MAIN IDEAS Flashcards
STYLE
Some of the most celebrated language in Macbeth can be found in the speeches of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, both of whom begin the play speaking in an energetic and fluent style, but end the play with more halting and cryptic language. Macbeth’s first soliloquy has a strong sense of forward momentum, made possible in part by the lack of line-end punctuation and in part by Shakespeare’s use of alliteration, consonance, and assonance:
BLOOD
Blood is everywhere in Macbeth, beginning with the opening battle between the Scots and the Norwegian invaders, which is described in harrowing terms by the wounded captain in Act 1, scene 2. Once Macbeth and Lady Macbeth embark upon their murderous journey, blood comes to symbolize their guilt, and they begin to feel that their crimes have stained them in a way that cannot be washed clean. “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” Macbeth cries after he has killed Duncan, even as his wife scolds him and says that a little water will do the job (2.2.58–59). Later, though, she comes to share his horrified sense of being stained: “Out, damned spot; out, I say . . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” she asks as she wanders through the halls of their castle near the close of the play (5.1.30–34). Blood symbolizes the guilt that sits like a permanent stain on the consciences of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, one that hounds them to their graves.
THE WEATHER
As in other Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeth’s grotesque murder spree is accompanied by a number of unnatural occurrences in the natural realm. From the thunder and lightning that accompany the witches’ appearances to the terrible storms that rage on the night of Duncan’s murder, these violations of the natural order reflect corruption in the moral and political orders.
HALLUCINATIONS
Visions and hallucinations recur throughout the play and serve as reminders of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s joint culpability for the growing body count. When he is about to kill Duncan, Macbeth sees a dagger floating in the air. Covered with blood and pointed toward the king’s chamber, the dagger represents the bloody course on which Macbeth is about to embark. Later, he sees Banquo’s ghost sitting in a chair at a feast, pricking his conscience by mutely reminding him that he murdered his former friend. The seemingly hardheaded Lady Macbeth also eventually gives way to visions, as she sleepwalks and believes that her hands are stained with blood that cannot be washed away by any amount of water. In each case, it is ambiguous whether the vision is real or purely hallucinatory; but, in both cases, the Macbeths read them uniformly as supernatural signs of their guilt.
VIOLENCE
Macbeth is a famously violent play. Interestingly, most of the killings take place offstage, but throughout the play the characters provide the audience with gory descriptions of the carnage, from the opening scene where the captain describes Macbeth and Banquo wading in blood on the battlefield, to the endless references to the bloodstained hands of Macbeth and his wife. The action is bookended by a pair of bloody battles: in the first, Macbeth defeats the invaders; in the second, he is slain and beheaded by Macduff. In between is a series of murders: Duncan, Duncan’s chamberlains, Banquo, Lady Macduff, and Macduff’s son all come to bloody ends. By the end of the action, blood seems to be everywhere.
PROPHECY
Prophecy sets Macbeth’s plot in motion—namely, the witches’ prophecy that Macbeth will become first thane of Cawdor and then king. The weird sisters make a number of other prophecies: they tell us that Banquo’s heirs will be kings, that Macbeth should beware Macduff, that Macbeth is safe till Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, and that no man born of woman can harm Macbeth. Save for the prophecy about Banquo’s heirs, all of these predictions are fulfilled within the course of the play. Still, it is left deliberately ambiguous whether some of them are self-fulfilling—for example, whether Macbeth wills himself to be king or is fated to be king. Additionally, as the Birnam Wood and “born of woman” prophecies make clear, the prophecies must be interpreted as riddles, since they do not always mean what they seem to mean.
ANTAGONIST
If Macbeth is the protagonist of the play, nearly every other character serves as his antagonist. Banquo, who is ambitious but knows how to check his ambition, threatens Macbeth with his nobility and belief that time will bring his children to the throne. Duncan opposes Macbeth by holding the throne Macbeth desperately wants. Malcolm, Siward, Macduff and the other nobles actively work against Macbeth, opposing his desire to be and stay king. At the same time, Macbeth can be seen as his own antagonist. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth doesn’t lack anything. He has a wife, a title, and is in the good graces of his king. In allowing his ambition to override his own morality, he not only loses everything he has, he also sets his entire country in disarray. In deciding to commit to murder to ensure the Witches’ prophecies come true, Macbeth acts against his own best interests. His ascendancy to the throne is tainted, and in order to maintain his power he must kill again. Every decision Macbeth makes takes him further from his goal of ruling securely over the kingdom of Scotland.
PROTAGONIST
Macbeth is the protagonist of the play, even though he is not a good or sympathetic character. His ambition to be king at any cost drives the action of the play. From the beginning of the play, Macbeth is unrelentingly ambitious; nothing that happens to him, up to and including the death of his wife, can thwart him in his quest. Due in part to the Witches’ prediction that he is destined to be king, Macbeth believe he is justified in committing murder to satisfy his ambition. Although Macbeth achieves his goal of becoming king, his ambition is never fully satisfied, as he spends the remainder of the play trying to defend his throne. At the end of the play Macbeth learns the futility of his quest as he understands the true meaning of the Witches’ prophecies. But his knowledge comes too late for him to correct the error of his ways, and at the price of everyone he loves, as well as his kingdom.
PLOT ANALYSIS
Macbeth is a tragedy that tells the story of a soldier whose overriding ambition and thirst for power cause him to abandon his morals and bring about the near destruction of the kingdom he seeks to rule. At first the conflict is between Macbeth and himself, as he debates whether or not he will violently seize power, and between Macbeth and his wife, as Lady Macbeth urges her husband toward a course of action he is hesitant to take. Once Macbeth stops struggling against his ambition, the conflict shifts. It then primarily exists between Macbeth and the other characters, in particular Banquo and Macduff, who challenge his authority. Macbeth is the protagonist in the sense that he is the main focus of the narrative and that audiences frequently have access to his point of view. However, as he often acts against his own best interests, as well as the best interests of the other characters and his country, he is also the antagonist. The characters who oppose Macbeth and eventually defeat him do so in order to restore order and justice.
The tension between duty and ambition sharpens when Lady Macbeth learns of the prophecy that her husband will become king, and immediately begins strategizing ways to bring about the fulfilment of the prophecy. Now Macbeth is torn between loyalty to Duncan and loyalty to his wife, who does not appear to feel any shame, doubt, or remorse about the dark act she is plotting. She is eager to “pour my spirits in [Macbeth’s] ear/And chastise with the valor of my tongue/All that impedes [him] from the golden round” (1.5.25-27). The audience has the sense that Lady Macbeth may have been longing for just such an opportunity where she can put her intelligence and strategic ability to good use. Lady Macbeth successfully manipulates her husband into taking action, telling him, “when you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.49). This initial conflict over whether or not he can kill his king, which exists both between Macbeth and himself and between Macbeth and his wife, is resolved when Macbeth acts, murdering Duncan and then seizing power after the more obvious heirs flee in fear of being accused of the crime.
After the murder, the conflict resides primarily in the opposition between Macbeth and the individuals who mistrust his power and how he got it. Having damned himself by killing Duncan, Macbeth will stop at nothing to hold on to his power. At the start of Act 3, the audience learns that Banquo is suspicious of whether Macbeth may have achieved power through nefarious means. Perhaps because he knows that Banquo has reason to mistrust him, and certainly because he fears that Banquo’s heirs are a challenge to his lineage, Macbeth arranges to have Banquo and his son murdered. Both Macbeth and his wife have changed: Macbeth, formerly hesitant, is now completely firm and decisive, and Lady Macbeth, formerly impatient and bloodthirsty, now thinks it would be fine to leave matters well enough alone. For example, she explicitly tells him that he “must leave this” (3.2.35), while he explains that “things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” (3.2.55). The murder of Banquo furthers the heightens the conflict. Macbeth is clearly a tyrannical figure, and that the plot will revolve around him being removed from power and punished for his crime.
The expository speech between Lennox and the lord in Act 3, Scene 6 clarifies that political loyalties have shifted and that Macbeth is now viewed as a usurper who needs to be deposed. We see that Macbeth’s rule is disastrous for Scotland as a whole, as Lennox laments the fate of “this our suffering country/Under a hand accursed” (3.6.49-50). Macbeth’s horrific order of the murder of Macduff’s wife and children creates a more specific personal conflict within the broader one; Macduff now has a case for a personal vengeance against Macbeth. Spurred by his rage and grief, Macduff vows to “Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself/Within my sword’s length set him” (4.3.234-235). Macduff’s declaration of personal enmity against Macbeth sets the stage for the final conflict between the two, and for Macbeth’s defeat. A positive outcome becomes impossible for Macbeth as he gradually loses his authority, power, and eventually his wife.
Ultimately, Macbeth’s overreliance on his belief he is fated to be king leads to his downfall, since he arrogantly misinterprets the witches’ prophecies, believing that they promise him glory while in fact the prophecies predict how he will be defeated. While the audience has long understood that the witches are untrustworthy and up to no good, Macbeth only realizes this fact when facing his own death. He laments that the witches “palter with us in a double sense/That keep the word of promise to our ear/And break it to our hope” (5.8.20-22). Although he blames the witches, his own ambition is equally to blame. He heard what he wanted to hear and believed what he wanted to believe from the first moment he met the witches. Yet Macbeth is not entirely unsympathetic, as he had several powerful forces inciting him to action, and for a long time truly believed he was following his fate. His death resolves the political and social conflict, since the legitimate king can now return to power and restore order to Scotland. The play’s brief falling action allows for the promise of a brighter future under Malcolm’s new reign.
