Macbeth

Characters:

• Macbeth

  • Lady Macbeth's husband and a Scottish nobleman, the Thane of Glamis. He is made Thane of Cawdor for his bravery in battle, and becomes King of Scotland by murdering the previous King, Duncan. As Macbeth opens, Macbeth is one of the great noblemen in Scotland: valiant, loyal, and honorable. He's also ambitious, and while this ambition helps to make him the great lord he is, once he hears the weird sisters' prophecy Macbeth becomes so consumed by his desire for power that he becomes a tyrannical and violent monster who ultimately destroys himself. What's perhaps most interesting about Macbeth is that he senses the murder will lead to his own destruction even before he murders Duncan, yet his ambition is so great that he still goes through with it.

  • Quotes:

    • “Stars, hide your fires!

      Let not light see my black and deep desires.” (Act 1, Scene 4)

    • “I have no spur

      To prick the sides of my intent, but only

      Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

      And falls on the other.” (Act 1, Scene 7)

    • “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 2, Scene 1)

    • “Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!

      Macbeth does murder sleep, — the innocent sleep;

      Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,” (Act 2, Scene 2)

    • “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.” (Act 5, Scene 5)

• Lady Macbeth

  • Macbeth's wife. Unlike her husband, she has no reservations about murdering Duncan in order to make Macbeth King of Scotland. She believes that a true man takes what he wants, and whenever Macbeth objects to murdering Duncan on moral grounds, she questions his courage. Lady Macbeth assumes that she'll be able to murder Duncan and then quickly forget it once she's Queen of Scotland. But she discovers that guilt is not so easily avoided, and falls into madness and despair.

  • Quotes:

    • “Come, you spirits

      That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

      And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full

      Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,” (Act 1, Scene 5)

    • “Look like the innocent flower,

      But be the serpent under it.” (Act 1, Scene 5)

    • “Nought's had, all's spent

      Where our desire is got without content.” (Act 3, Scene 2)

    • “Out, damned spot! out, I say!” (Act 5, Scene 1)

• Banquo

  • A Scottish nobleman, general, and friend of Macbeth. He is also the father of Fleance. The weird sisters prophesy that while Banquo will never be King of Scotland, his descendants will one day sit on the throne. Banquo is as ambitious as Macbeth, but unlike Macbeth he resists putting his selfish ambition above his honor or the good of Scotland.

• Macduff

  • A Scottish nobleman, and the Thane of Fife. His wife is Lady Macduff, and the two have babies and a young son. Macduff is completely juxtaposed to Macbeth: a Scottish lord who, far from being ambitious, puts the welfare of Scotland even ahead of the welfare of his own family. Macduff suspects Macbeth from the beginning, and becomes one of the leaders of the rebellion. After Macbeth has Macduff's family murdered, Macduff's desire for vengeance becomes more personal and powerful. —> He kills Macbeth as he was “"untimely ripped" from his mother's womb", turning the prophecy against Macbeth

• King Duncan

  • The King of Scotland, and the father of Malcolm and Donalbain. Macbeth murders him to get the crown. Duncan is the model of a good, virtuous king who puts the welfare of the country above his own and seeks, like a gardener, to nurture and grow the kingdom that is his responsibility. Duncan is the living embodiment of the political and social order that Macbeth destroys.

• Malcolm

  • “The older of King Duncan's two sons, and Duncan's designated heir to the throne of Scotland. Early in the play, Malcolm is a weak and inexperienced leader, and he actually flees Scotland in fear after his father is murdered. But Malcolm matures, and with the help of Macduff and an English army, Malcolm eventually overthrows Macbeth and retakes the throne, restoring the order that was destroyed when Duncan was murdered.”

• The Weird Sisters

  • Three witches, whose prophecy helps push Macbeth's ambition over the edge, and convinces him to murder Duncan in order to become King. The witches' knowledge of future events clearly indicates that they have supernatural powers, and they also clearly enjoy using those powers to cause havoc and mayhem among mankind. But it is important to realize that the witches never compel anyone to do anything. Instead, they tell half-truths to lure men into giving into their own dark desires. It's left vague in Macbeth whether Macbeth would have become King of Scotland if he just sat back and did nothing. This vagueness seems to suggest that while the broad outlines of a person's fate might be predetermined, how the fate plays out is up to him.

Key themes

• Ambition

  • Macbeth is a play about ambition run amok. The weird sisters' prophecies spur both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to try to fulfill their ambitions, but the witches never make Macbeth or his wife do anything. Macbeth and his wife act on their own to fulfill their deepest desires. Macbeth, a good general and, by all accounts before the action of the play, a good man, allows his ambition to overwhelm him and becomes a murdered

• Fate

  • From the moment the weird sisters tell Macbeth and Banquo their prophecies, both the characters and the audience are forced to wonder about fate. Is it real? Is action necessary to make it come to pass, or will the prophecy come true no matter what one does? Different characters answer these questions in different ways at different times, and the final answers are ambiguous—as fate always is.

• Violence

  • The play begins in battle, contains the murder of men, women, and children, and ends not just with a climactic siege but the suicide of Lady Macbeth and the beheading of its main character, Macbeth. In the process of all this bloodshed, Macbeth makes an important point about the nature of violence: every violent act, even those done for selfless reasons, seems to lead inevitably to the next. The violence through which Macbeth takes the throne, as Macbeth himself realizes, opens the way for others to try to take the throne for themselves through violence. So Macbeth must commit more violence, and more violence, until violence is all he has left. As Macbeth himself says after seeing Banquo's ghost, "blood will to blood." Violence leads to violence, a vicious cycle.

• Nature and the Unnatural

  • In medieval times, it was believed that the health of a country was directly related to the goodness and moral legitimacy of its king. If the King was good and just, then the nation would have good harvests and good weather. If there was political order, then there would be natural order.

• Manhood

  • Over and over again in Macbeth, characters discuss or debate about manhood: Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth when he decides not to kill Duncan, Banquo refuses to join Macbeth in his plot, Lady Macduff questions Macduff's decision to go to England, and on and on. Through these challenges, Macbeth questions and examines manhood itself.

Quotes

• “By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something wicked this way comes.” (Act 4, Scene 1)

Symbols

• Blood

  • Blood is always closely linked to violence, but over the course of Macbeth, blood comes to symbolize something else: guilt. Death and killing happen in an instant, but blood remains, and stains. At the times when both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel most guilty, they despair that they will never be able to wash the blood—their guilt—from their hands.

    • “Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” (Act 2, Scene 2)

• Sleep

  • When he murders Duncan, Macbeth thinks he hears a voice say "Macbeth does murder sleep" (Act 2, Scene 2). Sleep symbolizes innocence, purity, and peace of mind, and in killing Duncan Macbeth actually does murder sleep: Lady Macbeth begins to sleepwalk, and Macbeth is haunted by his nightmares.