormy and unsettling weather mirrors the tumultuous events of the play and the chaos that engulfs Scotland. It also reflects the witches’ malevolent influence over nature and the fate of the characters.

Through these themes and symbols, Shakespeare crafts a timeless narrative that explores the depths of human ambition, the complexities of morality, and the eternal struggle between order and chaos.

Writing Style and Tone

William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is a brilliant showcase of his literary genius, characterized by its distinctive writing style and tone that contribute significantly to the mood and atmosphere of the play. Here’s a breakdown of key aspects of Shakespeare’s style and tone in “Macbeth”:

Dramatic and Poetic Language — Shakespeare employs a mix of prose and verse, with the noble characters generally speaking in iambic pentameter, which adds a rhythmic and elevated quality to their speech. This poetic form enhances the dramatic intensity and emotional depth of the dialogue.
Imagery and Symbolism — Vivid imagery and symbolic elements run throughout “Macbeth,” creating a rich tapestry that evokes strong visual and emotional responses. From the bloody hands representing guilt to the dark and stormy landscapes mirroring the turmoil within Scotland and its characters, Shakespeare’s use of imagery and symbolism deepens the play’s themes and mood.
Contrasts and Paradoxes — The play frequently employs contrasts and paradoxes, such as “fair is foul, and foul is fair,” to highlight the blurring of moral boundaries and the inversion of the natural order. These elements add complexity and nuance to the narrative, challenging the audience to question appearances and truths.
Atmospheric Tone — The tone of “Macbeth” is overwhelmingly dark and foreboding, reflecting the moral decay and chaos that ensue from Macbeth’s actions. Shakespeare masterfully creates a sense of unease and impending doom through his choice of language, setting, and the supernatural elements, drawing the audience into the tragic world he constructs.
Psychological Depth — Shakespeare delves deep into the psyches of his characters, particularly Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, providing insights into their motivations, fears, and internal conflicts. The soliloquies, in particular, offer a glimpse into the characters’ minds, revealing their vulnerabilities and the torment of their guilt-ridden consciences.
Use of Irony — Dramatic irony is a significant stylistic device in “Macbeth,” with the audience privy to information that the characters are not. This technique heightens the tension and tragedy, as viewers witness characters unknowingly seal their fates.

Through these stylistic choices and the tone he employs, Shakespeare crafts a work that is not only a compelling drama but also a profound exploration of the dark facets of human nature and the consequences of unchecked ambition. “Macbeth” remains a masterpiece of English literature, captivating audiences with its intricate narrative, psychological depth, and poetic brilliance.

Literary Devices used in Macbeth

Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is a masterclass in the use of literary devices, each serving to enhance the drama, themes, and emotional impact of the play. Here are the top 10 literary devices used in “Macbeth,” showcasing Shakespeare’s skillful craftsmanship:

Foreshadowing — This device is used to hint at future events, creating anticipation and building suspense. The witches’ prophecies are prime examples, setting the stage for Macbeth’s ascent to the throne and subsequent downfall.
Symbolism — Objects, characters, and actions in “Macbeth” are imbued with deeper meanings. Blood symbolizes guilt and violence, while darkness represents evil and chaos, contributing to the play’s thematic complexity.
Irony — Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something the characters do not, heightening the tragic tension. For example, Duncan speaks of the treacherous former Thane of Cawdor not knowing Macbeth, his successor, will betray him too.
Imagery — Vivid, descriptive language is used to create mental images that appeal to the senses. The “dagger of the mind” soliloquy evokes a powerful visual of Macbeth’s turmoil and the lure of power.
Metaphor — Shakespeare uses metaphors to draw comparisons between unrelated things without using “like” or “as,” such as referring to life as a “brief candle” or a “walking shadow” to convey the transient nature of existence.
Allusion — References to well-known cultural or historical events, figures, or other works of literature are used to add deeper significance. The play contains allusions to Greek mythology and Biblical imagery, enriching its narrative layers.
Personification — Giving human traits to non-human entities or abstract concepts, such as when Lady Macbeth calls on spirits to “unsex” her, imbuing the night and the act of murder with malevolent human characteristics.
Paradox — A statement that contradicts itself but holds a truth, like the witches’ chant, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” reflects the moral inversion and the theme of appearance versus reality in the play.
Soliloquy — These are speeches delivered by a character alone on stage, revealing their inner thoughts and feelings. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies are crucial for understanding their motivations and psychological states.
Alliteration — The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words close to each other, used for emphasis or to create a rhythmic effect. The witches’ speeches, such as “Double, double toil and trouble,” employ alliteration to enhance their eerie, chant-like quality.

Each of these literary devices weaves together to form the rich tapestry of “Macbeth,” showcasing Shakespeare’s unparalleled ability to engage, provoke, and move his audience through the power of language.

Literary Devices Examples

Each of the top 10 literary devices used in “Macbeth” plays a crucial role in building the play’s atmosphere, developing its themes, and deepening the characters. Here are examples and explanations for each device:

Foreshadowing

Example : The witches’ prophecy that Macbeth will become king. Explanation : Sets the stage for Macbeth’s ambition and subsequent actions to seize the throne.
Example : Banquo’s warning to Macbeth, “The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence.” Explanation : Hints at the future betrayals and consequences of the witches’ prophecies.
Example : Macbeth’s vision of the dagger leading him to Duncan’s chamber. Explanation : Foreshadows the imminent murder of King Duncan by Macbeth.
Example : Blood as a symbol of guilt. Explanation : After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth says, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” indicating his overwhelming guilt.
Example : The weather (thunder and lightning) symbolizing ominous events. Explanation : The play opens with a storm, setting a foreboding tone that mirrors the chaotic events that follow.
Example : Darkness as a symbol of evil and concealment. Explanation : Darkness covers the evil deeds committed throughout the play, such as the murder of Duncan.
Example : Duncan’s trust in Macbeth, calling his castle “pleasant.” Explanation : Dramatic irony, as the audience knows Macbeth plans to murder Duncan in that very castle.
Example : Macbeth’s title of Thane of Cawdor, a traitor’s title, before becoming a traitor himself. Explanation : Highlights the irony of Macbeth’s transformation from hero to traitor.
Example : Lady Macbeth’s eventual madness, despite her initial strength. Explanation : Ironically, she who instigated the murder succumbs to guilt, while initially, she chastised Macbeth for his weakness.
Example : The “bloody hands” imagery. Explanation : Represents Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s guilt and the direct consequence of their murderous actions.
Example : “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” by Lady Macbeth. Explanation : Visual imagery of bloodstains she cannot remove, symbolizing her guilt.
Example : The “dagger of the mind” scene. Explanation : Creates a powerful image of Macbeth’s internal conflict and the allure of power driving him to murder.
Example : Life referred to as a “walking shadow” and a “poor player.” Explanation : Conveys the fleeting, insignificant nature of human life and achievements.
Example : Macbeth describes sleep as “the death of each day’s life.” Explanation : Highlights the restorative power of sleep and the consequences of its absence, reflecting his and Lady Macbeth’s insomnia and guilt.
Example : “The crown” representing power and the burden of guilt. Explanation : The crown symbolizes Macbeth’s kingship but also the heavy guilt and fear that accompany his ill-gotten power.

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Personification

Example : “The night is long that never finds the day.” Explanation : Personifies night and day to illustrate the idea of hope and redemption after prolonged suffering and darkness.
Example : “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care.” Explanation : Sleep is personified as a healer of mental anguish, highlighting its absence in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s lives due to guilt.
Example : Lady Macbeth’s invocation to the spirits to “unsex” her. Explanation : Personifies murderous intent and the stripping away of feminine qualities for cruelty, illustrating her ambition and desire to aid Macbeth’s rise to power.
Example : “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Explanation : This paradox sets the tone for the play, highlighting the theme of appearance versus reality and the moral confusion faced by Macbeth and others.
Example : “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.” Explanation : Refers to Banquo, suggesting his lower status than Macbeth but greater in moral standing and the legacy of his descendants.
Example : “Not of woman born.” Explanation : Refers to Macduff, born via caesarean section, a paradox that plays a crucial role in Macbeth’s downfall, as he misinterprets the witches’ prophecy.
Example : Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger which I see before me” soliloquy. Explanation : Reveals his inner turmoil and moral conflict prior to Duncan’s murder, illustrating his descent into madness.
Example : Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot!” soliloquy. Explanation : Showcases her guilt and descent into madness, revealing her inner conflict and remorse.
Example : Macbeth’s “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy. Explanation : Reflects on the futility and transient nature of life, showcasing his existential despair following Lady Macbeth’s death.

Alliteration

Example : “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Explanation : The witches’ chant uses alliteration to create a rhythmic, incantatory effect, enhancing the supernatural atmosphere.
Example : “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Explanation : The alliteration emphasizes the play’s theme of the inversion of moral values and the blurring of lines between good and evil.
Example : “Full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.” Explanation : Macbeth uses alliteration to convey his mental torment and paranoia, highlighting his descent into madness.

These examples showcase how Shakespeare’s use of literary devices in “Macbeth” not only enriches the text’s thematic depth and emotional resonance but also underscores his mastery of language and storytelling.

Macbeth – FAQs

What is the main theme of Macbeth? The main theme of “Macbeth” is the destructive nature of unchecked ambition and power. Shakespeare explores how ambition can corrupt individuals, leading to moral decay and the downfall of both the individual and those around them.

Who are the three witches in Macbeth? The three witches, also known as the Weird Sisters, are supernatural beings who prophesy Macbeth’s rise to power and his downfall. Their ambiguous and manipulative predictions play a crucial role in the play, symbolizing fate and the dark forces that influence human behavior.

What role does Lady Macbeth play in Macbeth’s downfall? Lady Macbeth is a pivotal figure in Macbeth’s downfall. Her ambition and determination to see Macbeth become king drive her to manipulate and encourage him to commit regicide. Her initial strength and resolve gradually give way to guilt and madness, highlighting the psychological consequences of their actions.

How does Macbeth change throughout the play? Macbeth transforms from a valiant and loyal soldier to a tyrannical ruler consumed by guilt and paranoia. His ambition, spurred by the witches’ prophecy and Lady Macbeth’s urging, leads him to commit heinous acts. This change reflects the corrupting influence of power and ambition.

What is the significance of the prophecies in Macbeth? The prophecies in “Macbeth” are significant as they set the play’s events into motion and influence Macbeth’s actions. They also raise questions about fate vs. free will, as Macbeth chooses to act on these predictions, leading to his eventual downfall.

How does Shakespeare use supernatural elements in Macbeth? Shakespeare uses supernatural elements, such as the witches and their prophecies, visions, and ghostly apparitions, to create an atmosphere of mystery and foreboding. These elements underscore the themes of fate, ambition, and the moral inversion within the play.

What does blood symbolize in Macbeth? Blood is a powerful symbol in “Macbeth,” representing guilt, violence, and the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s actions. It visually manifests the psychological burden of their crimes and the pervasive stain of their guilt.

What is the tragic flaw of Macbeth? Macbeth’s tragic flaw is his overwhelming ambition and desire for power. This flaw, combined with the influence of the witches’ prophecies and Lady Macbeth, drives him to commit regicide and other atrocities, leading to his downfall.

Can Macbeth be considered a tragic hero? Yes, Macbeth can be considered a tragic hero. He possesses noble qualities and initially earns the audience’s sympathy. However, his tragic flaw—ambition—leads him to make choices that result in his moral decline and ultimate demise, fitting the classical definition of a tragic hero.

This quiz covers a range of topics from plot details and character roles to themes and symbols in “Macbeth,” offering a comprehensive test of comprehension for the play.

Spot the Literary Device

Read the following paragraph from “Macbeth” and identify the literary devices used. Then, check your answers below.

“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?”

Metaphor – The “dagger of the mind” suggests the dagger is not real but a product of Macbeth’s tormented thoughts, symbolizing his guilt and ambition.
Imagery – Vivid imagery is used to describe the dagger, making the audience visualize the hallucination that Macbeth experiences.
Personification – The dagger is given qualities of being “sensible to feeling as to sight,” even though it is a figment of Macbeth’s imagination.
Alliteration – “fatal vision,” “false creation” – These phrases use the repetition of initial consonant sounds to emphasize Macbeth’s turmoil.
Questioning the self – Macbeth’s questioning of his own senses and sanity reflects his inner conflict and foreshadows his descent into madness.

This exercise demonstrates the depth of Shakespeare’s use of literary devices to convey complex themes and character emotions in “Macbeth.”

by William Shakespeare

Macbeth literary elements, setting and context.

The play is set in Scotland in the eleventh century.

Narrator and Point of View

There is no singular narrator to the play, but it closely follows the experience of its lead character, Macbeth, as he aspires to kingship and descends into madness.

Tone and Mood

The tone of the play is anxious and uncertain. The mood of the play is bleak and doomed.

Protagonist and Antagonist

There is no clear protagonist in the play, as Macbeth is both a sympathetic character and the catalyst for Duncan's murder. Many have argued that Lady Macbeth is an antagonist in the play, given how much she influences her husband's behavior.

Major Conflict

The major conflict in the play is that Macbeth cannot quiet his kingly ambition after hearing the witches' prophecy, which leads him to commit a series of crimes out of anxiety and paranoia.

Many maintain that the climax of the play actually appears rather early – in Act Two, with the murder of King Duncan. After Macbeth murders Duncan, the rest of the play dramatizes his slow descent into madness and eventually his own demise.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing plays a major role in Macbeth. Most notably, the witches at the beginning of the play predict Macbeth's ascent to power, but at the same time also foreshadow Macbeth's descent into madness and eventual demise. Macbeth's hallucinations further foreshadow his inability to think rationally, as does Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking and attempts to wash the blood from her hands.

Understatement

In Act Two, after Lennox describes all the ominous noises he heard in the night, Macbeth responds by saying, "'Twas a rough night" (2.2). This remark is an example of understatement because Macbeth himself is so haunted by the omens that he cannot express his anxiety in an honest way.

Like many of Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth makes frequent use of mythological allusions to ancient Greek and Roman culture. These allusions were conventional on the early modern stage, as the term "Renaissance" (used to describe this period of English history, even while it was happening) denoted a return to the arts and culture produced in antiquity. The mythological allusions also lend moral credence to the play, as certain characters are compared to figures from Greek and Roman mythology whose stories are told primarily as lessons to be learned.

Macbeth is rife with dark, sinister, and supernatural imagery: the dagger that presumably floats before Macbeth's eyes, Banquo's ghost, the invisible blood that will not wash off Macbeth's hands, etc. These images help craft the bleak and doomed mood of the entire play, and are compounded by the frequent appearance of the witches as they predict what is to come.

The three witches often speak in paradoxical phrases and riddles throughout the play, most notably in Act One when they say, "fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1). Their words are meant to both intrigue the listener (especially Macbeth) while leaving some room for confusion and doubt. The witches' use of paradox also suggests the importance of perspective in interpreting their prophecies, as not everyone would receive the same message.

Parallelism

In Act Five, Lady Macbeth uses parallelism when she says, "Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed!" (5.1). These are the last words Lady Macbeth speaks, and the parallel structure through repetition emphasizes her inability to form coherent thoughts and her own descent into madness.

Personification

When Macbeth hallucinates the dagger in front of him, he speaks to it as if it were a person. He longs to grab the handle, which would lead him to murder Duncan. The personification of the dagger imbues it with a sense of power, which is both enticing and scary for Macbeth.

Use of Dramatic Devices

Macbeth is a play known for its unique use of the early modern stage through setting and special effects. The weather events, strange noises, and supernatural appearances of ghosts and other hallucinatory objects cast an eerie mood onto the entire play, and as such modern performances of Macbeth have become increasingly creative in the way they dramatize elements like stage direction and secondhand description that would not have been possible to represent on the early modern stage.

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Macbeth Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Macbeth is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The third which says that Banquo's sons shall be kings, Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

Macbeth Act 1 Scene 3 questions

What is significant about the first words that Macbeth speaks in the play?

A motif or recurring idea in the play is equivocation. There is the balance of the dark and the light, the good and the bad. Macbeth's first line reflects this. It...

What news took the wind out of Macbeth's invincibility?

Macbeth rethinks his invincibility when MacDuff tells him that he was torn from his mother's womb.

Study Guide for Macbeth

Macbeth study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Macbeth
Macbeth Summary
Macbeth Video
Character List

Essays for Macbeth

Macbeth essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

Serpentine Imagery in Shakespeare's Macbeth
Macbeth's Evolution
Jumping the Life to Come
Deceptive Appearances in Macbeth
Unity in Shakespeare's Tragedies

Lesson Plan for Macbeth

About the Author
Study Objectives
Common Core Standards
Introduction to Macbeth
Relationship to Other Books
Bringing in Technology
Notes to the Teacher
Related Links
Macbeth Bibliography

E-Text of Macbeth

Macbeth e-text contains the full text of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

Persons Represented
Act I, Scene I
Act I, Scene II
Act I, Scene III
Act I, Scene IV

Wikipedia Entries for Macbeth

Introduction
Sources for the play
Date and text

IMAGES

Macbeth Essay
Macbeth Essay
Macbeth Essay
macbeth essay example introduction
Essay on Macbeth
Macbeth Essay Questions

VIDEO

Macbeth
Shakespeare's Macbeth summary& character sketch &Critical analysis ( PG TRB)
"Macbeth" Quotes Analysed
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Macbeth Explanation and full analysis in Urdu/Hindi
🔴Macbeth

COMMENTS

Macbeth: A+ Student Essay: The Significance of ...
A+ Student Essay: The Significance of Equivocation in Macbeth. Macbeth is a play about subterfuge and trickery. Macbeth, his wife, and the three Weird Sisters are linked in their mutual refusal to come right out and say things directly. Instead, they rely on implications, riddles, and ambiguity to evade the truth.
Macbeth: Critical Essays
Get free homework help on William Shakespeare's Macbeth: play summary, scene summary and analysis and original text, quotes, essays, character analysis, and filmography courtesy of CliffsNotes. In Macbeth , William Shakespeare's tragedy about power, ambition, deceit, and murder, the Three Witches foretell Macbeth's rise to King of Scotland but also prophesy that future kings will descend from ...
Analysis of William Shakespeare's Macbeth
By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 ) Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare's plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce ...
Macbeth Study Guide
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, King James of Scotland became King of England. James almost immediately gave his patronage to Shakespeare's company, making them the King's Men. In many ways, Macbeth can be seen as a show of gratitude from Shakespeare to his new King and benefactor. For instance, King James actually traced his ancestry back ...
Macbeth: Full Play Analysis
Full Play Analysis. Macbeth is a tragedy that tells the story of a soldier whose overriding ambition and thirst for power cause him to abandon his morals and bring about the near destruction of the kingdom he seeks to rule. At first, the conflict is between Macbeth and himself, as he debates whether or not he will violently seize power, and ...
Macbeth: Study Guide
Macbeth by William Shakespeare, which is believed to have been written around 1606, is a timeless tragedy that delves into the corrosive effects of unchecked ambition. Set against the backdrop of medieval Scotland, the play follows the tragic downfall of Macbeth, at first a brave and honorable general. His fate takes a drastic turn when he ...
Macbeth: Analysis and Themes
Macbeth was a real Scottish king, although he was somewhat different from the ambitious, murderous creation of William Shakespeare. His wife was real too, but Lady Macbeth's real name was Gruoch and Macbeth's real name was Mac Bethad mac Findlaích. The real Macbeth killed Duncan in battle in 1040 and Macbeth (or Mac Bethad) actually went ...
Macbeth Critical Essays
Macbeth's. Topic #3. A motif is a word, image, or action in a drama that happens over and over again. There is a recurring motif of blood and violence in the tragedy Macbeth. This motif ...
Shakespeare's Macbeth essay, summary, quotes and character analysis
Timeline. Master Shakespeare's Macbeth using Absolute Shakespeare's Macbeth essay, plot summary, quotes and characters study guides. Plot Summary: A quick review of the plot of Macbeth including every important action in the play. An ideal introduction before reading the original text. Commentary: Detailed description of each act with ...
Macbeth Essays
Essays and criticism on William Shakespeare's Macbeth - Essays. Shakespeare's handling of the three witches or "weird sisters" of Macbeth is in itself equivocal. He assigns them the first dozen ...
Macbeth Study Guide
Macbeth study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. ... Essays for Macbeth. Macbeth essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Macbeth by ...
Macbeth Summary and Analysis
Literary Significance of Macbeth. Macbeth is a timeless classic from one of the most widely read playwrights of all time. Shakespeare's legacy on the Western literary canon is upheld in this tragic play. As one of his most recognizable tragedies, Macbeth helped to define the genre and reflects Shakespeare's close relationship with James I, king of England.
Macbeth
Spurred by his wife, Macbeth kills Duncan, and the murder is discovered when Macduff, the thane of Fife, arrives to call on the king. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee the country, fearing for their lives. Their speedy departure seems to implicate them in the crime, and Macbeth becomes king. Worried by the witches' prophecy that ...
Macbeth: Study Help
Get free homework help on William Shakespeare's Macbeth: play summary, scene summary and analysis and original text, quotes, essays, character analysis, and filmography courtesy of CliffsNotes. In Macbeth , William Shakespeare's tragedy about power, ambition, deceit, and murder, the Three Witches foretell Macbeth's rise to King of Scotland but also prophesy that future kings will descend from ...
Macbeth
Introduction to Macbeth. Macbeth is one of the well-known tragedies of William Shakespeare that was performed with the full title of The Tragedy of Macbeth. It is one of the plays written during the reign of James I to please him as he was the patron of Shakespeare's acting troupe. The play was first performed in 1606.
Macbeth: Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Corrupting Power of Unchecked Ambition. The main theme of Macbeth —the destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral constraints—finds its most powerful expression in the play's two main characters. Macbeth is a courageous Scottish general who is not naturally inclined to commit evil deeds ...
Macbeth: New Critical Essays
Macbeth: New Critical Essays. Macbeth. : Nick Moschovakis. Routledge, Mar 3, 2008 - Drama - 376 pages. This volume offers a wealth of critical analysis, supported with ample historical and bibliographical information about one of Shakespeare's most enduringly popular and globally influential plays. Its eighteen new chapters represent a broad ...
Macbeth by William Shakespeare: A Study Guide on Themes and Literary
Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is a masterclass in the use of literary devices, each serving to enhance the drama, themes, and emotional impact of the play. Here are the top 10 literary devices used in "Macbeth," showcasing Shakespeare's skillful craftsmanship: Foreshadowing — This device is used to hint at future events, creating ...
PDF Six Macbeth' essays by Wreake Valley students
Level 5 essay Lady Macbeth is shown as forceful and bullies Macbeth here in act 1.7 when questioning him about his masculinity. This follows from when Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth to be ambitious when Macbeth writes her a letter and she reads it as a soliloquy in act 1.5.
Macbeth Essays
Macbeth essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. ... 11005 literature essays, 2763 sample college application essays, 926 lesson plans, and ad-free surfing in this premium content, "Members Only" section of the site! Membership ...
A Look At Macbeth Tragic Hero English Literature Essay
In the play "Macbeth", the plot focuses around a war hero who becomes greedy for power, which leads to his ultimate coronation as King, and demise. At the beginning of the play, Shakespeare displays Macbeth as a war hero, back from his latest campaign, and given a new title. At first, he is shown as a good person, however, after the ...
Macbeth Literary Elements
Macbeth study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. ... Essays for Macbeth. Macbeth essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Macbeth by ...
The Blood Imagery In Macbeth English Literature Essay
The image of blood symbolizes treason, ambition and murder, contrasting what it meant earlier in the play. It is now associated with evil. After Macbeth murders Duncan, he begins to realize the magnitude of his crime. He says, "This is a sorry sight" (2.2.28), looking at Duncan's blood on his hands.
Macbeth Essay
Macbeth Essay. 527 Words3 Pages. Shakespeare's Macbeth explores the ideas of the consequences of immoral actions and their impact on people's minds by presenting the shift of the tragic hero 'Macbeth' from a loyal and brave hero who wins battles for the king to an evil tyrant who is dominated by his ambition and suffers from guilt.
Macbeth Retold Essay
Macbeth Retold Essay. 1028 Words5 Pages. The act of creating texts in its nature involves experimentation and adaptation of different language and texture elements, while sustaining the value of original literary works. Authors express themes in their writing by using expression and varying techniques. William Shakespeare, a famous poet and ...

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Macbeth Summary and Analysis

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