Macbeth Study Guide

8/14/2019 1 Macbeth Study Guide DH - Google Docs
The Tragedy of Macbeth

Study the play as a Tragedy and as a Drama Write about the language of the play,
but also the characters, the narrative and the elements of drama – staging the play.

Consider how the play is ‘crafted’ through the combining of dramatic elements:

Settings Language Plot
eg the battlefield Macbeth’s Soliloquies follows the conventions
the heath ‘Vaulting Ambition’ (I,vii) of Shakespearean tragedy.
night scenes and
‘Tomorrow and tomorrow The action of the play
and tomorrow’ (V, v)
and Statements
contemplations
and Dialogues

Characterisation Symbolic Actions Symbolic Images
Macbeth as a Tragic Lady Macbeth’s eg: the dagger – a
Hero sleepwalking ritual, hallucinatory image of
Macbeth’s hamartia wringing her hands saying Macbeth’s will to murder
ambition that ultimately ‘out, out damned spot’ Banquo’s ghost – a
determines his destiny: reveals her repressed guilt hallucinatory image of
nothing is but what is not’ that has driven her mad. Macbeth’s guilt projected
Macbeth’s path from by his conscience.
honour to murder, his
guilt, his disillusionment,
his warrior spirit
challenging the forces of
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destiny, his self-realisation

– he has been deceived by Dramatic Irony Language
the witches and has Imagery of the diabolical /
relinquished all that is unnatural
meaningful in life. His References to the feminine
existential despair and and to manhood
fight to the death.
Verse and prose
Lady Macbeth
Her fierce ambition, desire Witches’ riddles
to be ‘unsexed’ – defiance Ambiguities / Deception
of nature, that ultimately ‘Fair is foul and foul is
gives way to her essential fair’
female nature. Guilt sends Equivocations
her mad. Suicide.
Destroyed by the distortion
of her nature.

The three witches –
supernatural hags
unnatural - ‘bearded’ -
dangerous & deceptive

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth has an historical source. Macbeth was an early
11 th century Scottish king whose reign was recorded in Holinhead’s Chronicles of
England (1577).

Shakespeare’s interest, however, is not historical so much as dramatic. Macbeth is
a tragedy, not a history play. In Macbeth , Shakespeare creates a tragic hero to
explore the nature of ‘human ambition’ and its potentially destructive effects.

The play is set in 1034, in the medieval era when the boundaries of kingdoms
were redrawn by the sword. The opening action is on a barren heath in a storm,
in the aftermath of a bloody battle. Against the odds, ‘valiant Macbeth’ has led the
King Duncan’s army and slain the Norwegian enemy to emerge victorious. He is
praised for his courage, loyalty and valour as a warrior and leader. Upon hearing
of Macbeth’s victory and learning of Cawdor’s treachery, King Duncan executes
Cawdor and promotes Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, to the Thane of Cawdor.

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The atmosphere of the opening scene, however, is dark and forboding. In thunder
and lightning on a barren heath, three witches chant:

ALL: Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair.

The statement, noticeably syntactically balanced, expresses a paradox, a
contradiction that disturbs the apparent equilibrium. The witches’ chant is
enigmatic.
“Foul is Fair”
- The bloody battle leaves a landscape of carnage = foul
- Macbeth and Banquo have led the Scottish force to victory = fair

There is more to the meaning of “Fair is Foul” with the weird sisters’ equivocal
prophesy for Macbeth that follows.

The Elizabethan belief in the Natural and the Unnatural

Natural Order refers to the divine order of things, as ordained by God.
natural bonds between king and subjects, subjects and king
upheld
balance and harmony, re lected in ‘nature’ – weather, and
fortunes.
and

Disturbance of the Natural Order
violation of the divine order of things by ‘unnatural acts’
breach of natural bonds of loyalty and duty
disturbed equilibrium brings violence, disruption and
upheaval
In Tragedy – the consequence is tragic downfall,
‘catastrophe’.

For Elizabethans and Jacobeans, morality was described in terms of what was
‘natural’ - what was Christian, virtuous and af irming of the divine order
‘unnatural’ – what was transgressive, evil and destructive.

Furthermore, Elizabethans and Jacobeans believed in a cause and effect
relationship between human behaviour and their world – events and fortunes.

‘Natural’ deeds that respected natural bonds assured success, prosperity, stability
and order.

‘Unnatural’ acts that neglected or de ied natural bonds, were considered evil and
threatened the ‘natural order’ with disruption and destruction.

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Act1, Scene 1
A desert place
Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches.

All: Fair is foul, and foul is fair

1. Describe the setting and the atmosphere of the opening scene. Explain how
Shakespeare creates it through the witches and their utterances on the heath and note
how the opening scene establishes the tone of the play.

Act 1, Scene 2

King Duncan: So well thy words become thee as thy wounds.
They smack of honour both.

1. Explain how Macbeth is characterised by the Sergeant’s report to King Duncan of
how Macbeth fought in bloody battle against the Norwegian foe. Incorporate
quotations into your response.

Act 1, Scene 3

Macbeth: So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Macbeth’s first words echo the witches. Their meaning is now clear.
1a. What does Macbeth mean when he says ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’?
1b .What greater meaning will be imbued in those words as the action of the play
unfolds? In what other way will this prove to be a day that is both ‘fair and foul’ for
Macbeth?

Note: The witches are referred to as ‘weird sisters’. ‘Wyrd’ is the Anglo Saxon word
for ‘fate’. Shakespeare thereby suggests that the witches possess the power to
prophesise the future. However, the weird sisters speak in ‘equivocal’ language . Their
words are ambiguous and deliberately conceal a truth while they reveal one. While
they do prophesy Macbeth’s future, they also conceal real truths about the terrible
ramifications.

3. Banquo describes Macbeth as initially being shocked by the prophecy of his
promotion and “royal hope”. Macbeth seems ‘rapt withal” the verb “rapt” with its
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connotation of amazement describe his distraction. Macbeth retreats into his

imagination. What image does he imagine?

Banquo comments that Macbeth’s reaction to the witches’ words that ‘sound so fair’.
Quote what Banquo says and explain what it indicates about Macbeth.

4. What is the witches’ prophesy for Banquo?

Macbeth and Banquo respond to the Situation differently. This is signi icant.
5. Describe Macbeth’s reaction to the witches’ prophesies especially after the irst
one comes true and he is proclaimed Thane of Cawdor.

A foil is a character whose particular traits function in the text to throw light on
those same traits, or excess or de iciencies of qualities, in the protagonist.
How is Banquo a foil for Macbeth?

6. Contrast Macbeth’s reaction to the witches’ words with Banquo’s. Incorporate
revealing comments Macbeth makes, as well as Banquo’s warning to Macbeth
Act 1, scene 3, Line 130, into your answer.

Macbeth: ( aside) …why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth un ix 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, (of) murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise
And nothing is, but what is not.
(1, iii, 140 – 150)

7. How does this ‘aside’ express what is going on in Macbeth’s mind?

The Inner World of the Mind
8. A central interest of Shakespeare’s in Macbeth is the subjective nature of our
own reality.
Macbeth here is physically and emotionally affected by what he imagines. He
envisages the malicious act of treachery that would open his way to becoming
king, while he shudders at the thought that he could imagine it.
What is the meaning of Macbeth’s enigmatic comment, ‘and nothing is, but what
is not’?

Macbeth: (aside) ..The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else overleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your ires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires.

9. How does Macbeth describe his ‘desires’?
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Why is Macbeth so differently affected by the words of witches on a heath than

Banquo is?
Explain the progression of Macbeth’s thinking since the initial prophesy of the
witches. What is disturbing about the direction of his thoughts? Does Macbeth
express an intention to act upon his ‘black and deep desires’?

Aristotelian Tragedy
The tragic hero’s Hamartia is Catalysed by a Situation in the Plot

Aristotle observed that in Tragedy , the tragic hero’s Situation draws forth a
particular Trait that plays itself out through the hero’s thoughts, decisions and
actions, in a way that is destructive. This trait is the hero’s hamartia.

10a. Imagine that you are the director of a production of Macbeth (for stage or
ilm) and you want to emphasise Aristotle’s idea about how the hero’s fatal law
is elicited by particular circumstances that occur.
Explain the acting and cinematic or staging decisions that you would make to
draw the audience’s attention to Macbeth’s reaction to the witches’ prophesies in
Act I, sc iii. Include notes about how to present Macbeth’s expressions, gestures
and asides. Note Banquo’s description of Macbeth when he hears the witches’
utterances as ‘rapt withall’.

10b. Idea: Macbeth’s hamartia is his ambition
Macbeth’s irst imaginings of what “might be” (that he might become king &
make this happen by murdering King Duncan) are manifest by his ambition. His
thoughts generate from his desires.
Can this explanation be sustained by all the action of the play?

10c. Idea: Macbeth’s hamartia is his reactive imagination
Or it is his ‘reactive imagination’ that most strongly characterises him. Notice
how Macbeth is characterised as reacting strongly to the witches’ suggestion that
he may be king, and following this, Lady Macbeth’s argument that he should
make it happen. It is as if his imaginative mind creates clear visions that feel real
and it is this, along with his imagination’s power to override his moral conscience
that accounts for his ‘catastrophe’ – his downfall.
Can this idea be sustained by all the action of the play?

10d. Idea: Macbeth’s hamartia is engaging with evil
Macbeth is receptive to the witches’ equivocal prediction, much more so than
Banquo who is characterised as more cautious and wise. Macbeth’s thoughts
become corrupt when he engages with the witches’ words. They become more
corrupt when he is receptive to Lady Macbeth’s persuasion to murder King
Duncan to become king. Lady Macbeth is characterised as evil when she,
witch-like, invokes the spirits of darkness to strip her of her female nature and all
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human compassion, so she can kill. Had Macbeth resisted these beguiling female
voices, and listened to is own moral, rational one, he would have avoided his
catastrophe.
Can this idea be sustained by all the action of the play?

Appearance can be Deceptive
11. Read Macbeth’s words to King Duncan in lines 24 – 31.
Contrast what he says publically with what he is thinking. (in his asides)
Macbeth is already presenting a false front. As he professes loyalty and honour to
the king, and thinks of murder, the witches’ ‘fair is foul’ applies also to Macbeth.

Macbeth : And nothing is but what is not
Macbeth expresses how immediate and real the vision of being crowned King of
Scotland seems to him. The witches’ words ignite his ambitious desire, his desire
for the greatest power a man can achieve. His imagination reacts to the idea, and
he envisages it so vividly that it feels already real.
The statement could also suggest that thoughts of it consume him now, and in
that sense, become his subjective reality. The real world fades as Macbeth is
distracted by thoughts of his great dream.

The world we inhabit in our mind
Shakespeare is interested in the world we inhabit in our mind.
We interpret the world subjectively. Our perceptions, as well as our perspectives,
goals and dreams are all the makings of our minds.
Macbeth’s irst imaginings of what “might be” (that he might become king and
make this happen by murdering King Duncan) are derived from a latent ‘passion’
or desire - his ambition. His thoughts generate from his base desires.

Reference: Rudyard Kipling’s Poem ‘If - ‘
‘If you can dream but not make dreams your master’..
You’ll be a man my son.
12. How does this relate to Macbeth?

The gendered language of Macbeth
13. The language of ‘Macbeth’ is more gendered than any other of Shakespeare’s
plays. Shakespeare is interested in how the very nature of the language we use,
with all its culturally embedded meanings, associations and corollary values,
‘shapes’ how we understand ourselves and our world.
Note that sex, male or female/ man or woman, is biologically determined.
Gender, male or female / man or woman, is culturally determined.

Note the lines from Macbeth that state the virtues and traits associated with
being a ‘man’ (as culturally gendered).
Lady Macbeth appeals to these in her appeal to Macbeth to ‘be a man’ and kill
Duncan to realise his own desire to be king.

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Note the lines from Macbeth that state the virtues and traits associated with
being a ‘woman’ (as culturally gendered).
Lady Macbeth prays to dark spirits to be divested of these .

The Opening Scenes of Macbeth in Review

Macbeth is characterised as being a valiant soldier, loyal to his liege, King Duncan.
He shows leadership and courage on the battle ield. Then when the witches
prophesise his advancement and the irst prediction, that he become the Thane
of Cawdor comes true, he is ‘rapt’. It seems incredible to him. Macbeth desires
the crown. However, at the same time, the witches “whose horrid image doth
un ix my hair”, disturb him. Banquo warns Macbeth that ‘instruments of
darkness’ that is, messengers of evil, may be deceptive.

Macbeth considers that fortune may bring about his rise to the throne of its
accord, saying ‘if chance will have me king why then, chance may crown me
without my stir,’ Act 1, scene III. Macbeth’s ambitious desire is unequivocal but
his intention to act on it at this point is less clear.

The opening scenes have at their conceptual centre the witches’ words:

Fair is foul and foul is fair.

Through the paradox, the witches speak ambiguously.

1. The witches’ incantations and their prophesies →
2. Macbeth’s initial response: he “starts’ he is stunned, shocked, shaken and
enthralled by the prediction.
3. Banquo goes on to describe Macbeth as overwhelmed by the prophesy of
his promotion and “royal hope” – “That he seems rapt withal.” The verb
“rapt” with its connotations of amazement describe Macbeth’s apparent
distraction as he imagines the glorious prospect.
4. The witches’ prophesy for Banquo is again expressed in enigmatic riddles.
(Lesser but greater, Not so happy yet much happier, shalt get kings
thought not become king, Contradictions create mystery.
5. Ambiguities: Unclear and open to interpretations. Equivocation.
6. Foreshadowing: Giving a hint early in the story to something later on.
Banquo warns Macbeth about how he interprets the witches’ words.
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7. Macbeth is fascinated by the prospect of becoming king. He can imagine

murdering King Duncan, even though the thought terri ies him and he is
shocked that he actually thinks it.
8. Elizabethan/ Jacobean belief in a dichotomy between the Natural and the
Unnatural
-“Natural” -Medieval Christian doctrine de ined a “divine order of things”
-Nature is God’s creation, it has an inherent order
- Natural equilibrium, stability, harmony

-“Unnatural”--To challenge the natural order = an “unnatural act.
-Transgression of natural bonds
- Causes disturbance of the natural order: disruption, chaos

Character Development of Macbeth as a Tragic Hero
The Progression of Macbeth’s
* Desires to Thoughts,
* Thoughts to Intention (Will to Act)
* Intention to Action – Corrupt, Evil Action
A Transgression of Nature and the Natural Order

Act 1, Scene 5. Macbeth’s Castle at Inverness
Lady Macbeth receives Macbeth’s letter

Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband detailing the encounter with the
supernatural witches, their prediction and his promotion.
She immediately resolves that they must kill King Duncan to ful il the rest of the
prophecy. King Duncan is soon arriving as their guest at the castle.

1. What is Lady Macbeth’s response to the news Macbeth sends in his letter?

Lady Macbeth subverts conventionally gendered qualities in her response to
Macbeths letter. She describes Macbeth as lacking the ruthlessness required to
murder King Duncan saying his nature is “too full of the milk of human
kindness.” Lady Macbeth depicts herself, however, as being able to inspire
Macbeth to realize his ambitious desires and act cold blood using the ‘valour of
her tongue.’

Lady Macbeth ascribes the masculine, soldierly quality to herself to denote the
will to murder as strength, like to the arm that wields the sword on the
battle ield.
Macbeth is initially characterized as a valiant soldier, a commanding leader and a
loyal subject of the king. He is ambitious for success, but the impression is that he
is virtuous, and while he might acknowledge his ambition, would act in good
conscience rather than abandon moral scruples to pursue it. Lady Macbeth thinks
too that her husband would not, by nature, follow through with the most terrible
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breach of the natural bond of loyalty that he has to his king, with ruthless
expediency for his advancement. But she intends to persuade him, and she does.

Lady Macbeth is ambitious and voraciously hungry; she is willing to do whatever
it takes to get her husband to power. Lady Macbeth appeals to the dark spirits to
strip away her humanity, particularly the feminine qualities of gentleness,
compassion and a nurturing spirit and to ill her with “direst cruelty”: to be
utterly insensitive and ruthless.

Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth is too loyal and honourable, possessing too
much ‘milk of human kindness,’ to seize the moment and murder Duncan:“
Lady Macbeth knows Macbeth has the ambition to be king, but she fears his good
nature will weaken the ruthless resolution required to achieve it when they have
the opportunity.

Notes on Lady Macbeth’s Soliloquy Act 1 Sc. V

Study closely Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy beginning, ‘the raven himself is hoarse’.

2. Write a short commentary on Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy in your own words. In
your response, include three speci ic examples and explain Lady Macbeth
expresses her desires through visual imagery.
To begin your response, state in your own words what Lady Macbeth’s personal
moral code is. Comment on how her morality transgresses Christian morality
and de ies ‘nature’.

Notes

Lady Macbeth expresses a morality that contends with Christian morality.
Her moral code speaks for complete and utter ruthlessness to achieve her
purpose. Her ambition is to attain the position of ultimate power. Macbeth
addresses Lady Macbeth in his letter as ‘my partner in greatness’ suggesting that
they share ambitious desire.

Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy is an invocation of evil, a pagan prayer or supplication.
She invokes spirits of darkness to divest her of her feminine nature and strip her
humanity so that she can act with merciless cruelty and an iron resolve.

The dark imagery in Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy graphically expresses her attempt
to separate her human ‘self’ from her ‘humanity’ as it is expressed through her
‘feminine identity’. Her language is strongly gendered.

Lady Macbeth de ies the Natural Order in her appeal to be stripped of female
compassion and thereby empowered to act beyond the limits of a woman. She is,
in some ways, like a fourth witch as she invokes diabolical spirits to empower her
by making her insensitive and utterly ruthless.

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Her desires are unimaginably “UNNATURAL”. “Unsex me now” she cries. The
imagery is demonic

The theme about duplicity and false appearances that is articulated by the
witches’ incantation ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ is developed further when Lady
Macbeth instructs Macbeth to ‘act’ the gracious host of King Duncan before they
murder him that night.

Note too that it is Lady Macbeth who proposes that they murder King Duncan
that night and she takes the task upon herself. That she as a female assumes
agency makes the murder doubly subversive.

Macbeth’s inal words are, ‘we will speak further’ suggesting that he might not be
completely resolved to commit the great offence to satisfy his ambition.

Act 1, Scene 7
Macbeth’s Soliloquy

This scene is important as at the beginning of the scene we see Macbeth express
a change of heart. He expresses misgivings about the dire course of action that
he and Lady Macbeth have discussed.

Macbeth contemplates the ‘natural bond’ of duty that he has towards his king and
considers exactly what it is that motivates him to consider committing the
greatest criminal and moral offence imaginable, the most ‘unnatural act’ possible
– murdering King Duncan.

Read Macbeth’s soliloquy, 1, VII, I – 28
beginning,
Macbeth : If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up (prevent) the consequence….

1. Write a 15 line interpretation of his train of thought. Include three of his
concerns and analyse at least four quotations in your response. As your inal
quotation, analyse the visual image (below) and interpret its meaning:

Macbeth: “I have no spur,
to prick the sides of my intent,
but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th’ other…….”

2. Focus on these lines that end Macbeth’s soliloquy. Macbeth here contemplates
his critical decision – whether to realise his intention through action, whether to
actually commit the sinful, treacherous deed.

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a) What does Macbeth mean when he says that he has ‘no spur / to prick the
sides of my intent?’ A horse is spurred to run faster or vault a hurdle. What does
the ‘spur’ represent metaphorically for Macbeth?

If the metaphorical spur is a reason that would motivate him to act upon his
thoughts or intentions, does Lady Macbeth provide the ‘spur’? Is Lady Macbeth’s
personal ambition and Macbeth’s subordination of his own morality to her
desires or by her persuasion (her ‘valiant tongue’) an aspect of his ‘hamartia’?
His character law or weakness that leads him to an error of judgement and his
tragic ‘fall’? What is this ‘spur’? Is it Macbeth’s reactive imagination, that
destabilises his own morality? Is it a distorted sense or vision of what it means
to be ‘a man’? Is it his engagement with the evil of Lady Macbeth’s argument?

d) Through the image of ‘vaulting ambition’, Macbeth conceives his ambition to
be a force that impels him to aspire to greater heights. Imagine a pole vaulter’s
ascent or an equestrian’s jump. However, Macbeth re lects that ambition in a
man ‘overleaps itself / And falls on th’other.
Macbeth is critically aware of the danger of unbridled ambition. Ambition is a
desire to advance forever higher and higher. He subtly distinguishes it from a
desire to achieve a speci ic goal saying that it ‘overleaps itself’. He is also astutely
aware of the danger of ‘overreaching’ and being destroyed by one’s own
ambition, in, ‘overleaps itself / And falls on th’other’.

e) How does this metaphor ‘that o’er leaps itself and falls / on th’other….’
represent the trajectory of the hero’s fate in a Tragedy?

3. Read the Feature Article ‘Ambition, A Double-Edged Sword’ that is about the
shift in the way that ambition has been regarded, historically and culturally, from
a human vice to a virtue. The article is posted on Schoolbox.
Towards the end of the article the writer outlines how Shakespeare represents
ambition in Macbeth .
Write down how the writer interprets these lines from Macbeth and the insight
they present on the nature of ambition.

4. In the dialogue between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that follows Macbeth’s
soliloquy, Macbeth tells his wife that ‘we will proceed no further in this
business’.
Re lecting rationally, considering his morality and his ‘natural bonds’ to his liege
King Duncan, Macbeth pulls out. Perhaps the most important comment Macbeth
makes though is:

Macbeth : Prithee peace!
I dare do all that may become a man
Who dares do more is none.

For Macbeth, what type of action ‘becomes’ a man? This is the action that he has
dared do on the battle ield, ighting in the service of King Duncan, as his loyal
subject.
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What rewards has this ‘manly’ action brought him?

What does Macbeth mean when he says that to murder King Duncan and usurp
the throne himself t is to ‘do more’, than ‘may become a man’? In fact to ‘dare…
do more’ is to not be a man? Interpret what Macbeth says.

It is important that at the end of his soliloquy where Macbeth rationally
considers his thoughts of claiming the crown by killing King Duncan, his decision
is NOT TO PROCEED.

How does this affect the argument that it is simply Macbeth’s ambition that
is his hamartia?
Is this merely incidental, of no consequence, as Lady Macbeth persuades
Macbeth go through with the murder, immediately afterwards?
Or does it indicate that there is more to Macbeth’s character that accounts
for his subsequent decision to murder Duncan, and his path of destruction
that ensues?
Lady Macbeth
Denial of Nature, Feminine Identity and Humanity
Lady Macbeth’s Transgressive Morality
Lady Macbeth embraces Evil

Read Lady Macbeth’s response to Macbeth and his concerns, Act 1 sc vii

Lady Macbeth uses powerful language to deal with Macbeth’s vacillation. She
intends to reset him on the decided course of action, and she does so, effectively.
Lady Macbeth aligns power with resolution, expediency and utter ruthlessness.

Lady Macbeth:
‘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 pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.’

Lady Macbeth expresses a merciless will through strongly gendered language.
She draws the archetypal image of the nurturing mother, and subverts it with a
description of shocking brutality that runs counter to the deepest maternal
instinct – to protect one’s child.

1. In your own words, explain how Lady Macbeth subverts her feminine identity
or ‘nature’ and appeal to Macbeth’s ‘manliness’ to persuade her vacillating
husband to block out his impulse for humanity in order to get what he wants –
satisfy the ‘deep and dark desires’.

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2. Describe Lady Macbeth’s transgressive morality. How is her ethical code at

odds with the Jacobean belief in the ‘natural order’ as inherent to Christian
doctrine and the perils of not adhering to it.

4. Quote the rhyming couplet that conventionally ends a Shakespearean scene.
What key theme of the play does this articulate once again?
How do Macbeth’s words develop the theme of the discrepancy between
appearance and reality? What does Macbeth mean here?

Themes and Imagery
4. How is the notion of ‘deceptive appearances as opposed to truth’ explored in
Oedipus Rex in comparison with Macbeth ?

MACBETH ACT 2
THE MURDER OF KING DUNCAN – DISRUPTION OF THE NATURAL ORDER
The STORM AT NIGHT AND SUNLESS MORNING AFTER

Scene 1 Before the murder

Macbeth: Is this a dagger, which I see before me
The handle toward my hand? ….
…..Or art thou but
A dagger or the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
………There’s no such thing
It is the bloody business that informs thus
To mine eyes. Now over one half the world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep.
Soliloquy, Act II, i

1. What does Macbeth mean when he suggests that the dagger that he perceives
leading him towards Duncan’s chamber is a ‘dagger of the mind’?
What does he realise about the way his mind is affecting him?
Is the ‘dagger of the mind’ a symbolic image of Macbeth’s ambition, or his
subconscious horror of the crime he is about to commit? Or is it a dramatic
representation of his ‘reactive imagination’ sliding into the world of tangible
reality? Is this an intrusion of the terrible murder he imagines into the real
world, as a precursor to the deed itself?
The world of the mind and the world of reality are merging, for Macbeth as he
prepares to realise his bloody thoughts in actual action.
How does this characterise Macbeth?

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Scene 2 Immediately after the murder

2 . Lady Macbeth returns to say that she could not follow through. Despite her
diabolical incantations and bold statements of her resolution, why couldn’t she
murder King Duncan?

The murder of King Duncan changes Macbeth immediately.

Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are irrevocably changed after the murder, but
the impact of it affects Macbeth most acutely, irst.

Macbeth : This is a sorry sight.
Lady Macbeth : These deeds must not be thought
After these ways. So it will make us mad.

3 . What is Lady Macbeth’s counsel here? Is she right?

Macbeth : Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth has murdered sleep,’ - the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care….
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course…

4. What does Macbeth fear that he has lost forever, and why? Describe his tone.

Macbeth : What hands are here? …
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Lady Macbeth : A little water clears us of this deed.

Macbeth : To know my deed
‘Twere best not know myself ( knock)
Wake Duncan with thy knocking!
I would thou couldst!

6 . Look at Lady Macbeth’s statement. She and Macbeth are in the act of
committing the crime, literally with blood on their hands. She encourages
Macbeth to quickly wash off the blood.
a) What can the water ‘clear’ them of?
b) What can the water not ‘clear’ them of? What can it not wash away? How does
Macbeth imaginatively express this through imagery?

Lady Macbeth’s philosophy is that what people see to be true, rather than what is
true, is essentially what matters. Furthermore, she argues that if they themselves
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do not think about the murder they’ve committed, it will not occupy their
thoughts or trouble their conscience – (and she has already prayed to dark
spirits to eradicate her own conscience, her humanity.)
She posits that what is not thought on, effectively does not exist in one’s
consciousness or the consciousness of others if it is effectively concealed.

If they do think on the crime, dwell on it, they ‘will go mad’ she warns her more
sensitive and introspective husband.

Lady Macbeth argues that to get rid of the evidence is effectively to rid
themselves of the crime.

Lady Macbeth sets the world of observable reality against the inner world of the
mind. She also sets appearances up against truth.
The play is about which is ultimately more powerful.
The play explores whether truth can be eradicated by will, or rather does it lurk
in what Freud terms the ‘subconsciousness’, the repository of human instincts,
dark emotions and desires.

7 . How does Macbeth express the guilt, shame and regret that presses hard upon
him after committing murder?
Interpret his re lective statement. How has the murder he has committed
changed him – his character, his identity, the way he ‘knows’ himself?
Is his voice the voice of a man celebrating the impending satisfaction of his great
ambition? How does this express that the crime of regicide irrevocably corrupts
Macbeth’s own nature, the rhythms of nature, his inner world, his mind?

8 . What is the impact of Macbeth’s comment , ‘To know my deed / ‘Twere best
not know myself’ j uxtaposed against Lady Macbeth’s comment ‘ A little water
clears us of this deed’?

‘And Nothing is but what is Not’
THE TWO WORLDS OF MACBETH

Lady Macbeth : “A little water clears us of this deed”

LMB’s argues that eliminating the evidence (that can be “seen”) is as good as
eliminating the crime. Ambitious and politically unscrupulous, she looks conceal the
truth in the external world.

Macbeth: “To know the deed t’were best not know myself ”
↓
(The murder) (it were)
Knowing the horror of the offence against the king and against nature that he has
committed, Macbeth abhors the truth about himself – the treacherous murderer he is.
He can not eradicate the deed as in his mind, he knows he is culpable and irrevocably
changed.
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Macbeth did not foresee the pangs of guilt that would torture him and he is struck
with remorse and regret.

● How does Lady Macbeth’s perspective conflict with Macbeth’s?
● Macbeth is characterised as extremely introspective. The world he inhabits in
his mind pervades his consciousness.

Macbeth’s hallucinations, of ______ and _______ dramatically represent the inner
world of his thoughts and fears sliding into physical reality, Macbeth realises the
dagger is ‘a dagger of the mind’, a manifestation of his horror of the parricide he is to
commit, but the world of his imagination, charged by his greatest desires and fears, is
indistinguishable from reality after Macbeth has bloodied his hands with Banquo’s
murder and he sees Banquo’s ghost.

[Compare how ideas about the truth and “seeing” are presented in Oedipus Rex and
Macbeth]

Macbeth as a Tragic Hero

What are your feelings towards Macbeth at this point in the play?
Does he still command the admiration that he earned as an honourable and loyal
warrior ighting for his king on the battle ield?
Or is your view of him altered?
Explain your answer.

9 . Pathetic Fallacy – The weather expresses the ‘atmosphere / mood ‘
Lennox reports that a ferocious storm ripped across the land that night causing
wreckage. There were also some strange aberrations of nature sighted.

The Elizabethan/ Jacobean audience would have understood these events as the
reverberations of the abhorrent disruption of nature that was King Duncan’s
murder.
What were some of the disturbing reports of strange sightings that night that
indicate nature gone wrong? (lines 50 – 60)

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth lie about the night’s events. Banquo and Macduff,
however, fear ‘treasonous malice’. The king’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain
decide to lee to England and Ireland for safety.

Their departure means that the sovereignty is passed to Macbeth.

The witches’ prophesy is ful illed, and ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair’.

Act 3 Scene 1
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Macbeth’s Soliloquy

Macbeth: To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus
Our fears in Banquo stick deep
And in his royalty of nature reigns
That which would be feared. …
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety. There is none but he
Whose being I do fear.
……….
They hailed him father to a line of kings
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
……
For Banquo’s issue have I (de iled) my mind
For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered….
Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list (the tournament area)
And champion me to the utterance! (to the death)

Macbeth is crowned king, but it the sovereignty that he so dearly sought does not
bring the ful ilment that he expected. Macbeth no longer has peace of mind. He
can’t he is so tormented with suspicions and fears of losing what he has
unrightfully gained. Guilt weighs heavily upon his conscience and in addition he
is constantly unnerved by the fear that the truth that he conceals will be
discovered.

In his soliloquy in Act II scene I Macbeth expresses that satisfying his ambition to
be king is not enough now. He must secure it for his sons, whom he would see his
heirs, not Banquo’s, otherwise the cost is too great. His fears have him tortured
by constant anxiety. He also realises that he has not only sacri iced his peace of
mind, but his honour and his very soul for this worldly prize. Macbeth needs the
crown to be worth this great cost.

1. In your own words, outline Macbeth’s contemplations through this soliloquy.
Is there anything noble or honourable in Macbeth’s motivation now?

Note the shift in his tone, his voice and how this reveals how he has changed.

2. Focus on the last lines. What is Macbeth’s new resolution? What does it mean
he will do? How does the imagery evoke it? What has driven Macbeth to this?
What does Macbeth instruct the assassins to do? How successful are they?

Act 3, Scene 2
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth : ‘Nought’s had, all’s spent
Where our desire is got without content
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Macbeth: Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep
In the af liction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.

Macbeth : Oh full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

Macbeth : Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till though applaud the deed. Come, seeling night
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with they bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! …..
……
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

1. This short scene is a confessional dialogue between Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth. Each expresses the unremitting agitation that they now live with – the
inescapable torment of a guilty conscience, uncertainty, and fear of being found
out. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have achieved their great ambition at a cost that
Macbeth suggests, is too great. Lady Macbeth was wrong in thinking that if
murder could be concealed, it would recede into the past (‘ what’s done is done’ )
without repercussion or rami ication. She was wrong in thinking that it would
not affect them, only raise them to the ultimate position of status and power.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth achieve the positions they desired, but they are
irrevocably changed in a way that they were unable to foresee.

In this sense, Macbeth’s hamartia could be, at once, an excess of imagination,
being morally vulnerable to the power of his desires, and a failure of
imagination, as he was unable to visualise the guilt and fears that would trouble
him forever after committing the crime.

1. How do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth express regret that they have lost the
peace of mind by losing their clear conscience? And how do they express how
unsettled they feel? Include quotations.

2. Macbeth says that the emotional anguish is so unendurable that it would be
better to be dead than to have to live with it. Their rise to power is fruitless
without contentment.

At the same time, Macbeth takes over from Lady Macbeth as the agent of brutal
action. He invokes the ‘seeling night’ and the forces of darkness in the way that
Lady Macbeth did in her pagan prayer to ‘murdering ministers’.

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Explain what Macbeth calls for in the quotation above, and explain the meaning
of his inal line. Consider also Macbeth’s development as a tragic hero here. What
does Shakespeare suggest accounts for Macbeth’s decision to murder again?

Act 3, Scene 4
Banquo’s Ghost Scene, A Hall in the Palace

Banquo is murdered at Macbeth’s instruction.
Macbeth holds a banquet. Macduff refused the invitation to attend.

At the banquet, Macbeth hallucinates again. This time though, it is in public, at a
banquet with Ross, Lennox and other lords in attendance. Lady Macbeth is hard
pressed to explain Macbeth’s ravings from ‘the heat oppressed brain.’ Macbeth
effectively indicts himself for Banquo’s murder.

Look at the dialogue between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the banquet when
the guests have left, shocked and confounded.
Macbeth seems to be receding more and more into a world that his fears are
crafting in his mind – the fear of being discovered as a treacherous murderer and
the fear of future threats to his position and posterity. His inner world, the world
of his imaginings, this time of the bloody murder of Banquo, again slides into his
reality. Macbeth does not realise, as he did when he saw the dagger, that he only
imagines what he sees. The horrifying vision of murdered Banquo appears so
real that he has to be persuaded by Lady Macbeth that it is not.

This dialogue reveals a further stage in Macbeth’s great moral descent, the
catastrophe in the tragedy. Read the scene again and focus on these lines:

Macbeth: It will have blood they say
Blood will have blood. …

1. What comment does Macbeth make here about violent actions? Is he making a
comment about a fate that is beyond his control, or does his comment mean
something slightly different?

Macbeth: … ………. For mine own good
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go over.
Strange things I have in head that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.

Lady Macbeth : You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

Macbeth: Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse
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Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.

We are but young in deed.

Macbeth re lects on where he is now. Now, having also killed his peer and friend
Banquo, Macbeth expresses that he is not only a murderer whose hands the seas
can not wash the blood from; now he is ‘wading’ in blood.

The opening line quoted here is also interesting in that it assumes the same
consideration about how he should proceed to act in his situation, that Macbeth
made earlier in his soliloquy in Act 1 sc vii. Then, he weighed up his natural
obligations to his king and the goodly nature of his reign, against his own
self-interest, and concluded not to proceed with the murder. Only Lady Macbeth
talked him back into it.
Now, however, thinking through the same issue, how to proceed to act after
murdering Duncan to obtain the crown and hounded by fear of losing it to
Banquo, Macbeth decides to act solely in self-interest. He will eliminate any and
all whom he fears. And Macbeth comes to this decision without any persuasion,
wilfully, alone.

Macbeth makes a critical moral decision about how to proceed from here.

1. What moral choice does Macbeth have to make at this moment in the play?

2 . Interpret the imagery in his speech to explain what he resolves to do.

3. Earlier Macbeth said: I dare to all that may become a man.
Who dares do more is none.
How is Macbeth’s resolution here a further betrayal of his own moral values? And
‘natural laws’ as Shakespeare’s Jacobean audience understood them?

4 . What is foreboding about Macbeth’s inal statement: We are but young in
deed? What does this metaphorical comment foreshadow ?

Act III, Scene v
Hecate instructs the Witches

The three witches on the heath visit Hecate, queen of the witches. They anticipate
that Macbeth will call on them to learn more about the future so that he might
eliminate his enemies. Hecate instructs the witches on how to deal with Macbeth
and reveals her intention to bring about Macbeth’s destruction by illing him
with overcon idence.

Hecate: As by the strength of their illusion
Shall drive him on to his confusion.
He shall spurn fate, scorn death and bear
His hopes above wisdom, grace and fear
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1. How does Hecate describe the intended effect of the witch’s equivocations
(ambiguous prophesies) upon Macbeth?

Macbeth Act 4

Act IV scene I
Macbeth visits the Witches

1. Describe each of the three apparitions. Sketch each one in your workbook.
Underneath each sketch, quote what each apparition says to Macbeth.

2. Sketch the inal apparition:
A show of eight Kings and Banquo last, with a glass in his hand.

3. What reassures Macbeth? And what continues to trouble him?

4. In Act III, scene vi, Lennox and a Lord describe Macbeth as a cruel and bloody
tyrant whose reign is despotic. People live in fear and yearn for freedom. Macduff
has left Scotland to England where he will meet Malcolm (King Duncan’s eldest
son). They will muster an army to attack Macbeth and rid Scotland of his brutal
tyranny.

When Macbeth hears that Macduff has left for England, Macbeth reiterates his resolve
to ruthlessly eliminate anyone who sparks suspicion, without reserve, without
thought. Macbeth determines to violate natural justice. His next target is the family
that Macduff has left at home – his wife, children and all his household.

Macbeth: ……… From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done !
The castle of Macduff I will surprise,
………. Give to the edge of the sword
His wife, his babes and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. ….
This deed I’ll do before the purpose cool.

In comparison with Lady Macbeth, who saw the way to act ruthlessly as being to
summons evil and defy nature, Macbeth finds the way to ruthless action in reacting
instinctively to fears, and deliberately avoiding thought.
Preventing reasoned thought circumvents the voice of conscience, of human
compassion, of human nature.

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Responding to suspicion with spontaneous violence, Macbeth’s method to control his

fear also denies his humanity. As his imagined fears grow, his fear becomes
pathological. In an attempt to crush them, Macbeth embraces savagery.

Macbeth’s limitless brutality is inhumane. It wrecks destruction upon Scotland and it
is also self-destructive.

Shakespeare dramatically represents through Macbeth’s catastrophe, his descent into
brutality and its destructive impact, as the consequence of a breach of the natural
order. Macbeth as a Jacobean tragedy thereby affirms the natural order, and the
sanctity of the legitimate monarch.

Act 4, Scene ii
The murder of Macduff’s wife and children

This is a critical scene in the tragedy. It dramatises visually, on stage, Macbeth’s
vicious brutality, destruction and violence.
The crucial question is whether the slaughter removes Macbeth from the audience’s
sympathy, such that sympathy shifts to the victims of his cruel regime.

Macbeth has Macduff’s castle burned to the ground and his wife, children and
household mercilessly slain. His violence is unfettered. He spares no one in the
slaughter.

1. Describe the destruction of Macduff’s castle and the murder of his family in your
answer to the question:
How does this inhumane brutality characterise Macbeth now? Is Macbeth no more
than a bloody butcher?
Has he become monstrous?
Does Shakespeare remove Macbeth from the audience’s sympathy through this scene?
Or is the audience able to feel deep pity for a man who was initially so noble, become
so corrupted by evil?
How different is Macbeth’s catastrophe from Oedipus’s in Oedipus Rex?

Macbeth Act 5

Macbeth’s Tragic Fall
The ‘Catastrophe’

Act 5, scene 1
Lady Macbeth, descended into Madness

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A doctor is called to attend on Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking each

night, speaks of the murder she and Macbeth have committed and conducts a ritual
where she attempts to wash blood from her hands.

Lady Macbeth : Out, damned spot! Out I say!.... Who need we fear who
knows it, when none can call our power to account.

This subconscious manifestation of her guilt and consuming fear of detection replies
to her own assertion that the truth could be concealed without consequence on the
night of King Duncan’s murder, when she said: ‘A little water clears us of this deed.’
False appearance ultimately gives way to truth.

1. How is Lady Macbeth’s somnambulistic hand-washing ritual a symbolic action ?
To end your response note how Shakespeare uses antithesis to comment on the
pervasiveness of truth, particularly within one’s own mind, through conscience.

Elizabethans, or more precisely, Jacobeans under King James 1, who watched the
original performances of Macbeth, believed that a cause of ‘madness’ was being
possessed by an evil spirit. Another explanation of derangement, or losing one’s wits,
was committing some grave, moral offence. How do these commonly understood
causes of derangement justify Lady Macbeth’s affliction?

Shakespeare and the Natural Order
Shakespeare dramatizes, through the fate of Lady Macbeth, that the consequence of
disturbing the natural order was the disturbance of one’s own ‘nature’.

In fact the doctor describes Lady Macbeth’s ailment as:

Doctor: A great perturbation in nature.,,,

2. Early in the play, after receiving Macbeth’s letters full of future promise, when
Lady Macbeth prepares to fulfil her ambition, she invokes spirits of darkness to strip
her of her female ‘nature’. Considering Lady Macbeth’s earlier attempts to deny her
feminine nature and her humanity, how would the Jacobean audience interpret her
descent in to madness in Act V? How does the ‘female nature’ that Lady Macbeth
appealed to ‘unnatural’ forces of evil to strip away, ultimately reclaim her?

Lady Macbeth: What, will these hands never be clean? No more of that, my
lord, no more of that. You mar all with this starting.

Doctor : …… Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles…
More needs she the divine than the physician….

Note how the repetition of references to the ‘natural’ and the ‘unnatural’ speak to the
audience in defence of the divine natural order of things and he terrible consequences
of breaching it.
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Act 5, Scene 3
Dunsinane Castle. Macbeth Reflects.

Macbeth appears differently again in this scene. He reflects on what has passed and
inferentially, the regrettable terrible price he has paid to become king.

Where previously Macbeth summonsed his warrior spirit to challenge fate ‘to the
utterance’ ( to the end, to his death, Act 3, sci), now Macbeth sounds world-weary.

When Macbeth hears news that his nobles and their armies are deserting him to join
forces with ten thousand English soldiers who are approaching the castle, he says:

Macbeth: ….. – This push
Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends
I must not look to have. But in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain ( wish to ) deny and dare not.

1. Macbeth seems to feel aged by experience. But as always, he comments on his
situation with insight and awareness.
What does Macbeth realise that he has lost by forfeiting his integrity for his ambition?
What rewards, tributes, virtues that are venerated in wise elders does he regret not
having?

In your response, identify the new TONE of Macbeth’s voice here, in Act V, and
explain how it denotes an inner change.

Note also that Macbeth speaks about how he APPEARS to others. While he presents a
false façade as legitimate king, he cannot force respect or love.

Informed of Lady Macbeth’s distraction, Macbeth says to the doctor:

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ….
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Look at Macbeth’s diction here. He draws on disease imagery. He describes a moment
in the past that is ineradicable, indelibly preserved in ‘memory’ as a ‘rooted sorrow’.
He speaks of ‘perilous stuff’ is weighty burden on the heart.

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Is this the language of a tyrant who is desensitised to violence, bereft of any sense of
humanity?
Does Macbeth’s insight into his own tragic fall, and his profound regret, redeem him
in the audience’s eyes?
Or does it rather serve as a warning to any who might have thoughts that question the
Protestant monarch King James 1, of the dire consequences of such unnatural, evil
ideas that transgress the natural order?

Act 5
Macbeth – A Tragic Hero?

Formulating his model of ‘tragedy’ as a dramatic form, based on his study of
contemporary Ancient Greek plays such as Oedipus Rex, Aristotle states that in order
for the protagonist to be a tragic hero , he must experience a moment of anagnorisis.
He must make a critical discovery about himself – his error and his failing. This
reminded the Ancient Greeks of hubris by reminding them that their fates were in the
hands of the gods.

Cultural beliefs were different nearly 2000 years later, in 1606 when Shakespeare
writes Macbeth.

The Ancient Greek audience of Oedipus Rex had a polytheistic religion and believed
that the gods intervened in human affairs and possessed the divine power to shape
human destiny. The greater power of the gods was to be feared, and the didactic
purpose of Ancient Greek tragedy was to remind people of human limitation though
the pity elicited for the tragic hero who is a victim of fate.

In Jacobean England, Christian doctrine put forward the notion of a divine natural
order ordained by God to explain the nature of existence - why things are as they are.
At the same time it fortified the established order, with the monarchy at its head,
representing it as unchallengeable. That God endows humanity with free will is
another Christian belief. Free will offers the individual the power to determine his
own destiny through his individual will – his decisions and his actions. Renaissance
humanism also celebrated the dignity of man through exercise of the will, creative
spirit and intellect. The belief is that God created man with a purpose, to be master of
the dominions following divine, ‘natural law’, so that the earth might flourish.

While Shakespearean tragedy does focus on the character and fate of a tragic hero, it
not have exactly the didactic purpose that Aristotelian tragedy has, because cultural
beliefs had changed. Shakespeare’s Jacobean audience did not believe in Ancient
Greek gods, so they would not fear their power. Shakespearean tragedy, rather, offers
insights into human nature. Macbeth may additionally convey a political message.

An idea to consider
26

Sophocles elevates tragedy, distancing it from the audience to guide them. This
happens through the audience’s ‘catharsis’, their emotional release of pity and fear
through bearing witness to a story that is removed from their own lives, on stage, but
that elicits sympathy, and recognition.

Shakespeare humanises tragedy. Shakespeare explores the shadowy recesses of the
human soul. Macbeth gives form to our darkest impulses, our desires, our
pathologies. It is more immediately about human nature and the world of the hero –
the inner world of the mind, the various influences upon him, the human condition
and the nature of human existence.

Act 5, Scene 5

There is a significant difference between the how the audience sees Macbeth and how
he appears to his tortured and oppressed Scottish subjects. The audience has a fuller
vision of Macbeth by having access to his thoughts, his fears, his mind. Macbeth’s
asides, private comments and soliloquies present a vision of a man whose
overwhelming sorrow and regret and tortuous fears set him on a trajectory of bloody
violence from whence he feels there is no turning back. He appears as a man who
with resolute despair determines to challenge Fate and fight it to the death, destroying
all that is valuable, slaughtering innocents along the way. Then, there is, arguably, his
moment of self-knowledge.

Macbeth, at his castle, prepares for battle against the approaching force of thousands,
as he sees, as the weird sisters prophesised, ‘Birnam wood come to Dunsinane’. Then
he is informed that his wife is dead. (Lady Macbeth commits suicide)

If Macbeth expresses a deep insight, the truth about himself and his fate, his
anagnorisis, it is perhaps expressed in his soliloquy Act 5, scene 5.

A Tragic Hero’s Anagnorisis, Or Not?
Macbeth’s Soliloquy, Act 5 scene 5

Macbeth : She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word –
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,
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Signifying nothing.

1. How do you interpret Macbeth’s soliloquy?
Does it express his anagnorisis? If it does, what is Macbeth’s profound insight?
Or is it an expression, rather, of ultimate resignation and despair?
Or is it a distorted vision of life emanating from a mind darkened by evil?
Does it refer to Macbeth’s own life only, or is it a revelation of the nature of life
universally?
How would the Jacobean audience respond to Macbeth here?
How does the modern audience? Does a further shift in values and belief alter our
response to Macbeth at all?

Then Macbeth sees his fate approach as Malcolm’s army, obscuring themselves from
sight behind branches that they carry, advance from Birnam wood. He realises that
the witches have deceived him:

Macbeth: I pull in resolution and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth. ‘Fear not, till Birnam Wood
Do come to Dunsinane,’ and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane….

Act 5, scene 7 and scene 8

Macbeth leaves his castle stronghold and challenges all comers on the battlefield. He
is determined to fight ‘to the utterance’, his courage fortified by the witch’s prophesy
that he should not fear death by any man (of woman born).

Macbeth: They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly,
But bear-like, I must fight the course. What’s he
That was not born of woman? Such a one
Am I to fear, or none.

Macduff finally confronts Macbeth with his personal vendetta. Macbeth had his wife
and children slaughtered.
A particular exchange as Macduff confronts Macbeth is very interesting;

Macduff: Turn, Hell-hound, turn!

Macbeth : Of all men else I have avoided thee.
But get thee back, my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.

1. What does this reveal about Macbeth?

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Macduff explains that he was not naturally birthed. He was a caesarean birth. Macbeth
realises that the witches’ equivocations have deceived him.

Hearing that Macduff was ‘from his mother’s womb untimely ripped’, Macbeth
refuses to fight him. Macduff calls him a ‘coward’ and vows that he will be:

Macduff: … as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,
‘Here may you see a tyrant.’

Macbeth retaliates saying that he will not yield and fights. Macduff slays him. His
head is cut off and carried on a spike for ridicule on public display.

Macduff: Behold where it stands
The usurper’s cursed head. The time is free .

Malcolm is hailed ‘King of Scotland’. He speaks the final word on Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth, describing them as:

Malcolm: … this dead butcher and his fiend-like Queen

The ending of the play anticipates the coronation of Malcolm that will end the terrible
suffering inflicted on the people under Macbeth’s tyranny. As is conventional in
Shakespearean tragedy, order is restored, reflecting the Elizabethan / Jacobean belief
in the divine, natural order.

In Act V the audience is given an insight into Macbeth’s personal thoughts and
feelings that the characters in the world of the play do not have.

We hear Macbeth’s mournful expressions of regret as, approaching death, his thoughts
are of the ruin that he has brought upon himself (and others?) We hear a voice of
conscience speak again. Macbeth’s humanity re-emerges in his reflections of sorrow
and loss.

To Macduff and the Scottish people, however, Macbeth is damned as an oppressive,
bloody tyrant.

2 . In Act V, is our privileged perspective of the inner world of Macbeth enough to
earn him our sympathy at the end?

3 . Having studied the play, is Macbeth, in your opinion, a tragic hero in the
Aristotelian sense? Is he a tragic hero at all?
What does the evaluation of Macbeth as being a tragic hero rely upon?
The catastrophe in the tragedy is truly shocking. Does Macbeth re-establish any
nobility of spirit, or at least, humanity, that elicits sympathy from the audience, at the
end?

4. Macbeth’s hamartia: his tragic flaw
29

Is it his ambition, his reactive imagination, his susceptibility to persuasion, his

engagement with evil, his submission to fear, all of these, none, or something else?
Which aspects of his character account the most for his moral decline and his terrible
brutality? What, according to your personal reading of the play, is Macbeth’s
hamartia?

The Natural Order
In Shakespeare

In the early modern era of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the medieval notion a
divine, natural order of things continued to be the established paradigm to explain the
nature of existence – the way things are.

In this ‘order’, God the omnipotent creator occupied the heavenly realm. The king
was the head of the earthly realm, of his kingdom and the social hierarchy of leading
30

nobility and clergy down to merchants, craftsmen, and peasants below. Humanity
ruled the dominion of the animal world.

King James 1 affirmed this hierarchical ‘chain of being’ in his declaration of the
Divine Right of Kings, effectively bolstering the legitimacy of his majesty and
condemning challenge to it as an offence not only to him personally or to the state,
but to the entire NATURAL ORDER.

Shakespeare often deals with oppositions in his plays, and none so much as the
opposition between NATURAL ORDER and DISORDER.

The Elizabethan belief in the Natural and the Unnatural

Natural Order refers to the divine order of things, as ordained by God.
natural bonds between king and subjects, subjects and king
upheld
balance and harmony reflected in ‘nature’ – weather, and
fortunes.
and

Disturbance of the Natural Order
violation of the divine order of things by ‘unnatural acts’
breach of natural bonds of loyalty and duty
disturbed equilibrium brings violence, disruption and upheaval
In Tragedy – the consequence is tragic downfall, ‘catastrophe’.

For Elizabethans, morality was described in terms of what was ‘natural’ - what was
virtuous and life affirming, and ‘unnatural’ – what was evil and destructive.

Furthermore, Elizabethans believed in a cause and effect relationship between human
behaviour and their world – events and fortunes.
‘Natural’ virtuous deeds assured success, prosperity, stability and order.
‘Unnatural’ evil acts threatened the ‘natural order’ with disruption and destruction.

These are two opposing conditions, or worlds Macbeth.
The physical world and the inner world of the mind are also two worlds in Macbeth.

In Shakespeare,
MORAL CORRUPTION is a DISORDER
Disruption of the Natural Order brings Destruction

Consider Macbeth’s hamartia as a Shakespearean tragic hero.
31


Hamartia – Macbeth’s engagement with evil.

The tragedy dramatizes how engagement with evil leads to a moral corruption within.
From the moment Macbeth imaginatively engages with the witches’ prophesy, his
thoughts turn to evil imagining. He visualises murdering King Duncan, a ‘horror that
doth unfix my hair’. He engages again with Lady Macbeth’s soliciting, she who has
attempted to cast off her feminine and essential human nature in a pagan prayer to the
spirits of darkenss, ‘murdering ministers’. Imagery of nature transgressed, and
gruesomely, terribly disturbed, permeate the play: the ghastly storm the night of
Duncan’s murder when escaped horses ate eachother, Lady Macbeth’s shocking claim
that she would pull the infant child from her breast and dash its brains out, rather than
live with their unrealise desires, Macbeth’s vision that the blood on his hands can not
be washed clean by the waters of all the seas, but would rather turn ‘the seas
incarnadine.’

The Disruption of Nature in Macbeth

It’s origin is with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. When they murder King Duncan they
corrupt themselves – their human nature.

Disruption of the Inner World of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

The immediate consequence is a disturbance in their minds. They lose their peace of
mind. They are tense, anxious and fearful that their crime will be discovered and their
position contested for retributive justice. Note how Shakespeare dramatizes this in
various ways.
Identify key quotations from Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that express this.
Macbeth becomes a brutal tyrant. Overwrought with fear, so ‘full of scorpions’ is his
mind, he descends to savage butchery.
Lady Macbeth, initially unremorseful, cannot sustain her defiance of her nature.
Ineluctably, she succumbs to her nature, her ‘feminine’ nature, it is argued, and goes
mad.

Disruption in the World

Scotland suffers storms, famine and oppression under the tyrannical king, Macbeth,
who murdered the legitimate King Duncan.

Shakespearean Tragedy
In the reign of King James 1
Jacobean England
32


Shakespeare wrote his early plays under Queen Elizabeth 1. Her majesty Queen
Elizabeth 1, the virgin queen, reigned during a golden age of stability and a
flourishing of the arts. Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII had separated England
from Papal power, the Catholic Church. He joined the established the Church of
England as a Protestant church. This rejection of rule from Rome was aligned with the
Protestant reformation across northern Europe, following the Lutheran lead in 1616.
The consequence was ongoing conflict between Catholics and Protestants in England.
Queen Elizabeth 1 died in 1603.

King James VI succeeded Queen Elizabeth 1. In 1587, Queen Elizabeth 1 had ordered
the execution of James’s mother, her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth was very
reluctant but ultimately acted on the advice of her counsel, in response to fears that
Catholics wanted to depose Elizabeth and instate Mary as a Catholic monarch. Mary
Queen of Scots had been married to a French prince. When he died in the 1550s,
however, she remarried a Scot, a Stuart. Traduced by talk that she played a hand in her
husband’s death, she stood down from the Scottish throne, passing it to her infant son
James. He became James VI of Scotland and was brought up staunchly Protestant.
Elizabeth named James her successor and he was crowned James 1 of England in
1603.

King James 1 did not enjoy the universal popularity of Queen Elizabeth 1. The nobles
resented his calls for more money so he established a new order of baronets who
could buy titles, as a revenue raiser.

In 1605, the gunpowder plot, a Catholic plot by to blow up parliament, was only just
averted.

King James 1 declared The Divine Right of Kings, the notion that the king was
instated by God as part of the Natural Order, in a time of political instability.

He was fascinated by witchcraft and had written a book on it.

He commissioned the Bible written in English (from Latin). This is known as the
King James Bible.

He patronised the arts.
While King James was married to a Danish princess, (Denmark was a Protestant
kingdom so this consolidated Protestantism under a Protestant monarchy in England),
his favourites were male.

Macbeth in the context of England under King James 1

33

Here is an argument about Macbeth.

Shakespeare wrote Macbeth to suit the tastes of King James 1
● It is set in Scotland and King James VI is himself a descendent of Banquo.
● It features witches, witchcraft and black magic, a topic that was of immense
interest to King James. He had written a book on it.
● It is about the Natural and the Unnatural. Specifically, Macbeth warns against
disturbance of the natural order by the seditious and sinful act of parricide.
This affirms King James 1 regency amidst the religious and political tensions
in England under his reign.

34

Questions to Explore Comparing Oedipus Rex and Macbeth

considering ‘Tragedy’ as a ‘Dramatic Form’

The overarching question is, ‘Compare Aristotelian tragedy in Oedipus Rex with
Shakespearean tragedy in Macbeth. ’

1. Element of Form : The Tragic Hero.

Compare Macbeth and Oedipus as Tragic Heroes. Refer to Aristotle’s model.
How does Oedipus illustrate the Aristotelian tragic hero?
Is Macbeth a tragic hero?
If Macbeth is a Shakespearean tragic hero, specifically how is he similar to and
different from the Aristotelian tragic hero , Oedipus?

2. How does Shakespeare manipulate the conventions of Aristotelian tragedy in
Macbeth ?

If you attempt to map out the plot of Macbeth, does it conform to the plot conventions
of Aristotelian tragedy?

3. What role does the theme of ‘truth and appearance’ have in Oedipus Rex, and by
comparison, how is the theme of ‘truth and appearance’ explored in Macbeth?

4. Close-up on an Element of Tragedy: The tragic hero’s HAMARTIA
Compare how this is represented in each play and its role in the tragic hero’s
downfall.

5. Close-up on an Element of Tragedy: The tragic hero’s ANAGNORISIS
Compare the ‘critical discovery’ made by each ‘tragic hero’ Oedipus and Macbeth: -
what it is, how they come to it and how they express it in the plays.

6. Close-up on an Element of Tragedy: the Audience’s CATHARSIS
How is the audience positioned to respond to the tragic hero’s downfall:

a) in Oedipus Rex b) in Macbeth

Catharsis requires dramatic magnitude –a terrible turn of fate is required to elicit an
empathetic response from the audience and a realisation about their own humanity.
Compare the experience of CATHARSIS for the audience of

a) Oedipus Rex b) Macbeth

7. Is Macbeth more relatable, relevant and meaningful than Oedipus due to the way
that it explores human nature? Is Macbeth a more ‘human’ character than Oedipus?

35

8. Both plays are interested in the relationship between the individual and their
external forces that shape destiny. How does each text do this, considering its
particular historical and cultural context?

9. Oedipus Rex and Macbeth have universal appeal as they both explore moral
problems and moral decision-making. They prompt the audience to ask: What would
I do? How would I act? And everyone encounters moments when they must choose a
course of action when the question is a moral one.
What moral decisions do Oedipus and Macbeth have to make at crucial moments in
the plays? How do their decisions ‘universally’ speak to the audience?

10. Characterisation: Lady Macbeth: What is the role of Lady Macbeth in Macbeth?
Does she have a unique place in Shakespearean tragedy?

11. The Witches in Macbeth: Are the witches a unique invention in Macbeth? Or are
they a permutation of a Chorus in Ancient Greek Tragedy? Explain the role of the
witches in Macbeth and compare it with the role of the chorus in Oedipus Rex.

36


Model : Close analysis of Language and Meaning

from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Macbeth’s Soliloquy Act 5 scene 5

‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day’. Macbeth begins by repeating the phrase ‘tomorrow, and tomorrow …’ the
pauses between each ‘ tomorrow ’ create a slow, ponderous pace. This gives the
impression Macbeth is burdened by some great weight. He feels that his life is
being drawn out to a meaningless end. For Macbeth now, life moves at a “petty
pace”, suggesting that not only has it almost stopped, but that it has lost its
purpose and has become reduced to insigni icance. His tone is of resignation and
defeat.

Macbeth continues, saying that (we) ‘ ind all our yesterdays have lighted fools the
way to dusty death, ’ Macbeth depicts life as the passage of time that man’s
existence spans that inevitably leads to death. Now, for Macbeth the notion that
life has real purpose and meaning would only be believed by ‘fools’ . A ‘ dusty
death ’ alludes to the Biblical words that man was made from dust and unto dust
will return.

Macbeth’s complete disillusionment about life bereft of purpose is in striking
contrast to the sense of empowerment and direction he felt when he was driven
by ambition. The witches’ prophesies and Lady Macbeth’s entreaties in lamed his
own hopes, his dark desires. Now, having lost it all, life is empty.

Macbeth continues his contemplations though a sequence of visual images . He
says, ‘ out, out brief candle’ . The candle lame is a metaphor for life. It casts a
light that is brief and fragile. With nothing to live for Macbeth calls for the light to
be extinguished; for his life to end. Macbeth then represents life as, ‘ A walking
shadow / a poor player, that struts and frets his hour on the stage / and then
heard no more .’ The analogy compares life to a theatrical performance with its
arti ice and drama played out, as the actor ‘ struts ’ and ‘ frets ’ and at the end of the
act is silenced by death. Macbeth’s inal meditation that life is a ‘ tale told by an
idiot, / full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing ’. The metaphor again
highlights the intensity and drama of life, suggested by the ‘ sound ’ and ‘ fury ’ of
great ambition, the intensity of the battle to achieve it, the trumpet call of
triumph in victory or destruction in defeat.

Macbeth’s ultimate conclusion though, is that it is all ultimately meaningless. The
inal two words that stand alone in the inal line, distill Macbeth’s insight and
despair: Life ‘ Signi ies nothing ’.

37


Soliloquy Act 1, Scene 7 Macbeth

The imagery of Macbeth's soliloquy reveals the intentions he would like to
achieve ("assassination," "success"), but its construction shows the workings of a
mind still very much in confusion.
Notice the insistent repetition of individual words — if, were, done, be, but, and,
2 here — each repeated two or three times within the irst few lines. Within the
luid construction of this soliloquy, words and sounds constantly attract and
suggest each other, giving the impression of a train of thought. All this prompts
the question of whether Macbeth, able to rationalize and express his thoughts, is
thereby revealed as an intelligent, poetic soul.
And if that's the case, does he appear more human, and capable of winning our
sympathy?

If - = A hypothesis
If these were the facts:
1. If he’s going to commit murder – regicide – he should do it immediately.
LMB “catch the nearest way.”
2. If all the repercussions would be eliminated – ‘die’ – with King Duncan &
that the assignation would be successful.
3. But Macbeth must consider the sin and implications for his soul –
damnation for eternity
4. A decision to make – consider ‘Divine Justice’ – that his actions will have
repercussions/ divine retribution.
5. There are “natural bonds” that de ine Macbeth’s relationship to King
Duncan

Macbeth vacillates. He says:
“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.”

Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy Act 1 Sc. V

Lady Macbeth invokes dark spirits to divest here of her feminine nature – her
human compassion.
Lady Macbeth expresses a morality that contends with Christian teaching.
38

The moral code speaks for complete and utter ruthlessness to achieve their
desires and purpose. Their desire and purpose is to ful il the ambition to attain
the position of ultimate power. Macbeth addresses Lady Macbeth in his letter, ‘my
partner in greatness’ suggesting that they share the desire for advancement.

The imagery in Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy is so graphic it illustrates that Lady
Macbeth’s attempt to separate her human ‘self’ from her ‘humanity’ as it is
expressed through her ‘feminine identity’.

Masculine de ining qualities:
LMB
Identi ies the de ining qualities of a ‘man’ as:
- Courage – to manifest will in action will
- Advancement – Success
Macbeth
Identi ies the qualities of a ‘man’ as Honour – Virtue
= Macbeth’s morality here refers to the Christian world view
“ the Christian Moral code”
“ the Christian “paradigm.”

Shakespeare’s thematic interest:

- The world within the mind
- A subjective reality
- The way our thoughts shape the way we perceive world around us, and
shape the thoughts that guide our actions
- The way our imagination shapes our dreams for the future

The dynamic between our inner world and the external world:
The world of the mind and reality.
Mind:
- What one imagines envisages feels
Reality:
- The actual world
- The objective truth

Homework:
Select 10 important quotations from throughout the play. For each quotation:
Explain its meaning,
Identify dramatic or language devices and
Its significance in the tragedy.

39

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The Tragedy of Macbeth

destiny, his self-realisation

connotation of amazement describe his distraction. Macbeth retreats into his

Why is Macbeth so differently affected by the words of witches on a heath than

7. Macbeth is fascinated by the prospect of becoming king. He can imagine

What rewards has this ‘manly’ action brought him?

2. Describe Lady Macbeth’s transgressive morality. How is her ethical code at

Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.

Responding to suspicion with spontaneous violence, Macbeth’s method to control his

A doctor is called to attend on Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking each

Is it his ambition, his reactive imagination, his susceptibility to persuasion, his

Here is an argument about Macbeth.

Questions to Explore Comparing Oedipus Rex and Macbeth

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