Introduction to Macbeth
With Macbeth we directly enter into the prime of William Shakespeare’s career. Queen Elizabeth died in 1602 without a direct heir to the throne, so a cousin, King James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England. In what must be regarded as the most prolific creative explosion in literary history, between 1599 and 1606 Shakespeare wrote As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, Macbeth, King Lear and Anthony & Cleopatra.
Macbeth is the story of a very good and a very brave man who is corrupted by ‘vaulted ambition’ after three witches promise that he will be king and that his accompanied friend Banquo will have his descendants become kings after Macbeth’s reign. As well, his wife encourages, prods and mocks him into killing King Duncan in order to ensure the witches’ prophecy and accelerate the process. But after killing the king and being crowned in his place, it all begins to unravel. Macbeth assumes the throne but then becomes increasingly paranoid of Banquo and has him murdered. The killing continues, as ‘blood will have blood’. Lady Macbeth is likewise wracked with guilt and finally commits suicide. King Duncan’s son and MacDuff rally the forces who oppose Macbeth and he is defeated and killed in accordance with the witches’ prophecy.
Macbeth is as much about the ascension of a Renaissance Scottish King to the English throne, and his fascination with witches, as anything else. This was a play clearly intended to please, intrigue and flatter Shakespeare’s new monarch. King James became the patron of Shakespeare’s acting troupe, conferring upon them the honored title of “The King’s Men”. As he won over the heart of his English Queen he will do so again with his Scottish King.
Drawn from Holinshed’s ‘Chronicle of Scottish History’, the loosely based Banquo is a supposed direct ancestor to King James and Shakespeare lavishes his sympathy upon this character. Banquo is assured by the witches that, while he himself will not be king, his descendants will be. King James must have been pleased indeed to witness the staging of this play where ancient witches prophecized and predicted his English Kingship. James had hunted down witches in Scotland between 1590-92 and had over 70 of them imprisoned, while he personally interrogated many of them at their trials before most were burned at the stake. They usually confessed grotesque and improbable deeds under the torture preceding their murders. Three of these witches had personally assured King James that he was indeed a decendant of Banquo. King James even wrote a treatise on witches, titled ‘Daemonologie’, which lashed out at the increasingly popular belief that there were no such thing as witches or witchcraft. Witches were hunted and burned until well into the 1700s in both Scotland and England. It is no coincidence that the witches encountered by Macbeth and Banquo conform precisely to King James’ beliefs. Shakespeare had done his homework. They are ugly old hags who have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for the gift of half-awful powers. They traffic with the Prince of Darkness and this must have enthralled King James. Naturally, today’s audiences tend to see Macbeth’s psychological state as more important than the witches curse as a driver of the action in the play. Shakespeare was merely adapting King James’ own beliefs into memorable theatre.
Macbeth is one of the shortest of Shakespeare plays and the plot develops rapidly, with a speed unmatched in any of the other tragedies. It is almost relentless in its pace. There is no relief whatsoever from the singular, focused and gripping plot. Attention remains fixed upon the crimes and their two perpetrators. Macbeth is an uncanny unity of setting, plot and characters, fused together beyond comparison with any other Shakespeare work.
Like Richard III, Macbeth is a victim of criminal ambition. The actual historical Macbeth killed King Duncan in battle and ruled for 14 years before Duncan’s son, Malcom, fought and killed Macbeth and assumed his father’s throne. Other than that, Shakespeare completely creates his own version of Macbeth, as he did with Richard III.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, before the curtain rises to our play, had been a loyal and brave subject to King Duncan. It is ambition, ignited by the prophecy of the witches and his crown hungry wife, that alter his character profoundly and sweep away all moral restraints. Unlike Richard III, Macbeth is heroic and altogether stable when we first encounter him, which explains why we relate to him as readily as we do. Almost immediately he subordinates his good soldierly qualities of loyalty, bravery, nobility and valour to those of ambition and superstition, and his downfall is assured. The onset of conscience and the face of his terrifying assaults of fear create a character that has fascinated audiences for centuries. His old courage is blotted out by his horrific fear of what he has done and become. Macbeth suffers intensely from knowing that he does evil, and that he must go on to do worse yet. After the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth finds he has given birth to a new and intolerable self, a self he must remain until he is slaughtered.
The ghost of murdered Banquo is an awful projection of Macbeth’s persistent dread and the figment of an imagination half crazed by fear. But ‘blood will have blood’ and the only path that Macbeth traverses is as a butcher and a killer. His wickedness deprives his life of all meaning. He is a magnificent monster and his soliloquies are tirades.
Lady Macbeth moves to her catastrophe by a different course from that of her husband. She ‘unsexes’ herself and tries to breathe her determination for the crown into the will of Macbeth. But as he concocts murder after murder, her repressed nature sinks under the strain of nerve wracked sleeplessness and despair. She may inspire her husband to hardness and murder but in the end she lacks that very hardness of heart necessary to survive this play. Macbeth himself refuses to follow his wife into madness and suicide. Again, like Richard III, Macbeth will learn that killing himself to the throne will never bring contentment. He must kill and kill again, trapped in a cycle of violence and haunted by an active imagination. Like most of the tragedies, Macbeth is a very dark play, as nightmares await those with a guilty conscience. It is a tragedy of the imagination, seeped in blood. Macbeth becomes a great killing machine endowed with an imagination so vividly portrayed as phantasmagoria that it must be Shakespeare’s own. At the very least, Macbeth represents an inner emblem of that faculty in Shakespeare.
The witches, his wife, his own ‘heat oppressed brain’ and a good dose of paranoia persuade and propel Macbeth toward self-abandonment. No one else in all of Shakespeare is as occult as Macbeth. His language and imaginings are those of a seer and his great utterances repeatedly break through his plunging and diabolical confusions. He is as much a natural poet as a natural killer. The ultimate irony of Macbeth are divisions in the self – both his and ours. His consciousness seems to have our contours and we have no choice but to participate in his journey from genuine authenticity to the charnel house.
Shakespeare was clearly interested in the psychology of murder and the way one man’s nightmare can quickly become that of an entire nation. Macbeth is the study of someone fated with self-knowledge coupled with self-loathing and journeying deeper and deeper into a kind of ‘existential hell’, which we can see coming from the moment he stops to listen to the witches. After the murder of King Duncan there is no turning back. He bought his ticket and must take the ride. Every subsequent murder only further destroys him until his life loses all meaning and becomes ‘a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
Shakespeare depicts a strong marriage breaking down before our eyes, leaving both partners psychologically vulnerable and imbalanced. They were once both strong characters, who become blood obsessed shadows of their former selves under the intense scrutiny of their crimes. They were likely Shakespeare’s happiest married couple until the play begins. They are like two friends, despite their crimes.
The audience is pulled in tight to their relationship with this very good man turned Machiavellian murderer, as his last traces of human decency are obliterated. We become even closer to Macbeth as he initially resists temptation and vaulting ambition. We identify with him because, as Shakespeare knew well, our own imaginations can be as frightening an archetype as Macbeth’s. Also, this singular character so dominates his own play that we often have nowhere else to turn, other than to Lady Macbeth and her imaginings, which offer little respite. We journey inward down Macbeth’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. The enigma of Macbeth is the lead character’s hold upon our sympathy. He is Mr Hyde to our Dr Jekyll. Jekyll, you recall, turns into Hyde and cannot get back. Shakespeare suggests we could share such a fate. Macbeth is a visionary maniac, not unlike Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a work profoundly influenced by Shakespeare and Macbeth. They both become world destroyers, as the Atlantic Ocean and the Scottish heath amalgamate. One of Shakespeare’s great strengths is radical internalization and this is his most internalized drama, played out in the guilty imagination that we share with Macbeth.
Macbeth is a very superstitious play, seeped in witches, blood and murder. To this day actors refuse to use the name “Macbeth”, but rather refer to it as the “Scottish Play”, a clear tribute to Shakespeare’s vivid imagination and dark envisionings.
The London theatre scene was a pretty wild and raucous environment in Shakespeare’s day. There are countless examples of groundlings expressing their displeasure with fruit, vegetables, bottles and even chairs. Many performances had to pull the curtain on plays too disrupted to continue. The year before Macbeth premiered at the Globe King James passed an obscenity law, ensuring that the vulgar and dirty bits were removed from all performances. The groundlings loved the dirty bits. Remember, Shakespeare is trying to appeal to the aristocracy in the cushy seats as well as the groundlings who, for a penny, could stand right up against the stage. With Macbeth, Shakespeare astonishes them all in Act I, Scene I, which is eleven lines long. As the curtain rises there are three witches and they are waiting for Macbeth. No one threw fruit or veggies, let alone bottles or chairs. The entire audience was enchanted and the speed of the plot development maintained their fixation on Macbeth, his wife, his witches, his victims and the blood and imagination that never lets up until the curtain comes down just 22 lines after Macduff appears with Macbeth’s head.
Act I
Scene i
An open place.
Enter three witches
Witch # 1: “When shall we three meet again?”
Witch # 2: “Upon the heath.”
Witch # 3: “There to meet Macbeth.”
All 3 witches: “Fair is foul and foul is fair.”
Summary and Analysis
The dark superstitious tone is set along with the dire premonition by these malignant forces. ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’ proves true throughout the play as the welcoming and wholesome nature of Macbeth’s fair castle will transform into a scene of the grotesque and foul murder of a king, inspired by the seemingly gracious hostess, Lady Macbeth. Things are indeed not what the appear to be, as the witches warn. This opening scene immediately plunges the audience into a state of disorder and chaos. And we haven’t even encountered Macbeth yet, although his name is already on the witch’s lips. The stormy thunderous revolt of nature will mark the rest of the play. Shakespeare gets our attention early. Are these unnatural hags predicting Macbeth’s future or causing it? A spell has been cast on us as well as Macbeth
Act I
Scene ii
A military camp
Enter King Duncan and Malcolm with attendants, meeting s bleeding sergeant.
Duncan: “What bloody man is this?”
Malcolm: “This is the sergeant who fought against my captivity. Hail, brave friend! Say to the king the knowledge of the broil as thou did leave it.”
Sergeant: “Doubtful it stood, as the merciless Macdonwald, worthy to be a rebel, showed like a rebel’s whore. But for brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name – disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, which smoked with bloody execution, like valour’s minion, carved out his passage and faced the slave till he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps, and fixed his head upon our battlements.”
Duncan: “O valiant cousin! Most worthy gentleman!”
Sergeant: “But the Norwegian lord, surveying advantage, with furbished arms and a new supply of men, began a fresh assault.”
Duncan: “Dismayed not this our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?”
Sergeant: “Yes, but I must report they were as canons overcharged and they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe. But i am faint; my gashes cry for help.”
Duncan: “So well thy words become thee as thy wounds. They smack of honour both – Go, get him surgeons.”
Enter Ross
Ross: “God save the King!”
Duncan: “Whence came thou, worthy thane?”
Ross: “From Fife, great King, where the Norwegian banners flout the sky and fan our people cold. Norway himself, with terrible numbers, assisted by that most disloyal traitor, the Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict, till Macbeth confronted him point against point, arm against arm, curbing his lavish spirit; and to conclude, the victory fell on us.”
Duncan: “Great happiness! No more shall that Thane of Cawdor deceive our bosom. Go pronounce his present death, and with his former title greet MacBeth. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.”
Summary and Analysis
We still don’t meet Macbeth in scene ii but we learn only wonderful and admirable things about him. A battle has just occurred against Norway and a dying sergeant tells King Duncan and his son Malcolm what transpired on the bloody field: ‘that brave Macbeth – well deserving of that name – disdaining fortune, and with brandished steel smoked with bloody executioin, carved out his passage. Macbeth and Banquo, bathing in reeking wounds, redoubled strokes upon the foe until the victory fell on us.’ The King is so impressed and delighted that he assigns the great title of Thane of Cawdor upon Macbeth, just as the witches predicted. The plot is advanced by our hearing about the brave and good Macbeth, for so he was. This scene is very violent in its description of Macbeth in battle and in the wounded soldier who tells the story. His violence is a foreshadowing of so much blood to come.
Act I
Scene iii
Upon a blasted heath
Enter the three witches
1 Witch: “Where hast thou been, sister?”
2 Witch: “Killing swine.”
3 Witch: “Sister, where thou?”
1 Witch: “A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap and mounched and mounched and mounched. ‘Give me’ quote I. ‘Aroint thee, witch’ she cried. ‘I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do. I’ll give thee a wind and the very ports they blow, that sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his lid. He shall be tempest-tost. Here I have the sailor’s thumbwrecked as homeward he did come.”
3 Witch: “A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come.”
Enter Macbeth and Banquo
Macbeth: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”
Banquo: “What are these? So withered and so wild in their attire, that look not like the inhabitants of the earth, and yet are on it. ‘You should be women, and yet your beards forgive me to interpret that you are so.’”
Macbeth: “Speak if you can. What are you?”
1 Witch: “All hail, Macbeth, Thane of Glamis.”
2 Witch: “ All hail, Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor.”
3 Witch: “All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter.”
Banquo: “Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear things that do sound so fair? In the name of truth are thee fantastical, as outwardly ye show? My noble partner you greet with great prediction of royal hope that he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not. Speak then to me.”
1 Witch: “Hail!”
2 Witch: “Hail!”
3 Witch: “Hail!”
1 Witch: “Lesser than Macbeth and greater.”
Witch # 3: “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So, all hail, Macbeth and Banquo.”
Macbeth: “Stay, you imperfect speakers. Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence, or why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting.”
The witches vanish.
Banquo: “Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?”
Mabeth: “Your children shall be kings.”
Banquo: “You shall be king.”
Macbeth: “And Thane of Cawdor, too.”
Enter Ross and Angus
Ross: “The King hath happily received, Macbeth, the news of thy success. As thick as tale came post with post, and every one did bear thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence.”
Angus: “We are sent to give thee thanks and call thee Thane of Cawdor. Hail most worthy Thane, for it is thine.”
Banquo: “What, can the devil speak true?”
Macbeth: (aside to Banquo) “Do you not hope your children shall be kings?”
Banquo: (aside to Macbeth) “Tis strange, but oftentimes to win us to our harm the instruments of darkness tell us truths.”
Macbeth: (aside) “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 shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not. If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me. Come what may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
Banquo: “Look how our partner is rapt. New honours come upon him.”
Macbeth: “Let us toward the King.” (aside to Banquo) “Think upon what hath chanced; and, at more time, the interim having weighed it, let us speak our free hearts each to other.”
Banquo: (aside to MacBeth) “Very gladly.”
Summary and Analysis
So good Macbeth and good Banquo have met the witches and have heard their predictions. They are intrigued, but such superstition is dubious, to be sure. But then they meet Ross, who announces that he has been named the Thane of Cawdor, exactly as the witches foretold. The thoughts begin to pour in on Macbeth that he could be king as well, just as he is being led to meet the very good and the very grateful King Duncan himself. Banquo is more cautious, warning Macbeth that the witches prophecies could lead him into danger. Is Macbeth’s fate sealed or does he still maintain the power to shape his own destiny? Clearly his ambition has been ignited and his impulses and desires will set the stage for his eventual downfall. How much did the witches know? They speak of his future greatness but they leave out the cost and the consequences of achieving it. Macbeth wants to trust the witches but fails to recognize the danger of pursuing power through dark deeds. The witches may have set these events into motion but Macbeth’s own choices will eventually bring about his downfall.
Act I
Scene iv
The King’s palace.
Enter King Duncan and Malcolm, his son.
King Duncan: “Is execution done on Cawdor?”
Malcolm: “My liege, I have spoke with one who saw him die and did report that very frankly he confessed his treasons, and implored your pardon, and set forth a deep repentance. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.“
Enter Macbeth
KIng Duncan: “O, worthiest cousin. More is thy due than more than all can pay.”
Macbeth: “The service and the loyalty I owe, in doing it, pays itself. Your highness’ part is to receive our duties, and our duties are to your throne.”
King Duncan: “Welcome hither. I have begun to plant thee, and will labour to make thee full of growing. Know, we will establish our estate upon our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name here-after the Prince of Cumberland and successor to our throne. My worthy Cawdor.”
Macbeth: (an aside to the audience) “The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step upon which I must fall down, or else overleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires. The eye winks at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”
Summary and Analysis
King Duncan welcomes Macbeth as a returning hero and decides to spend a night in his castle just as Macbeth determines that only Malcolm stands between he and the throne of Scotland. The king is very trusting of Macbeth, who admits to himself that he is consumed and affected enough to ‘ignite his black and deep desires’. How quickly the plot thickens. Macbeth is already caught between his loyalty to his king and his sudden expectation that the throne might be his. He is frustrated that the king has announced that his son, Malcolm, will be the successor to the throne. Duncan’s visit to Macbeth’s castle foreshadows that murder that is soon to take place. But does Macbeth have it in him to murder his very able king, or will he need to be spurred on by his wife we are about to meet?
Act I
Scene v
Inverness. Macbeth’s castle.
Enter Lady Macbeth, reading a letter.
Lady Macbeth: ‘They met me in the day of success and have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. While I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me “Thane of Cawdor’, by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me with “hail king that ye shall be!’ This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou might not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant by what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart and farewell.’ “Cawdor thou art; and shall be what thou are promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou would be great; art not without ambition, but without the illness that should attend it. Thou would have that which cries ‘thus thou must do’ if thou have it; and that which rather thou does fear to do than wishes should be undone. Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits into thine ear and chastise thee with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crowned withal.”
Enter messenger
Messenger: “The King comes here tonight.”
Lady Macbeth: “Thou art mad to say it. Is not thy master with him?
Messenger: “Our Thane is coming.”
Lady Macbeth: “Give him tending: he brings great news.”
Exit messenger
Lady Macbeth: (aside) “The raven himself is hoarse who croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. 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, stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between the effect and it. Come to my woman’s breast, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night, and pall thee in the smoke of hell, that my keen knife sees not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry ‘Hold, hold’.
Enter Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: “Worthy Cawdor! Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now the future is the instant.”
Macbeth: “My dearest love, King Duncan comes here tonight.”
Lady Macbeth: “And when goes hence?”
Macbeth: Tomorrow, as he purposes.”
Lady Macbeth: “O never shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange manners. To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it. You shall put this night’s great business into my dispatch; which shall to all our nights and days to come give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.“
Macbeth: “We will speak further.”
Lady Macbeth: “Leave all the rest to me.”
Summary and Analysis
Lady Macbeth reads the letter about the witches prophecy but worries that Macbeth is too honourable to ensure the fulfilment of the prophecy. So the witches intrigue him, his wife propels him forward and Duncan affords them the opportunity, as he resides for this one night in their castle. Macbeth seems too good a man to agree to kill his cousin and king, but his unsexed wife is not done with him yet. When he arrives home she immediately set to work on him, urging him to act swiftly to kill King Duncan and seize the throne. ‘Leave all the rest to me’ she tells her husband, sensing that the crown is near and the opportunity is now. She is single-minded in her desire for power and her determination to attain it on this night. Her ambition far exceeds that of Macbeth, who remains troubled about the consequences of such a murder. When she pleads to the spirits to unsex her she reveals her desire to reject the traditional feminine qualities of nurturing compassion and become more masculine in her ruthlessness. To get what she wants she must embrace a more aggressive and unyeilding role. It will be Lady Macbeth who drives the action of the play, manipulating her husband to act on his desires and strongly persuading him to murder King Duncan. She is relentless in pushing him to overcome his doubts and take action. She is a key instigator in the events that will follow. She seizes control of his free will and shapes his fate herself.
Act I
Scene vi
Inverness. Macbeth’s castle
Enter King Duncan, Malcolm and Donalbain (the King’s sons), Banquo, lords and attendants
King Duncan: “This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.”
Enter Lady Macbeth
King Duncan: “See, see, our honoured hostess!”
Lady Macbeth: “All our service in every point twice done, and then done double.”
King Duncan: “Fair and noble hostess, we are your guest tonight. Give me your hand; conduct me to my host. We love him highly.”
Summary and Analysis
This can be a very uncomfortable scene, as we know King Duncan is in danger, although he appears quite comfortable at the Macbeth castle. And the person who greets him most warmly is the same Lady Macbeth who so wants him dead… tonight! Unsuspecting Duncan walks straight into the trap his hosts have set for him. This scene highlights the theme of appearance vs reality. Duncan speaks of the castle as a warm and gentle place, contrasting vividly with the evil plans being set in motion. The Macbeths are very graceful toward their king just before they kill him. Fair is foul indeed. And the audience knows what Duncan does not, creating excellent dramatic irony.
Act I
Scene vii
Inverness. Macbeth’s castle
Enter Macbeth
Macbeth: (aside) “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly. If the assassination could trammel up the consequence, that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here. But here upon this bank and shoal of time, we still have judgement, that we but teach bloody instructions, which being taught return to plague the inventor. This even-handed justice commends the ingredience of our poisoned chalice to our own lips. He is 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 the murderers shut the door, not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan hath born 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… 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 over-leaps itself, and falls on the other.”
Enter Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: “How now. What news?”
Macbeth: “We will proceed no further in this business. He has honoured me of late.”
Lady Macbeth: “Was 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? From this time such I account thy love. Are thou afeared to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art in desire? Would thou have that which thou esteems the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’, like the poor cat in the adage?”
Macbeth: “Prithee, peace; I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none.”
Lady Macbeth: “What beast was it then that made you break this enterprise to me? Then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man. I have given suck, and know how tender it is to love the babe who ilks 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.“
Macbeth: “If we should fail?”
Lady Macbeth: “We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep, his two chamberlains will I with wine… and when in a swinish sleep their drenched natures lie as in a death, what cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Duncan? What not put upon his spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt of our great quell?”
Macbeth: ”Bring forth men children only; for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males. Will it not be received, when we have marked with blood those sleepy two of his own chamber, and used their very daggers, that they have done it.”
Lady Macbeth: “Who dares receive it other, as we shall make our griefs and clamour roar upon his death?”
Macbeth: “I am settled to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show. False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
Analysis
That’s it. She did it. He’s in. We know he has been an honourable man, so we identify with him. The dramatic premise is established. The witches have ignited his ‘vaulting ambition’, his wife has pricked his intent and Duncan is in his castle tonight – for one night only. This is a very dark play. Much of it takes place at night, amid witches, battlefields and murderous plots, ghosts and excessive guilt, pains of conscience, revenge and blood… lots and lots of blood. Lady Macbeth is the great plot advancer and likely the most interesting character in the play. Macbeth is clearly leaning on his own rational and moral compass until she challenges his manhood by taunting when persuasion fails and he readily falls under her spell. There is no turning back now. This scene showcases Macbeth’s deep moral struggle and the forces influencing him to carry out the crime. He soliloquizes his deep conflict about murdering the king. He knows it is a grave sin that will have terrible consequences, but his ambition pushes him on. And then enter Lady Macbeth, who immediately criticizes his wavering, calls him a coward, questions his manhood and convinces him to perform the deed. The central conflict within Macbeth between ambition and conscience, between the drive for power and moral consequence, is heavily influenced by his wife’s ruthless determination to push him into action. This scene sets the stage for the tragic downfall that follows throughout the remainder of the play.
Act II
Scene i
Inverness. Macbeth’s castle
Enter Banquo and his son, Fleance
Banquo: “How goes the night, boy?”
Fleance: “The moon in down.”
Banquo: “There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.
Enter Macbeth
Banquo: “What, sir, not yet at rest? The king’s in bed. He has been in unusual pleasure. All’s well. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters. To you they have shown some truth.”
Macbeth: “I think not of them. Good repose the while.”
Exit Banquo and Fleance
Exit Banquo and Fleance.
Macbeth: “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 feel as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation. proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee still; and on thy blade gouts of blood, which was not so before. There’s no such thing: it is the bloody business which informs thus to my eyes. Now witchcraft celebrates withered murder. (a bell rings) I go and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
Summary and Analysis
The real action begins. Macbeth opens the scene with another soliloque, expressing his deep anxiety and guilt about what he is about to do. Macbeth is alone as he prepares to murder his king, when his first of several bouts of excessive imagination strikes him: ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me… Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?’ All of his hesitation was for good reason, we shall see, as he will never be the same man again and begins the plummet from ‘good and brave Macbeth’ to the final scene where McDuff exhibits ‘the usurper’s cursed head’ and Malcolm speaks in eulogy of ‘this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen’.
This scene marks a turning point in Macbeth and it is masterfully tense. There’s no action yet—just a slow, psychological descent. It’s the calm before the storm. By the time the scene ends, we know that murder is moments away, and that Macbeth, once a noble warrior, is now stepping into darkness.
Act II
Scene ii
Inverness. Macbeth’s castle
Enter Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: “That which has made them drunk has made me bold; what has quenched them has given me fire. The surfeited grooms do mock their charges with snores.”
Macbeth: (within) “Who’s there! What, ho!”
Lady Macbeth: “Alack! I am afraid they have awoken, and it tis not done. The attempt, and not the deed, confounds us.”
Enter Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: “My husband!”
Macbeth: “I have done the deed. Did thou not hear a noise?”
Lady Macbeth: “I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.”
Macbeth: (looking at his bloody hands) “This is a sorry sight.”
Lady Macbeth: “A foolish thought to say a sorry sight.”
Macbeth: “Who lies in the second chamber?”
Lady Macbeth: “Malcolm and Donalbain, his sons.”
Macbeth: “One did laugh in his sleep and one cried ‘Murder!’ and they did wake each other. I stood and heard them; but they did say their prayers, which addressed them again to sleep. One cried ‘God bless us’, and ‘Amen’ the other, as if they had seen me with these hangman’s hands. Listening to their fear, I could not say ‘Amen’ when they did say ‘God Bless us’!“
Lady Macbeth: “Consider it not so deeply.“
Macbeth: “But wherefore could I not pronounce “Amen’? I had most need of blessing and “Amen’ stuck in my throat.“
Lady Macbeth: “These deeds must not be thought. It will make us mad.“
Macbeth: “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more.’ Macbeth does murder sleep – the innocent sleep. Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care. The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.“
Lady Macbeth: “What do you mean?”
Macbeth: “Still it cried ‘Sleep no more’ to all the house; Cawdor has murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more – Macbeth shall sleep no more.“
Lady Macbeth: “Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength to think so brain sickly of things. Go get some water and wash this filthy witness from your hands. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there. Go carry them and smear the sleepy grooms with blood.”
Macbeth: “I’ll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; look on it again I dare not.”
Lady Macbeth: “Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. If he do bleed I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, for it must seem their guilt.”
Exit Lady Macbeth
Macbeth: (Looking at his hands) “What hands are here? They pluck out my eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hands?”
Re-enter Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: “My hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white. I hear a knocking; retire we to our chamber. A little water clears us of this deed. How easy it is then! Your constancy has left you unattended. (knock) Hark! More knocking. Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts.“
Macbeth: “To know my deed, ’twere best not to know myself. (knock). Wake King Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou could.“
Summary and Analysis
This scene is a masterclass in psychological tension. If Scene i was the tense build-up, Scene ii is the emotional fallout. The deed is done but we now witness the psychological shockwave rippling through Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The murder happens off stage, in our minds as well as in Macbeth’s. When Macbeth enters, fresh from killing Duncan, he is badly shaken. He’s not triumphant—he’s horrified. His hands are covered in blood, and his speech is fragmented and full of dread. He’s clearly traumatized. “This is a sorry sight,” he says, looking at his bloody hands. He begins to unravel, feeling that he will never be able to wash the blood off his hands. His wife tries to hold it together, assuring him that a little water will clear them of the deed. But the reality of what he has done is far worse than he ever imagined and he feels haunted: ‘Sleep no more. Macbeth murders sleep’, foreshadowing his long steady breakdown over the remainder of the play. He already knows he has destroyed his own inner peace forever. Lady Macbeth, cold and clinical at first, is deeply unnerved by her husband’s descent into madness. The real horror of this murder is as much psychological as it is physical. Their minds are affected the instant the deed is carried out. Here is the beginning of the transition from Macbeth the conflicted man to a paranoid tyrant. It is also the beginning of his wife’s slide into madness, although she continues to put on a brave face for a spell. Everything shifts in this scene. There is no going back.
Act II
Scene iii
Macbeth’s castle
Enter the porter
Porter: (knock) “Knock, knock! Who’s there in the name of Beelzebub? (knock) Knock, knock! Who’s there, in the other devil’s name? Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who created treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O, come in equivocator. (knock) Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? (knock) Knock, knock; never at quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further. I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire. (knock) Anon, anon! (opens the gate) I pray you remember the porter.”
Enter Mcduff and Lennox
Macduff: “Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, that you do lie so late?”
Porter: “Faith, sir, we were carousing. Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.”
Macduff: “What three things does drink especially provoke?”
Porter: “Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivotator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him into a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.“
Macduff: “I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.”
Porter: “That it did, sir.”
Macduff: “Is thy master stirring? (enter Macbeth) Our knocking has awakened him; here he comes. Is the king stirring, noble Thane?”
Macbeth: “Not yet.”
Macduff: “He did command me to call timely on him.”
Macbeth: “I’ll bring you to him.”
Macduff: “I’ll make so bold to call.” (exit Macduff)
Lennox: “Goes the King hence today?”
Macbeth: “He does.”
Lennox: “The night has been unruly. Where we lay, our chimneys were blown down and lamentings heard in the air, strange screams of death and prophesying, with accents terrible, of old dire combustion and confused events new hatched to the woeful time. Some say the earth was feverous and did shake.”
Macbeth: “T’was a rough night.“
Lennox: “My young remembrance cannot parallel a fellow to it.”
Re-enter Macduff
Macduff: “O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee.”
Lennox, Macbeth: “What’s the matter?”
Macduff: “Confusion has now made his masterpiece. Most sacreligious murder hath broke open. Approach his chamber, and destroy your sight with a new gorgon. Do not bid me speak.”
Exit Lennox and Macbeth
Macduff: “Awake! Awake! Ring the alarum bell. Murder and treason! Banquo! Donalbain! Malcolm! Awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself. Up, up, and see the great doom’s image! Malcolm! Banquo! As from your graves rise up and walk like sprites to countenance this horror! Ring the bell!” (bell rings)
Lady Macbeth enters
Lady Macbeth: “What’s the business, that such a hideous trumpet calls to parley the sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!”
Macduff: “O gentle lady, ‘tis not for you to hear what I can speak! The repetition in a woman’s ear would murder as it fell.”
Enter Banquo
Macduff: “O Banquo, Banquo, our royal master’s murdered!”
Lady Macbeth: “Woe, alas! What, in our house?”
Banquo: “Too cruel anywhere. Dear Duff, I prithee, contradict thyself, and say it is not so.”
Re-enter Macbeth and Lennox
Macbeth: “Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time. Renown and grace is dead.”
Enter King Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain
Donalbain: “What is amiss?“
Macbeth: “You are and do not know it.”
Macduff: “Your royal father’s murdered.”
Malcolm: “By whom?”
Lennox: “Those of his chamber, as it seemed, had done it. Their hands and faces were all badged with blood; so were their daggers.”
Macbeth: “Yet I do repent me of my fury that I did kill them.”
Macduff: “Wherefore did you so?”
Macbeth: “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in a moment? No man. Here lay Duncan and his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature for ruin’s wasteful entrance. There, the murderers, steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers unmannerly breached with gore. Who could refrain that had a heart to love.”
Lady Macbeth: “Help me hence, ho!”
Macduff: “Look to the lady.”
Malcolm: (aside to Donalbain) “Why do we hold our tongues that most may claim this argument for ours?”
Donalbain: (aside to Malcolm) “What should be spoken here, where our fate, may rush and seize us? Let’s away. Our tears are not yet brewed.”
Lady Macbeth is carried out
Banquo: “When we have our naked frailties hid, that suffer in exposure, let us meet, and question this most bloody piece of work, to know it further. Fears and scruples shake us. In the great hand of God I stand and against the undivulged pretence, I fight treasonous malice.”
Macduff: “And so do I.”
Macbeth: “Let’s briefly put on manly readiness and meet in the hall together.”
Exit all but Malcolm and Donalbain
Malcolm: “What will you do? Let’s not consort with them. I’ll to England.”
Donalbain: “To Ireland I; our separated fortune will keep us both the safer. Where we are, there are daggers in men’s smiles. The near in blood the nearer bloody.”
Malcolm: “This murderous shaft that’s shot has not yet lighted, and our safest way is to avoid the aim. Therefore to our horses.”
Summary and Analysis
This is where everything explodes into the open. It’s often referred to as the “porter scene“, but it does far more than provide comic relief. This scene shifts us from the private world of guilt and fear into the public world of discovery and disorder. The scene opens with the Porter staggering to the door, drunkenly pretending to be the gatekeeper to hell. He imagines himself as the devil-porter, welcoming in all sorts of sinners. On the surface, this is comic relief after the darkness of Duncan’s murder, but the castle really has become a kind of hell and Macbeth, its host, has turned murderer. The “equivocator” in particular is a sly reference to someone who twists the truth—just like Macbeth, who cloaks ambition and says one thing while doing another. When Macduff and Lennox arrive, Lennox mentions that the night was strangely stormy, with “lamentings heard i’ the air,” and “strange screams of death.” This sense of unnatural disturbance reinforces a classic Shakespearean theme: when a rightful king is murdered, nature itself reacts. The world is out of joint.
Then comes the shocking moment: Macduff discovers Duncan’s body and likening the murder to the destruction of God’s anointed temple. It’s a powerful moment that places Duncan’s death as a sacrilege against the natural and divine order. Chaos erupts as the castle awakens. Lady Macbeth arrives, feigning ignorance and horror, pretending she’s too delicate to even hear about the murder. Banquo is stunned but already starts to question the situation. He asks Macbeth why he killed the guards who apparently murdered King Duncan. Macbeth claims it was done in the rage of the moment. The scene closes with Malcolm and Donalbain, Duncan’s sons, realizing they’re likely next, deciding to flee: Malcolm to England, Donalbain to Ireland.
This scene marks the turning point where the private crime becomes a public crisis. The castle, once a place of hospitality, becomes a crime scene. The natural order is upside down. Macbeth’s carefully laid plan is working, for now, but already the cracks are showing, the guilt is growing, and suspicion is forming.
Act II
Scene iv
Inverness
Enter Ross with an old man
Old Man: “Threescore and ten I can remember well; within the volume of which time I have seen hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night has trifled former knowings.”
Ross: “Ah, good father, thou sees the heavens as troubled with man’s act, threatening his bloody stage. By the clock ’tis day, and yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp. Is it night’s predominance, or the day’s shame, that darkness does the face of earth entomb, when living light should kiss it?”
Ross: “Duncan’s horses, beautious and swift, the minions of their race, turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, contending against obedience, as they would make war with mankind.”
Old Man: “Tis said they ate each other.”
Ross: “They did so; to the amazement of my eyes that looked upon it.”
Enter Macduff
Ross: “Is it known who did this more than bloody deed?”
Macduff: “Those who Macbeth has slain. Malcolm and Donalbain, the KIng’s two sons, are stolen away and fled; which puts upon them suspicion of the deed.”
Ross: “Against nature still. Then tis most likely the sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.”
Macduff: “He is already named and gone to be invested.”
Summary and Analysis
So suspicion lies with the dead grooms, the sons of Duncan’s and perhaps Macbeth. The heavens and nature are out of sorts again and for good reason. If Scene iii was the chaotic eruption of discovery, Scene iv is like the unsettling morning after—when the dust begins to settle, but everything feels wrong.
The scene begins outside Macbeth’s castle. An old man speaks with Ross, one of the thanes, about the strange and unnatural events that have followed Duncan’s death. The old man says he’s lived seventy years and has never seen a night so ominous. Ross agrees, describing how Duncan’s horses went wild and even ate each other. It sounds bizarre, almost mythic—but in Shakespeare’s world, these supernatural signs are symbolic of deeper truths: the world is out of balance. This conversation between Ross and the old man serves a few key functions. First, it shows that Duncan’s murder is more than a political event—it’s a cosmic disruption. Second, it lets the audience feel the growing unease of the people. There’s fear in the air. Everyone knows something terrible has happened, but they can’t quite make sense of it yet. Then Macduff enters, and the political consequences start to come into focus. He tells Ross that Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, have fled—Malcolm to England, Donalbain to Ireland. Their flight makes them look suspicious, and Macbeth is set to be crowned king at Scone. But Macduff doesn’t go to the coronation. That’s important. He chooses instead to return to his home in Fife. His absence is a subtle but powerful gesture of doubt, and it hints at future opposition. We’re beginning to see fault lines form between Macbeth and those around him. Loyalty is fraying. So, in just a few short lines, this scene tells us a lot. The natural world is disturbed. The political world is unstable. Macbeth has maneuvered his way to the crown, but cracks are beginning to show.
Act III
Scene i
The palace
Enter Banquo
Banquo: (aside) “Thou has it now: King, Cawdor, all as the weird sisters promised; and I feared thou played most foully for it; yet it was said it should not stand in thy posterity; but that myself should be the root and father of many kings.”
Enter Macbeth, as King, and Lady Macbeth, as Queen
Macbeth: “Here’s our chief guest. Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir, and I’ll request your presence.”
Banquo: “Let your highness command me.”
Macbeth: “Ride you this afternoon?”
Banquo: “Ay, my good lord.”
Macbeth: “Fail not our feast.”
Banquo: “My lord, I will not.”
Macbeth: “We hear our bloody cousins are bestowed in England and in Ireland, not confessing their cruel parricide. Hie you to horse; adieu, till you return tonight. Goes Fleance with you?”
Banquo: “Ay, my good lord.”
Exit all but Macbeth and a servant
Macbeth: “Sirrah, a word with you. Attend those men our pleasure?”
Servant: “They are, my lord, outside the palace gate.”
Macbeth: “Bring them before us.”
Exit servant
Macbeth: (aside) “To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo stick deep. There is none but he whose being I do fear. He chid the sisters when first they put the name of King upon me, and he bade them speak to him; then, prophet like, they hailed him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown and put a barren sceptre in my grip, no son of mine succeeding. If it be so, for Banquo’s issue the gracious Duncan have I murdered. Rather than so, come, fate. Who’s there?
Enter two murderers
Macbeth: “Was it not yesterday we spoke together?”
1 Murderer: “I was, so please your highness.”
Macbeth: “Well then, now have you considered that it was he, in past times, who held you so under fortune?”
1 Murderer: “You made it known to us.”
Macbeth: “I did so, and went further. Do you find your patience so predominant in your nature that you can let this go. Are you so gospell’d, to pray for this good man and hs issue, whose heavy hand has bowed you to the grave and beggar’d yours forever?”
1 Murderer: “We are men, my liege.”
Macbeth: “in the catalogue ye go for men; as hounds, greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs and demi-wolves are clept all by the name of dogs.”
2 Murderer: “I am one, my liege, whom the vile blows of the world have so incensed that I am wreckless what to do to spite the world.”
1 Murderer: “And I another, so weary with disasters, that I would set my life on any chance to mend it.”
Macbeth: “Both of you know Banquo was your enemy.”
Both Murderers: “True, my lord.”
Macbeth: “So he is mine, and every minute of his being thrusts against my nearest of life. And thence it is that I to your assistance do make love.”
2 Murderer: “We shall, my lord, perform what you command us.”
Macbeth: :”Your spirits shine through you. I will advise you where to plant yourselves. It must be done tonight. I require clearness and no botches in the work. Fleance, his son, who keeps his company, whose absence is no less material to me than is his father’s, must embrace the fate of that dark hour.”
Both Murderers: “We are resolved, my lord.”‘
Exit murderers
Macbeth: (aside) “It is concluded: Banquo, thy soul’s flight, if it find heaven, must find it tonight.”
Summary and Analysis
This scene is one of the most psychologically rich and crucial turning points in the play. Macbeth is now king, but rather than bask in the glory, he’s already looking over his shoulder. This scene marks the moment when Macbeth moves from ambitious opportunist to cold-blooded plotter. The crown isn’t enough. He wants security, and to get it, he’s prepared to kill again. Instead of experiencing peace at having attained the crown, Macbeth is riddled with anxiety because the witches’ prophecy didn’t stop with Macbeth: they said Banquo would father a line of kings. So in Macbeth’s eyes, Banquo is a threat to the throne. Act III, Scene i shows Macbeth’s mind beginning to fracture under the weight of power, insecurity, and prophecy. Banquo knows the witches’ prophecy came true for Macbeth, and he suspects Macbeth may have killed Duncan to make it happen. This is where we really start to see the dangerous twist in his thinking: murder got him the crown, so maybe murder is the way to keep it. This is a bitter moment. Macbeth realizes that he’s done all this, murdered a good man, ruined his soul, only to hand the kingdom to Banquo’s children. That’s an important shift. His moral boundaries are dissolving. This isn’t about ambition anymore, it’s about maintenance of power. He was wracked with guilt over Duncan. Now he’s calm, strategic, and remorseless. But having Banquo murdered will prove no easier on his nerves or psyche than murdering King Duncan, as the remainder of Act III will demonstrate. Macbeth’s mind is being governed by his interpretation of fate. The witches’ words are driving him deeper into darkness.
Act III
Scene ii
The Palace
Enter Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: (aside) “‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy, than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”
Enter Macbeth
Lady Macbeth: “How now, my lord! Why do you keep alone, using those thoughts which should indeed have died with them they think on? Things without all remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done.”
Macbeth: “We have scorched the snake, not killed it.”
Lady Macbeth: “Gentle my lord, be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.”
Macbeth: “So shall I, love. But O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife. Thou knowest that Banquo, and his Fleance, live. There’s comfort yet; they are assailable. There shall be done a deed of dreadful note.”
Lady Macbeth: “What’s to be done?”
Macbeth: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest, till thou applaud the deed. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, while night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
Analysis
There is a transition afoot in this middle act. Earlier Lady Macbeth was insistent that they murder Duncan and seize the crown. She really had to work over Macbeth before he would agree to commit such a crime. Ever since, she has had to try to control his fits of imagination and ensure that he is able to mask his crime and get on with his kingship. The upcoming banquet scene is a quintessential example of this. But eventually we will see that Macbeth and his wife seem to be trading roles. He lacked the resolve needed to kill Duncan, yet it is she who becomes more and more uncomfortable about each additional slaughter. In Act I she told him to ‘look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it.” Now he tells her “Let’s make our faces visors to our hearts, disguising who we are.” They are awakening to the realization that this crown they acquired with blood will not bring them contentment but is rather fraught with inner turmoil, paranoia and minds ‘full of scorpions’, as they sink deeper and deeper into blood and tyranny.
Act III
Scene iii
A forest near the palace
Enter thee murderers
1 Murderer: “But who did bid thee join with us?”
3 Murderer: “Macbeth.”
1 Murderer: “Then stand with us. Near approaches the subject of our watch.”
3 Murderer: “Hark! I hear horses.”
2 Murderer: “Then ’tis he.”
Enter Banquo and Fleance with a torch
Banquo: “It will rain tonight.”
1 Murderer: “Let it come down.” (he stabs Banquo)
Banquo: “O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! Thou may revenge.”
Banquo dies. Fleance escapes.
3 Murderer: “There is but one down. The son has fled.”
1 Murderer: “Well, let’s away, and so how much is done.
Summary and Analysis
It was never Banquo so much as his son that most affrighted Macbeth, so we can anticipate that he will be sorely disposed when he hears the news of the half successful murder. Fleance’s escape means the witches prophecy, that Banquo’s descendents will rule, still hangs over Macbeth like a curse, ensuring that the killing must continue just as the tyrnannous ambition is spiralling out of control.
Act III
Scene iv
The palace
Enter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, Lords and attendants
Macbeth: “Sit down with hearty welcome.”
Lords: “Thanks to your Majesty.”
Macbeth: “Ourself will mingle and play the humble host, but our hostess we will require her welcome.”
Lady Macbeth: “Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends; for my heart speaks they are welcome.”
A knock on the door. Macbeth goes to answer it. It is one of the murderers.
Macbeth: “There is blood upon thy face.”
1 Murderer: “‘Tis Banquo’s then.”
Macbeth: “Is he dispatched?”
1 Murderer: “My lord, his throat is cut. That I did for him.”
Macbeth: “Thou art the best of the the cut-throats; yet he’s good who did the like for Fleance.”
1 Murderer: “Most royal sir, Fleanced is escaped.”
Macbeth: “Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect, whole as the marble. But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears. The grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled has nature that in time will venom breed. Get thee gone.”
Exit murderer
Macbeth returns to the banquet. Enter the ghost of Banquo sitting at Macbeth’s place.
Lennox: “May it please your Highness to sit?”
Macbeth: “The table is full.”
Lennox: “Here is a place reserved, sir. What is it that moves your Highness?”
Macbeth alone sees Banquo’s ghost
Macbeth: “Which of you have done this?”
Lords: “What, my good lord?”
Macbeth: (to the ghost) “Thou cannot say I did it; never shake thy gory locks at me.”
Lords: “What, my good lord?”
Ross: “Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is not well.”
Lady Macbeth: “Sit, worthy friends. My Lord is often thus, and hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep your seats. The fit is momentary; upon a thought he will again be well. If much you note him, you shall offend him and extend his passion. Regard him not.”
Lady Macbeth: (aside to Macbeth) “Are you a man?”
Macbeth: “Ay, and a bold one that dare look on that which might appal the devil.”
Lady Macbeth: (aside to Macbeth) “This is the very painting of your fear. This is the air-drawn dagger again. Oh these flaws and starts… would well become a woman’s story authorized by her grandam. Shame itself. Why do you make such faces? When all’s done, you look but on a stool.”
Macbeth: “Prithee see there. Behold! Look! ‘How say you? If thou can nod, speak too.’”
Exit the ghost
Lady Macbeth: “What, quite unmanned in folly?”
Macbeth: “I saw him”
Lady Macbeth: “Fie, for shame!”
Macbeth: “The time has been that when the brains were out the man would die… but now they rise again and push us from our stools. This is more strange than such a murder is.”
Lady Macbeth: “My worthy Lord, your noble friends do lack you.”
Macbeth: “Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends; I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing to those who know me. Come, love and health to all. Give me some wine, fill full.”
The ghost reappears.
Macbeth: “I drink to the general, to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss. Would he were here! (to the ghost) Avaunt and quit my sight. Let the earth hide thee. Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold. Thou has no speculation in those eyes which thou does glare with!”
Lady Macbeth: “Think of this, good peers, but as a thing of custom. ‘Tis no other; only it spoils the pleasure of the time.”
Macbeth: “Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble… Hence horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!”
The ghost exits.
Macbeth: “Why so, being gone, I am a man again. Pray you, lords, sit still.”
Lady Macbeth: “You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder.”
Macbeth: “Can such a thing be without our special wonder? You make me strange when now I think that you can behold such sights and keep the natural ruby of your cheeks when mine is blanched with fear.”
Ross: “What sights my Lord?”
Lady Macbeth: “I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse. Questions enrage him. At once, good night. Go at once!”
Lennox: “Good night and better health attend his majesty.”
Lady Macbeth: “A kind good night to all!”
Exit all but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
Macbeth: “It will have blood. They say blood will have blood. How sayest thou that Macduff denies his person at our great bidding? I will to the Weird Sisters; more shall they speak; for now I am bent to know by the worst means the worst… I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as going over.”
Lady Macbeth: “You lack the season of all natures, sleep.”
Macbeth: “We are yet but young in deed.”
Analysis
The banquet scene may be the apex of the plot. In Act II Macbeth’s imagination presented to him the very dagger with which to kill King Duncan, even if it was merely a dagger of the mind. But in this scene the very ghost of Macbeth’s latest victim, Banquo, returns to haunt him during the banquet intended to celebrate the new king and queen. Throughout Shakespeare, the supernatural and the unnatural appear as harbingers of a wickedness that is soon accompanied by a downfall. As in the heavens and in nature so be it on earth. Banquo’s ghost and the witches’ appearance once again later in the act are clear indicators to the audience of ill omens brought on by Macbeth’s transgressions. It’s a downward spiralling slope right to the end for the overwhelmed Macbeth, his badly and increasingly agitated wife and every suspicious and alerted guest at the feast, who know now how mentally troubled their new king is. This is the turning point of the play. The rise of the unholy couple has been depicted. The fall proceeds from here, although Macbeth is not yet done. The most disturbing of his actions still await us in Act IV. But as for now our royal couple must confront the undeniable reality of their dreadful deeds coming back to haunt them. And how appropriate it is in this play that King James’ very ancestor should be the one to haunt Macbeth so vehemently. In Holinshed’s Chronicles Banquo and Macbeth were accomplices in Duncan’s murder. But Shakespeare’s play is written for King James, who, as descendant of Banquo’s, no doubt delighted in the depiction of his kin as heroic. As well, when Macduff flees to England to join King Duncan’s son, Malcolm, King Edward the Confessor supplies a large army for the Scottish lords to defeat Macbeth, celebrating, again for Shakespeare’s new King James, the bond between England and his Scottish homeland.
Act III
Scene v
The heath
Enter three witches and Hecate, the queen of the witches
1 Witch: “Why, how now, Hecat! You look augerly.”
Hecate: “Have I not reason, saucy and overbold as you are? How did you dare to trade and traffic with Macbeth in riddles and affairs of death; and I, mistress of your charms, was never called to bear my part, or show the glory of our art? And which is worse, all you have done have been but for a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do, loves for his own ends, not for you. But make amends now. Get you gone, and meet me in the morning, where he will come to know his destiny. Your vessels and your spells provide, your harms, and everything beside shall draw him on to his confusion. He shall spurn fate, scorn death and bear his hopes above wisdom, grace and fear. And you all know security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.”
Summary and Analysis
Hecate is angry at the witches for interfering with Macbeth without her permission. She finds Macbeth unworthy of their attention. She plans to step in and take control of his downfall, by luring him in to a false sense of security with illusions of his own invulnerability. There is hierarchy in the witches’ world and Hecate is the boss.
Act III
Scene vi
The palace
Enter Lennox and another lord
Lennox: “My former speeches have but hit your thoughts, which can interpret farther. Only I say things have been strangely born. The gracious Duncan was pitied of Macbeth. Marry, he is dead. And the right-valiant Banquo walked too late, whom you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed, for Fleance fled. Who cannot want the thought how monstous it was for Malcolm and Donalbain to kill their gracious father? Damned fact! How did it grieve Macbeth? Did he not straight, in pious rage, the two delinquents tear, who were the slaves of drink? Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too. He has born all things well; and I do think that had he Duncan’s sons under his key they should find what it were to kill a father; so should Fleance. But peace, because he failed his presence at the tyrant’s feast, I hear Mcduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell me where he bestows himself?”
Lord: “The son of Duncan lives in the English court and is received by the most pious Edward. Thither Macduff is gone to pray to the holy king upon his aid to wake Northumberland and warlike Siward, that by the help of these we may again give to our tables meat free from bloody knives. The King prepares for some attempt at war.”
Lennox: “Some holy angel fly to the court of England, that a swift blessing may soon return to this our suffering country under a hand accursed.”
Analysis
This brief scene offers critical insight into the growing unrest in Scotland under Macbeth’s rule, as suspicions are building among the Scottish nobles. Clearly, following the banquet, the lords are deeply perturbed by recent events and are beginning to connect the dots. Lennox is unapologetically sarcastic about the murder of Duncan and Banquo, the suspicion hovering over their children and McDuff’s sudden flight to England. This is the first time we hear the nobles openly, if cautiously, criticizing Macbeth. Macduff’s trip to England foreshadows the uprising that will eventually overthrow Macbeth. His grip on power is weakening and opposition is growing both at home and abroad.
Act IV
Scene i
A dark cave, with a cauldron boiling
Enter the three witches
1 Witch: “Round about the cauldron go; in the poison’d entrails throw.”
All: “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.“
2 Witch: “Fillet of a fenny snake, in the caudron boil and bake; eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog.”
All: “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
3 Witch: “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, liver of blaspheming Jew; nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, finger of birth-strangled babe.”
All: “Double , double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
2 Witch: “Cool it with a baboon’s blood, then the charm is firm and good.”
Enter Hecate
Hecate: “O, well done! I commend your pains.”
2 Witch: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
Enter Macbeth
Macbeth: “How now, you secret, black and midnight hags! What is it you do?”
All: “A deed without a name.”
Macbeth: “I conjure you – answer me to what I ask you.”
1 Witch: “Speak.”
2 Witch: “Demand.”
3 Witch: “We’ll answer,”
1 Witch: “Say, if thou would rather hear it from our mouths or from our masters.”
Macbeth: “Call ’em; let me see ’em.”
Thunder. First Apparition, an armed head.
Macbeth: “Tell me, thou unknown power.”
1 Witch: “He knows thy thought. Hear his speech but say thou nought.”
Apparition: “Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff.”
The apparition descends into the earth.
Macbeth: “Whatever thou art, for thy good caution, thanks. But one word more.”
1 Witch: “He will not be commanded. Here’s another, more potent than the first.
Thunder. Second Apparition, a Bloody Child.
Apparition: “Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Be bloody, bold and resolute, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.”
The apparition descends into the earth.
Macbeth: “Then live, Macduff; what need I fear of thee? But yet I’ll make assurance double sure. Thou shall not live, that I might sleep in spite of thunder.”
Thunder. Third Apparition, a Child Crowned, with a tree in his hand.
Macbeth: “What is this?”
All: “Listen, but speak not to it.”
Apparition: “Be lion-mettled, proud and take no care who or where conspirers are; Macbeth shall never be vanquished until Great Birnam Wood to High Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.”
The Apparition descends into the earth.
Macbeth: “That will never be. Who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfixed his earth-bound root? Good! Rebellion’s head rise never till the wood of Birnam rise. Yet my heart throbs to know one thing: tell me – if your art can tell so much – shall Banquo’s issue ever reign in this kingdom?”
All: “Seek no more to know.”
Macbeth: “I will be satisfied. Deny me this, and an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know, why sinks that cauldron, and what noise is this?”
1 Witch: “Show!”
2 Witch: “Show!”
3 Witch: “Show!
All: “Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; come like shadows, so depart!”
A show of eight kings, the last king with a looking glass in his hand, and Banquo.
Macbeth: “Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo; down! Thy crown does sear my eye-balls. Filthy hags! Why do you show me this? A fourth? What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? Another yet? A seventh? I’ll see no more. And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass which shows me many more. Horrible sight! Now I see it’s true. So the bloody Banquo smiles upon me and points at them for his.”
The show of kings and Banquo vanish.
Macbeth: “What! Is this so?”
1 Witch: “Ay, sir, all this is so. But why stands Macbeth thus amazedly? Come, sisters, cheer we up his spirits and show the best of our delights, that this great king may kindly say, our duties did his welcome pay.”
The witches dance and vanish.
Macbeth: “Where are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour stand accursed in the calendar.
Enter Lennox
Lennox: “What’s our Grace’s will?”
Macbeth: “Saw you the Weird Sisters?”
Lennox: “No, my lord.”
Mabeth: “Infected be the air whereon they ride; and damn’d all those who trust them!”
Lennox: “Macduff is fled to England.
Macbeth: “Fled to England?”
Lennox: “Ay, my good lord.”
Macbeth: (aside) “Time, thou anticipates my dread exploits. 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, seize it and give it 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 this purpose cools.”
Summary and Analysis
Act IV, scene i opens with the Weird Sisters brewing a strange and sinister potion in a cauldron. These witches are powerful and sinister creatures and their spell prepares the audience for the dark prophecies to come. This is a classic Shakespearean atmosphere for something ominous. The scene marks a turning point in Macbeth’s psychological descent, as he becomes fully ensnared by the witches’ manipulations and his own vaulting ambition. The witches feed Macbeth’s arrogance while subtly warning him. It’s a clever trap. Each prophecy contains a hidden truth, but Macbeth only hears what he wants to hear. The armed head refers to the war that is inevitable against Macbeth, led by Macduff. The bloody child is a reference to Macduff’s caesarean birth, as he is not therefore born of woman. The child crowned with a tree in his hand is clearly Malcolm, who will bring forth branches of Birnam Woods to Dunsinane. And the procession of kings are all of those heirs of Banquo. The mirror carried by the last descendent suggests it is King James himself, a distant descendent of Banquo’s, in the audience seeing his own reflection in the mirror. Well crafted, Mr Bard! The witches offer deliberately ambiguous prophecies that Macbeth interprets in ways that feed his sense of invincibility. “None of woman born” and “Birnam Wood to Dunsinane” seem to promise eternal safety. Yet the truth is buried in the phrasing, and Macbeth, blinded by overconfidence, fails to see how these riddles might unravel him. Each prophecy is true but misleading and his demand for answers and his response to the apparitions show a man who no longer respects moral or natural limits; he’s willing to kill preemptively, including the innocent, to protect his crumbling power. This scene marks the point where he gives up on reason entirely. Shakespeare uses it to explore the dangerous human tendency to hear only what we want to hear, and the consequences of trying to control fate through force and fear. The supernatural, once eerie and mysterious, now becomes a mirror of Macbeth’s own corrupted mind. These witches with their bubbling cauldron and grotesque ingredients must have been quite the riveting sight in Shakespeare’s theatre around about 1606. They are still impressive today.
Act IV
Scene ii
Macduff’s castle
Enter Lady Macduff, her son and Ross.
Lady Macduff: “What had he done to make him fly the land?”
Ross: “You must have patience, madam.”
Lady Macduff: “He had none; his flight was madness. When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.”
Ross: “You know not whether it was his wisdom or his fear.”
Lady Macduff: “Wisdom! To leave his wife, to leave his babes, his mansion and his titles in a place from whence himself does fly? He loves us not; he wants the natural touch; for the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl. All is the fear, and nothing is the love; little is the wisdom, where the flight so runs against all reason.“
Ross: “My dear coz, I pray you, your husband is noble, wise, judicious and best knows the fits of the season. I dare not speak much further; but cruel are the times, when we are traitors and do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour from what we fear, yet know not what we fear. I take my leave of you. Things at the worse will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before. My pretty cousin, blessing upon you.”
Exit Ross
Lady Macduff: “Sirrah, your father is dead, and what will you do now? How will you live?”
Son: “As birds do mother. My father is not dead.”
Lady Macduff: “Yes, he is dead. How will thou do for a father?”
Son: “Nay, how will you do for a husband? Was my father a traitor, mother?”
Lady Macduff: “Ay, that he was. God help thee, poor monkey! “
Son: “If he were dead, you’d weep for him.”
Lady Macduff: “Poor prattler, how thou talks.”
Enter a messenger
Messenger: “Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known, though some danger does approach you nearly. If you will take a homely man’s advice, be not found here; hence with your little ones. Heaven preserve you! I dare abide no longer.”
Exit Ross
Lady Macduff: “Whither should I fly? I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, and to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas, do I put up that womanly defence to say I have done no harm?”
Enter murderers
Lady Macduff: “What are these faces?”
1 Murderer: “Where is your husband?”
Lady Macduff: “I hope, in no place so unsanctified, where such as though may find him.”
1 Murderer: “He’s a traitor.”
Son: “Thou lies, thou shagged-eared villain.”
1 Murderer: “What, you egg? (he stabs him). Young fry of treachery.”
Son: “He has killed me, mother. Run away, I pray you!” (he dies)
Exit Lady Macduff, crying murder!
Summary and Analysis
In this scene Shakespeare draws us into a domestic moment, as Lady Macduff and her son appear onstage for the first, and tragically, last time. The scene opens with Lady Macduff furious and bewildered by her husband’s sudden departure for England, which she interprets as abandonment and cowardice. She voices a truth that reverberates through the play: in a world turned upside down by Macbeth’s tyranny, “to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometimes accounted dangerous folly.” A messenger arrives, urging them to flee, and within moments Macbeth’s hired murderers burst in. The boy is stabbed and killed onstage, while Lady Macduff’s fate, and that of her remaining children and servants, is sealed offstage. This scene, though brief, is emotionally charged. It illustrates the far-reaching consequences of Macbeth’s descent into tyranny, showing how the innocent are now caught in the wake of his paranoia. Shakespeare heightens the audience’s sense of horror and injustice here, making Macduff’s later quest for vengeance both inevitable and righteous. This is the most senseless crime of the play and marks Macbeth’s moral point of no return. It also explains why Act V will open with Lady Macbeth being attended by a medical doctor. He has finally pushed even his ‘dreadful queen’ over the edge with his senseless and horrific savagery.
Act IV, Scene iii
England, before King Edward’s palace.
Enter Malcolm and Macduff
Malcolm: “Let us seek out some desolate shade and weep our sad bosoms empty.”
Macduff: “Let us rather hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men bestride our down fallen birthdom. Each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry and new sorrows strike heaven on the face.”
Malcolm: “What I believe, I’ll wail, and what I can redress I will. This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, was once thought honest; you have loved him well. He has not touched you yet.”
Macduff: “I am not treacherous.”
Malcolm: “But Macbeth is. I shall crave your pardon. That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose. Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, yet grace must still look so. You may be rightly just, whatever I shall think.”
Macduff: “I have lost my hopes. Bleed, bleed, poor country. Fare thee well, lord. I would not be the villain that thou thinks.”
Malcolm: “Be not offended. I speak not as in absolute fear of you. I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; it weeps; it bleeds; and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. And here, from gracious England, have I offer of goodly thousands. But, for all this, when I shall tread on the tyrant’s head, or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country shall have more vices than it had before, by him that shall succeed.”
Macduff: “Who shall he be?”
Malcolm: “It is myself I mean; in whom I know all the particulars of vice so grafted that, when they shall be opened, black Macbeth will seem as pure as snow.”
Macduff: “Not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damned in evils to top Macbeth.”
Malcolm: “I grant him bloody, luxurious, false, deceitful, malicious, smacking in every sin that has a name; but there is no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters, your matrons and your maids could not fill up the cistern of my lust. Better Macbeth than such a one to reign.”
Macduff: “There cannot be that vulture in you to devour so many as will to greatness dedicate themselves.”
Malcolm: “There grows in my most ill-composed affection such a stanchless avarice that, were I king, I should cut off the nobles fo their lands, and my more having would be as a sauce to make me hunger all the more.”
Macduff: “Yet do not fear; all these are portable, with other graces weighed.”
Malcolm: “But I have none. The king-becoming graces, as justice, temperance, stableness, perseverance, mercy, devotion, patience, courage, and fortitude; I have no relish of them, but abound in the division of each several crime, acting it out in many ways. Nay, had I power, I should pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, uproar the universal peace and confound all unity on earth.”
Macduff: “O Scotland, Scotland!”
Malcolm: “If such a one be fit to govern, speak. I am as I have spoken.”
Macduff: “Fit to govern? No, not to live! O my breast, thy hope ends here!”
Malcolm: “Macduff, this noble passion, child of integrity, has from my soul wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts to thy good truth and honour. For even now I put myself to thy direction and here abjure the taints and blames I laid upon myself for strangers to my nature. I am yet unknown to woman, never was forsworn, scarcely have coveted what was my own, at no time broke my faith and delight no less in truth than life. My first false speaking was this upon myself. What I am truly is thine and my poor country’s to command. Why are you silent?”
Macduff: “Such welcome and unwelcome things at once tis hard to reconcile.”
Enter Ross
Macduff: “See, who comes here, my ever gentle cousin.”
Ross: “Sir, amen.”
Macduff: “Stands Scotland where it did?”
Ross: “Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know itself! It cannot be called our mother, but our grave, where violent sorrow seems a modern ecstasy and good men’s lives expire before the flowers in their cap.”
Malcolm: “What’s the newest grief?”
Ross: “Each minute teems a new one.”
Macduff: “How does my wife?”
Ross: “Why, well.”
Macduff: “And all my children?”
Ross: “Well too.”
Macduff: :”The tyrant has not battered at their peace?”
Ross: “They were at peace when I did leave them.”
Malcolm: “Be it their comfort. We are coming thither. Gracious England has lent us ten thousand men.”
Ross: “Would I could answer this comfort with the like! But I have words that would be howled out in the desert air.”
Macduff: “What concern they? The general cause or due to some single breast?”
Ross: “The main part pertains to you alone.”
Macduff: “If it be mine, keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.”
Ross: “Let not your eyes despise my tongue forever, which shall possess them with the heaviest sound that ever yet they heard. Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes savagely slaughtered. To relate the manner were to add the death of you.”
Macduff: “Merciful heaven! My children too?”
Ross: “Wife, children, servants, all that could be found.”
Macduff: “My wife killed too?”
Ross: “I have said.”
Malcolm: “Be comforted. Let us make medicines of our great revenge to cure this deadly grief.”
Macduff: “He has no children. Did you say all?”
Malcolm: “Dispute it like a man.”
Macduff: “I shall do so; but I must also feel it like a man. Did heaven look on, and would not take their part? Sinful Macbeth, they were all struck for thee, and not for their own demerits but for mine.
Malcolm: “Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief convert to anger; blunt not the heart; enrage it.”
Macduff: “Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; within my sword’s length set him.”
Malcolm: “Come, go we to the king. Our power is ready. Macbeth is ripe for shaking. Receive what cheer you may; the night is long that never finds a day.
Analysis
This is one of the most emotionally resonant and thematically complex scenes in Macbeth, as it marks a critical contrast between Macbeth and the forces opposing him. Set in England, the scene begins with Malcolm testing Macduff’s loyalty through a lengthy and elaborate deception, claiming to be darker and more sinister than Macbeth ever could be, in order to gauge whether Macduff is truly trustworthy. We can understand why Malcolm is at first doubtful of Macduff. After all, when Macbeth was thought to be honest he and Macduff were dear friends who quite loved each other. Furthermore, Macduff’s life has not yet been affected by Macbeth. Once he has Macduff convinced and absolutely devastated by his declaration of evil personified, he realizes that Macduff can be trusted and he comes clean and the two are ready to join forces against Macbeth. Then Ross arrives with the devastating news that Macbeth has slaughtered Macduff’s wife and children. This moment naturally shatters Macduff, who breaks down before transforming his grief into a sacred vow of vengeance, exacted in Act V. Malcolm and Macduff now each have reason enough to rage, and rage they will.
Act V
Scene i
Macbeth’s castle
Enter a doctor and Lady Macbeth’s gentlewoman
Doctor: “I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?”
Gentlewoman: “Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, afterward seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.”
Doctor: “A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching! In this slumb’ry agitation, what have you heard her say?”
Gentlewoman: “That, sir, which I will not report.”
Doctor: “You may to me.”
Gentlewoman: “Neither to you nor anyone.”
Enter Lady Macbeth with a candle.
Gentlewoman: “Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise; and upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.”
Doctor: “How came she by that light?”
Gentlewoman: “She has light by her continually; tis her command.”
Doctor: “You see her eyes are open.”
Gentlewoman: “Ay, but their sense is shut.”
Doctor: “What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.”
Gentlewoman: “It is an accustomed action with her to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her to continue in this a quarter of an hour. Hark, she speaks.”
Lady Macbeth: “Yet here’s a spot. Out damned spot! Out, I say. Hell is murky. What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?“
Doctor: “Did you mark that?”
Lady Macbeth: “The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? What, will these hands never be clean? No more of that, my Lord, no more of that.”
Doctor: “Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.”
Gentlewoman: “She has spoken what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she has known.”
Lady Macbeth: “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”
Doctor: “What a sigh there is. The heart is sorely charged.”
Gentlewoman: “I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.”
Doctor: “This disease is beyond my practice.”
Lady Macbeth: “Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again; Banquo is buried; he cannot come out of his grave.”
Doctor: “Even so?”
Lady Macbeth: “What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.”
Exit Lady Macbeth
Doctor: “Will she now got to bed?”
Gentlewoman: “Directly.”
Doctor: “Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician. God forgive us all. Look after her and remove from her the means of all annoyance, and still keep eyes upon her. Good night. My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight. I think but dare not speak.”
Gentlewoman: “Good night, dear doctor.”
Analysis
In this scene Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking episode reveals the devastating weight of guilt that has consumed her. She has clearly gone over the edge. Her repeated line, “Out, damned spot!” is more than a cry to remove imagined blood; it’s a futile attempt to cleanse herself of a moral stain that cannot be washed away. There is no way she can wash the blood off her hands at this point and this scene recalls her telling Macbeth in Act II that ‘just a little water clears us of this deed.’ They are that much further in blood now. Lady Macbeth once mocked Macbeth’s conscience and took the lead in planning Duncan’s murder, and is now the one undone by psychological torment. Both Macbeth and his lady have difficult sleeps now, harking back to the foreshadowing in Act II, when Macbeth thinks he hears a voice declare that ‘Macbeth does murder sleep’. The doctor quickly links Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking to a ‘great perturbation in nature’ and that ‘unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.’ These troubles are beyond the doctor’s practice, as she requires the divine more so than a physician. Her breakdown marks the beginning of the final unraveling of the Macbeth regime. Macbeth flies solo from here on out and he is hardly in much better shape than his sickly wife
Act V
Scene ii
Near Dunsinane
Enter Menteith, Caithness, Angus and soldiers
Menteith: “The English power is near, led on by Malcolm and the good Macduff. Revenges burn in them.”
Angus: “Near Birnam Wood shall we meet them.”
Menteith: “What does the tyrant?”
Caithness: “Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies. Some say he’s mad; others, who lesser hate him, do call it valiant fury; but for certain he cannot buckle his distemper’d cause within the best of rule.”
Angus: “Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands. Those he commands move only in command, none in love. Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.“
Summary and Analysis
In this brief scene, these Scottish lords discuss the situation while their forces gather near Birnam Wood, preparing to confront Macbeth. The English army of 10,000 men is approaching Macbeth’s castle, ‘burning with revenge’ and led by Macduff and Malcolm while Macbeth fortifies his castle and prepares for the battle. Angus delivers the stunning line that Macbeth’s title ‘hangs loose about him like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief’. This scene suggests there is a sense of growing momentum and inevitability around the convergence of Macbeth’s enemies, as the gathering storm of justice aligns itself against the tyrant’s reign.
Act V
Scene iii
Macbeth’s castle
Enter Macbeth, the doctor and attendants
Macbeth: “Bring me no more reports till Birnam Wood removes to Dunsinane. What’s the boy Malcolm? Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know all mortal consequences have pronounced me thus: ‘Fear not, Macbeth; no man that’s born of woman shall ever have power upon thee’. The mind I sway by and the heart I bear shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.”
Servant: “There are ten thousand soldiers.”
Macbeth: “I am sick at heart. I have lived long enough, 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. I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. Give me my armour. Hang those who talk of fear. How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: “Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick coming fancies that keep her from her rest.”
Macbeth: “Cure her of that. Can thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart?”
Doctor: “Therein the patient must minister to herself.”
Macbeth: “Throw physic to the dogs – I’ll none of it. If thou could, doctor, find her disease and purge it to a sound and pristine health. I would applaud thee to the very echo that should applaud again. Pull it off, I say.”
Summary and Analysis
There are ups and downs in this act for Macbeth. The witches have given him confidence that unless Birnam Woods moves toward his castle and a man not born of woman he should have to fight, then he is safe. Both of these occurrences are so unimaginable to Macbeth that he does not even desire fresh reports from the field. He is that cocky now. But yet when he is informed that 10,000 English soldiers are approaching, he is suddenly sick at heart and has lived long enough, but still claiming he will fight till the flesh is hacked from his bones. Then again, he is dismayed by the doctor’s report on his wife. Macbeth is all over the place in Act V, responding strongly to every bit of news, both bad and good, that comes his way. It is as though he were swaying in the wind. The contrast between his outward bravado and inward collapse sets the stage nicely for his inevitable pending downfall.
Act V
Scene iv
Before Birnam Wood
Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff and Menteith
Malcolm: “I hope the days are at hand that chambers will be safe.”
Menteith: “We doubt it not.”
Siward: “What wood is this before us?”
Menteith: “The wood of Birnam.”
Malcolm: “Let every soldier hew him down a bough and bear it before him, and thereby shadow our numbers.”
Siward: “The confident tyrant keeps still in Dunsinane.”
Malcolm: “More have given him the revolt, and none serve him but the constrained, whose hearts are absent.”
Summary and Analysis
As Malcolm, Macduff and the English troops approach Birnam Woods they decide to have every soldier hew himself a branch or a bough and carry it in front of himself. In that way it would be impossible for Macbeth’s forces to accurately determine the number of English soldiers. This is also the way that Birnam Woods can be seen to be moving toward Macbeth’s castle and thereby explains the witches’ prophecy. Nature itself appears to be turning against this unnatural king.
Act V
Scene v
Macbeth’s castle
Enter Macbeth, Seyton and soldiers
Macbeth: “Hang our banners on the outward walls. Our castle’s strength will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie till famine eats them up.”
A cry within of women
Macbeth: “Wherefore was that cry?”
Seyton: “The Queen, my lord, is dead.”
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 is 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.”
Enter a messenger
Messenger: “Gracious my lord, I should report that which I say I saw, but know not how to do it. As I did stand my watch I looked toward Birnam and anon me thought the woods began to move.”
Macbeth: “Liar and slave!”
Messenger: “Within three miles you may see it coming.”
Macbeth: “If thou speak false, upon the next tree shall thou hang alive, till famine cling to thee. ’Fear not till Birnam Woods do come to Dunsinane’ and now it comes toward Dunsinane. Arm! Arm! Ring the alarum bell. Blow wind, come wrack; at least we’ll die with a harness on our back.”
Summary and Analysis
Again, good news which gets overwhelmed by bad news. Macbeth is certain his castle could withstand a siege when news arrives that Lady Macbeth is dead. His solilique in response to this news is the finest writing in the entire play and some of the finest in all of English literature, expressed in a very dark, dismal language of searing poetic quality. It is regarded as among the finest quotes in the entire Shakespearean canon.
Shakespeare will often use acting, the stage and theatre in general as a metaphor for life. Here, he writes of we poor players, who strut and fret what seems an hour upon this stage of life and then we are gone, done. Furthermore, ‘it is a tale told by an idiot (what do we know in the face of it all?), full of sound and fury (oh the racket we make while we occupy this tiny space), signifying nothing (and what has it all meant?)’ What a beautifully tragic passage on the futility of life, expressed in the finest poetry our language has ever witnessed. Macbeth is so low. His despair is existential… deep and profound. This passage can stand beside Hamlet’s ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ solilique or Richard III’s opening speech to his audience. And just as Macbeth gets this eulogy for his queen off his tongue he is informed that the impossible prophecy has come true, that Birnam wood is actually moving toward the castle. He knows the end is near and all he can do is to declare that at least he will die fighting. His fall is now precipitous.
Act V
Scene vi
Dunsinane before the castle
Enter Malcolm, Macduff and their army
Malcolm:”Now near enough; your leafy screens throw down and show like those you are. Lead our battle, worthy Macduff, and we shall take upon whatever else remains to do.”
Macduff: “Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.”
Summary and Analysis
The beginning of the final confrontation is at hand. Malcolm gives the order to fight and we are thrust into action. Its the moment when fate arrives at Macbeth’s door and there is no stopping it. The fuse is lit. Here they come for Macbeth, who has murdered Malcolm’s father, the king, and slaughtered Macduff’s entire family. This is indeed a tragedy and can only end one way.
Act V
Scene vii
The field of battle
Enter Macbeth
Macbeth: “They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, but bear-like I must fight. What’s he who was not born of woman? Such a one am I to fear, or none.”
Enter Siward
Siward: “What is thy name?”
Macbeth: “Thou would be afraid to hear it. My name is Macbeth.”
Siward: “The devil himself could not pronounce a title more hateful to my ear.”
Macbeth: “Nor more fearful.”
Siward: “Thou liest, abhorred tyrant, and with my sword I’ll prove the lie thou speaks.”
They fight and Siward is slain
Macbeth: “Thou was born of woman and swords I laugh at brandished by a man of a woman born.
Enter Macduff
Macduff: “Tyrant, show thy face. If thou be slain with no stroke of mine, my wife and children’s ghost will haunt me still. Let me find him, fortune, and more I beg not.”
Summary and Analysis
We are in the midst of the battle and Macbeth, spurned on by the witches’ promise that no man born of woman may defeat him, is fighting heroically. He slays the son of the most renowned soldier in the English army. The scene switches to Macduff who, is fighting fanatically and desperately seeking out Macbeth.
Act V
Scene viii
Another part of the field of battle
Enter Macbeth and Macduff
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.”
Macduff: “I have no words – my voice is in my sword.”
Macbeth: “I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.”
Macduff: “Despair thy charm; Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.”
Macbeth: “Accursed be that tongue that tells me so. I’ll not fight with thee and yet I will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet and be baited with the rabble’s curse, though Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of no woman born, yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff.”
They exit, fighting
Enter Malcolm, old Siward, lords and soldiers
Malcolm: “I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.”
Siward: “Some must go off, and yet I see so great a day as this is cheaply bought.”
Malcolm: “Macduff is missing.”
Macduff enters with Macbeth’s head.
Macduff: “Hail, King! For so thou art. Behold where stands the usurper’s cursed head. The time is free. Hail, King of Scotland!”
Malcolm: “Calling home our exiled friends abroad who fled the snares of watchful tyranny of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen. So thanks to all at once and to each one, whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.”
Summary and Analysis
On the battlefield Macbeth confidently confronts Macduff until he is informed that he was never born of woman but delivered by caesarean section. Macbeth realizes that the witches’ messages were merely riddles intended to lure him into a false sense of security. He may have trusted their words, but his own choices determined his fate. They fight and Macduff rightly becomes the agent of justice and returns to his men holding Macbeth’s severed head aloft. Malcolm is the King of a liberated Scotland and becomes the steady, rational and respectful King, everything Macbeth was not.
Just like Duncan’s murder and Lady Macbeth’s suicide, we do not witness the death scene. Rather Macduff will enter the castle carrying Macbeth’s severed head in his hand and proclaiming Malcolm the King of Scotland. Typical of the tragedies, the villainous protagonist does not survive his own play. This is true as well for Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Othello and Antony and Cleopatra. It is rather the definition of a tragedy. Some good people usually are traumatized but remain alive enough to pick up the pieces and carry on, such as Malcolm and Macduff in this play, about a Scottish King who murders a Scottish King in a play written for a Scottish King who is descendent of a line of Scottish Kings from the play. Huh?
Final Thoughts on Macbeth
What I love most about Macbeth is the economy of time, the relentless pace and the progression of the two lead characters, Macbeth and his Lady, throughout the play, as they change and evolve toward their inevitable fates. This play is short, moves fast, is character driven and is thematically as rich as any work by Shakespeare. In a sense it is a very simple play about the rise and fall of our two lead characters, much like the other tragedies, wherein the temptations and complexities of the human heart are what launch the principal personages into their tragic orbits amid all the others in the drama who they affect. In a play this short hardly a word is wasted, while the plot proceeds like a snowball going downhill, increasing speed until the final spectacular crash into the classic reckoning for some and reconciliation for others. The secondary characters who surround our two main personages are as interesting as the Macbeth’s themselves. Banquo, his ghost, King Duncan, Malcolm, the witches, the Macduffs, the doctor and the porter are all brilliantly presented with well-rounded clarity. And it’s not merely the characters who excite us in this play. The heath itself, the witches, their cualdron and all that they throw into it, the dagger of the mind, the sleepwalking and sleeplessness, the blood, the prophecies, the incomparable language, the brilliant asides, the tone, the moods, the psychological states of the various characters, the metaphors, the violence, the blind ambition, the political coup, the disintegration of a once great man and the finest marriage in all of Shakespeare, the murders, nightmares, revenge, and the great reckoning and reconciliation. What a feast!
Shakespeare started his career as a playwright with the tragedy of Titus Andronicus in 1589. Six years and nine histories and comedies later he created his second tragedy in Romeo and Juliet in 1595. Then he wrote another ten histories and comedies over the next four years before his return to tragedy in 1601 with Hamlet and Juliet Caesar. Once King James assumes the throne in 1603 several brilliant tragedies follow with Othello (1604), Macbeth (1605), King Lear (1606), Antony and Cleopatra (1606) and Coriolanus (1608). Even his comedies are less simple, less purely comedic and charged with more tragic elements in the period of King James’ reign. These later ‘comedies’ are often referred to increasingly as ‘the problem plays’ because they become impossible to neatly categorize and are unlike anything else ever written. Watching Shakespeare boldly experiment and develop his craft over the 24 years between his first play, Titus, in 1589, and his final work, Two Noble Kinsman, in 1613, is in so much like following some of his principle characters’ journeys through their own plays. They change in three hours as Shakespeare does over 24 years. In this sense each play becomes a micro-burst of the mental prowess and imagination the Bard displayed over that incomparable career of 40 plays, 154 sonnets and several lengthy poems. Shakespeare’s journey has become our own, as he created his art from his observations of our unconscious and interior states in countless manifestations and then merely presented them back to us for our consideration in the finest poetry ever written. I sit in the midst of his work and meditate, ruminate, analyse and postulate on the meaning of my own life and that of the world around me in the personages, themes and plots that float by in scene after scene and line after line of utter genius. “Lay on, Macduff”, indeed. ‘This is the stuff that dreams are made on.’
William Shakespeare: Journey Through Genius 