Macbeth - themes Flashcards
Significance of ambition
> Shakespeare links having ambition with evil and committing evil deeds.
Some people think that LM encourages M to murder D because of her own ambition.
Macbeth’s perspective at start - ambition
> At the start of the play, M doesn’t seem to be ambitious.
He is already a thane, so he has some social status. He does not seem to want more.
When he is given the title, ‘Thane of Cawdor’, he is surprised.
Lady Macbeth’s perspective at start - ambition
> LM is more ambitious for her husband than M is for himself at the start.
She believes he deserves more than he has, but that he is too nice for his own good. She thinks he won’t go after power: ‘Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be/ What thou art promis’d; yet do I fear thy nature,/ It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness/ To catch the nearest way’ (1.5)
LM thinks M does have ambition, but he is too good, gentle and kind to go after what he wants; ‘Thou wouldst be great,/ Art not without ambition, but without/ The illness should attend it’ (1.5).
Significance of Macbeth’s ambition
> M’s growing ambition eventually causes his downfall.
>He becomes paranoid as a result of his ambition.
Significance of damnation
> At the time the play was set, people believed in heaven and hell.
If someone went against God’s will, they would be damned (condemned) in the afterlife and punished in hell for all eternity.
This was often seen as more frightening than allowing harm to happen to you while you were alive.
Once M has damned (condemned) himself by killing D, nothing he can do will save his immortal soul.
He might as well pursue his ambitions and kill anyone who gets in his was because his punishment by God has already been decided.
Paranoia
> After the death of D, M can’t cope with what he has done (perhaps his religious guilt comes into play here).
He becomes more and more paranoid. The price of fulfilling his ambition was not worth it: ‘I have liv’d long enough. My way of life/ Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf, /And that which should accompany old age, /As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have’ (5.3).
M lists all the things he should have had later in life, like an honourable reputation and many friends. He has lost everything by going after the crown.
Causes of M’s downfall
> You could argue ambition causes his downfall.
M’s ambition changes his life from good to horrific and causes his death.
It is caused by the outside force of the witches’ prophecies.
M and LM make huge errors in judgement as they allow their greedy desire for power to overtake them.
The audience can see their bad choices building up throughout the play, and they know that it can’t end well for either character.
Therefore, the tragic mood of the play starts as soon as M meets the witches in Act 1 and gets worse until he eventually dies in Act 5.
Macbeth- violence
> The violent imagery describing M at the start of the play is honourable: his violence on the battlefield is for the king.
He is praised and rewarded for killing a treacherous than, Macdonals: ‘Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’ chaps/ And fixed his head upon our battlements’ (1.2).
M shows his courage and strength by cutting his enemy open from his navel to his face.
The violent verb ‘unseam’d’ emphasises how M opens him up.
It all seems very fluid in motion. This implies M is strong and is unphased by horrifically killing another man.
Macdonald’s head - message about treason
> M removes his enemy’s head and displays it from the battlements. This might seem grisly, but it has a clear purpose.
When Shakespeare was writing, anyone sentenced to death for treason, such as Guy Fawkes after the failed Gunpowder Plot, would be hung, drawn and quartered and their heads would be shown on pikes on Traitor’s Gate. This was the gateway prisoners would pass through as they entered the Tower of London.
This was done to make sure people thought twice before acting against their king and country.
Macbeth’s head
> At the end of the play, Macduff removes M’s head.
Macduff seems to be displaying it as he asks them to look at it: ‘Behold where stands/ the usurper’s cursed head’ (5.9).
This moment makes M’s heroism at the start somewhat ironic - he was a hero for killing a man who seems to have been a traitor to the king. However, almost immediately after that, he himself becomes a traitor, soon murdering the king and taking over Scotland.
This related back to the witches’ statement: ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair (1.1) - things and people are not always as they seem.
Heroic code
> The warriors fighting believed in the heroic code (defines how a noble person should act): it was honourable to die in battle.
That is why Siward says that his son ‘parted well’ (5.9). The battles were bloody and violent, but participating and fighting, even dying, bravely was very honourable. It deserved praise.
This is why M’s murder of D seems particularly evil - he killed him while he slept without warning.
He did not give D a chance to meet him equally in battle.
Lady Macbeth - violent imagery
> LM uses very violent imagery to persuade her husband to murder D.
She tells him she would have bashed in the brain of her own baby if she had promised to do it:
-‘I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums, /And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn/ As you have done to this’(1.7).
Lady Macbeth baby quote - shocking
> This would have been very shocking to a Jacobean audience.
LM is a woman whose main purpose, according to the values of the time, would be to give birth to and nurture children. The language she uses is very vivid and violent.
Lady Macbeth baby quote - ‘plucked’
> The verb ‘plucked’ is simple, but devastating; it’s as if she casually removed the baby from the breast and broke the connection between them.
In this sense, LM goes against nature by refusing to nurture her own child ad, instead, describes the violent image of her murdering it.
Lady Macbeth baby quote - ‘boneless’
> The adjective ‘boneless’ reflects how young the child is.
He doesn’t have teeth in his gums yet. This reminds the audience of how vulnerable the baby is and how LM does not seem to care - again, her careless attitude goes against nature, especially for women at the time the play was set.
Lady Macbeth baby quote - ‘dashed’
> Finally, the verb ‘dashes’ is a very aggressive one.
>It showed how she would have bashed in her baby’s head if she had promised to do it.
Lady Macbeth baby quote - analysis
> She uses violence to try and show M how strong her commitment is to anything she promises to do.
She is trying to show him he is a coward for going back on the plan.
She uses an image of violence against the thing she cares most about - her baby.
She does this to show him that she’d do anything to keep her word to him and to make him change his mind.
In LM’s mind, this violent description shows her husband the extent she’d go to for him and, therefore, how much she loves him.
Killing Duncan
> The ciolence of killing D is clear from the blood on M’s hands.
D was sleeping. Macbeth was especially cowardly in the murder and prevented him from a warrior’s death.
M refers to his hands as ‘a sorry sight’ (2.2). This suggests that he has done something incredibly weak in murdering a sleeping man, and one who he was honour-bound (morally obliged) to serve and protect.
Other murders
> After D’s murder, M steps away from murdering others with his own hands. He prefers to send murderers to do this for him.
This may suggest he is still ashamed of using violence against those who don’t deserve it.
Alternatively, this could show that he cares so little about human life that he carelessly gives the job of murdering to other people - his victims don’t deserve his attention.
Violence bringing violence
> M says after seeing B’s ghost, ‘It will have blood they say: blood will have blood’ (3.4).
This is a metaphor saying that once a violent act is committed, more violence will follow. This usually happens when a family tries to avenge the first murder.
One murder after another
> One violent act causes more and more violence:
- after murdering D, M continues to kill others in an attempt to stop anyone else from taking his throne.
- He hires men to murder B and his son.
- He hires men to murder Lady Macduff and her son.
- The guilt of murdering D drives LM to suicide.
- The murder of D, lady macduff, and her son causes Macduff to kill M.
Protecting the crown
> M will also stop at nothing to protect his crown. He punishes those disloyal yo him, including women and children.
He sends murderers to kill Band his son, Fleance, who escapes.
After Macduff leaves for England, M sends more murderers to kill his wife and children in their home.
Murdering children
> The murder of Macduff’s son is seen on stage: ‘he has killed me, mother’ (4.2).
The murder of children is very violent and upsetting. Children are symbolic of innocence. They can’t protect themselves.
Calling out to his ‘mother’ is very emotive, because it reminds those watching how young he is. This violence reflects how evil M has become.
Banquo’s ghost
> A key supernatural event is when M sees the ghost of B. He is the only one who can see the ghost.
We could argue that this hallucination is a symptom of M’s mind becoming more and more unbalanced because of the guilt he feels, as well as the overwhelming amount of power he suddenly has.
Dagger
> M has visions throughout the play, such as the dagger before he kills D, ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me’ (2.1).
These could be psychological or they could be premonitions and M is experiencing the supernatural.
Because he has interacted with the witches, the audience might think that he has made himself vulnerable to evil.
