Macbeth Evidence

Ambition:

  1. Act 1 Scene 2, initial character + hamartia

    • "Bellona's bridegroom"

    • "Valour's minion"

    • "valiant" "noble" "brave"

  2. Act 3 Scene 1, driving ambition, fear of Banquo

    • "To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus"

    • Banquo antithesis, given set of prophecies, yet has mental clarity

      • Realises supernatural as "instruments of darkness"

      • Flatter King James I, believed descendent of Banquo

  3. Clothing motif, stolen unrightful title, cause disruption + moral decline

    • Act 1 Scene 3, dress him in "borrowed robes"

    • Act 5 Scene 2, title "hang[s] loose upon him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief"

 

Supernatural:

  1. Act 1 Scene 3, paradoxical language mirrored by Macbeth

    • "Cannot be ill, cannot be good"

    • "nothing is, but what is not"

      • "horrible imaginings" "against the use of nature" "yield"

  2. Act 4 Scene 1, 2nd set of prophecies

    • "none of woman born shall harm Macbeth"

      • Told with equivocation to mislead, convince invincible

  3. Play begins with witches, trochaic tetrameter, pathetic fallacy

    • Establish significance

    • Suggest that evil thrives only in darkness/foul weather

    • Language hostile and unnatural

  4. Motif of light and dark, influence Macbeth's alignment with evil

    • "stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires" Act 1 Scene 4

      • Evil thrives away from light

    • "dark night strangles the travelling lamp" Act 2 Scene 4

      • Personification of "night" as choking the sun (metaphor for eclipse)

      • Disruption of natural order due to regicide, break Great Chain of Being

 

Gender:

  1. Act 1 Scene 5, target Macbeth's masculinity, force alignment

    • "too full o'th'milk of human kindness", milk is white, symbolise purity innocence

    • "Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it"

  2. Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth rejection of femininity, suppression of natural human empathy

    • "direst cruelty" stop the "passage to remorse"

  3. Act 4 Scene 3, Shakespeare redefines masculinity

    • Macduff told to "dispute it like a man", reply "I must also feel it as a man"

      • Masculinity redefined to include human compassion and grief

 

Conflict/Guilt:

  1. Act 2 Scene 2, Macbeth's guilty conscience after murder of Duncan

    • "Macbeth does murder sleep" "innocent sleep"

      • Paranoia, guilt, lost innocence

      • Sleep, traditionally time of peace and purity, extremely immoral

    • Could not pronounce "Amen"

      • Distanced himself from God

  2. Motif of blood, Act 2 Scene 2, symbol of honour becomes symbol of guilt

    • Beginning of play, blood is symbol of valour, honour, bravery

    • After murder of Duncan, physical symbol of guilt

    • "All great Neptune's ocean wash this blood"

      • Roman God of sea, powerful and unpredictable force of nature, order of natural world disrupted

      • Hyperbole for enormity of guilt

    • "multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red"

      • Hyperbole for his mental distress

      • Rich sophisticated language in first phrase, initial shock

      • Simple, plain language in second phrase, horror

      • "green" symbolise pure, nature, "red" symbolise guilt, destruction, murder