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Macbeth
Additional Characters
• Donaldbain – Duncan's younger son
...

• Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness – Scottish Thanes
...

• Young Siward – Siward's Son
...

• Captain – in the Scottish army
...

• Gentlewoman – Lady Macbeth's caretaker
...


Act 1:
• Play opens amongst thunder and lightning – three witches decide that their next meeting will be
with Macbeth
...


• Macbeth is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess
...


• The Witches tell Macbeth that he will be Thane of Cawdor and then King
...

• When Banquo asks of his fortunes the witches reply paradoxically, saying he will be less than
Macbeth but happier, less successful, but more
...


• While the two wonder at these prophecies, the Witches disappear and another Thane, Ross,
arrives and informs Macbeth that he is now Thane of Cawdor
...


• King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo and declares that he will spend the
night at Macbeth's castle in Inverness; he also names his son Malcolm as his heir
...


• Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty and wishes him to murder Duncan in
order to obtain kingship
...


• He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan's two chamberlains drunk so that they will black out;
the next morning they will blame the chamberlains for the murder
...


Scene 1:
• Thunder and Lightning (stage directions) – associated with evil
...
” – Trochaic tetrameter,
rhyming couplets sounds like incanting – rhythm-like chanting
...
Equivocal – the use of
ambiguous/evasive language
...
– Every witch had an animal servant
...

• Witches: Fair is foul, and foul is fair – equivocal language used by the witches
...

• Witches: hover through the fog and filthy air – black and hostile weather conditions, darkness
and unhealthiness, Gothic, black and remote setting
...


Scene 2:
• Alarum within (stage directions) – contrasts to scene 1, which opened with thunder and
lightning suggesting evil
...

• Duncan: What bloody man is that? – Highlights key theme of brutality and bloodshed as
Duncan is unable to recognise his captain
...

• Captain: with his brandished steel, Which smoked with bloody execution - celebration of
bloodshed
...

• Duncan: O Valiant Cousin, worthy gentleman – Duncan praising Macbeth’s brutality and
courage
...

• Ross: Bellona’s bridegroom – Associated with Roman Goddess of War, attributes mythological
war lore to Macbeth
...

• Duncan: What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won
...


• “Valour’s minion” (bravery’s favourite) “valiant cousin, worthy gentleman” “belladonna’s
bridegroom” - Epithets used by other characters to portray Macbeth as a valiant and courageous
hero
...

• Witches: “weird sisters” – in the original version weird is spelt “wyrd” which means fate –
supports the view that the witches control fate
...
Macbeth's opening lines are a linguistic echo of the witches' - suggests he is already in tune
with the witches’ ways of thinking
...

• Banquo: look not like the’inhabitants o’th’earth, and yet ar on’t?- do not look like inhabitants
of the earth
...

Director Roman Polanski made the witches meet on a beach due to its liminal setting of sea and
land, emphasising the witches’ unknowable nature
...

• Witches: Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none - witches tell Banquo that his descendants
will be kings
...

• Banquo: Are ye fantastical - Banquo is sceptical about whether the witches are supernatural or
real mortal women
...

• Stage Direction: Witches Vanish – supernatural but, unlike the Dagger or possibly Banquo's
ghost, we know they are real because two people have seen them, not only Macbeth
...
It also would have had the connotation of
being entranced by magic to a Jacobean audience
...
Not so happy, yet much happier
...

• Banquo: What, can the devil speak true? - Banquo recognises that the witches' prophecies have
some truth
...
Not 'rapt' like Macbeth
...
Why do you dress me / In borrowed robes? - nobility
associated with the metaphor of clothing
...
It also
shows their predictions as credible to the audience
...
By showing that the Witches prophecies are
credible, the audience are likely to expect predictions to unfold, although the ambiguous
language allows for an air of mystery regarding how
...
Could also be interpreted comically
...

• Banquo: The instruments of darkness tell us truths; win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in
deepest consequence – People use truth to mislead us – equivocal
...
Banquo is wary
...

• Macbeth: Why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make
my seated heart knock at my ribs – Macbeth thinks about murdering Duncan
...
Cannot say murder
...

• Macbeth: Why, chance may crown me without my stir - Macbeth considers leaving matters to
fate
...
Odd that he says this so definitively when he doesn't recognise this idea
for the rest of the play
...
Not suited to his role
...


Scene 4:
• Duncan: There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face – no way of knowing
somebody’s mind by looking at their face
...

• Duncan: He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust – Duncan is not a good judge
of character, is going to make the same mistake with the new Thane of Cawdor
...

• Macbeth: that is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap – recognises Malcolm as a
potential obstacle
...

• Macbeth: Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires – wants to conceal
his transgressive ambitions that are so terrible he cannot stand to have stars shine on them
...
Rhyming
couplets – sense of inevitability about what he has to do
...


Scene 5:
• Lady Macbeth reading letter from Macbeth: they have more in them than mortal knowledge
- The witches are superior to humans
...

• Lady Macbeth: and shalt be what thou art promised – the imperative “shalt” shows Lady
Macbeth’s determination
...
She worries that Macbeth will not be
able to do what he must because he is too kind
...

• Lady Macbeth: chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden
round - Lady Macbeth plans to use her rhetoric to persuade Macbeth to murder Duncan
...

• Lady Macbeth: Unsex me here – wants femininity removed – parallel with witches who have
ambiguous gender (you should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you
are so)
...

• Lady Macbeth: make thick my blood, stop up th’access and passage to remorse - Lady
Macbeth wants her blood to be made thick so that she can't feel regret
...

• Lady Macbeth: murd’ring ministers – contrasts to Macbeth who cannot verbalise the notion of
death
...
Hopes that her evil plans
will be shrouded in darkness and secrecy from everyone
...

• Lady Macbeth: your face, my thane, is a book where men may read strange matters – giving
away his feelings – recognises the danger of Macbeth’s transparency
...

• Macbeth: we will speak further – could mean one of three things: 1) – he is not convinced by
Lady Macbeth’s persuasion, 2) – he wants to reassert his authority over a demeaning wife, 3) –
wants to discuss further and plan more
...


Scene 6:
• Duncan: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto
our gentle senses – dramatic irony – this is where his death has been planned
...
Duncan's compliment about Macbeth's castle highlights his
naivety
...
In Shakespearean times, can also be somebody who
is a gullible fool – befitting for Duncan
...

• Macbeth: if it were done when tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly – Macbeth
reflects that if he is going to kill Duncan then he needs to do it quickly
...
Still cannot say murder, evasive, avoiding saying the truth
...

• Macbeth: But in these cases we still have judgment here - Macbeth realises that he will be
judged (and damned) by God if he commits the murder
...
Macbeth fears that, if he murders the
king, when he becomes king others will do the same and he will be murdered in return
...

• Macbeth: hath borne his faculties so meek hath been so clear in his great office – reflects
on what a great king Duncan has been
...

• Macbeth: blow the horrid deed in every eye - Macbeth thinks that after killing Duncan,
heavens angels will make sure that everyone knows about the horror of the murder
...

• Macbeth: only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself - Macbeth recognises that his
ambition is excessive
...

• Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk / Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? /
And Wakes it now to look so green and pale – hope = courage
...

• Lady Macbeth: Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art in
desire? - Lady Macbeth questions whether Macbeth is afraid to display the same bravery in
his actions as he has in his thoughts
...

• Lady Macbeth: live a coward in thine own esteem - Lady Macbeth suggests that if
Macbeth doesn't kill Duncan he will have to live with himself as a coward
...

• Macbeth: I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none – willing to do
everything a real man would but any more is monstrous
...

• Lady Macbeth: when you durst do it, then you were a man – challenging Macbeth’s
masculinity
...


• Lady Macbeth: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his
boneless gums and dashed the brains out – Lady Macbeth says that to display her loyalty,
she would have committed infanticide if she had promised it to Macbeth
...
Shows how far she would
go to keep a promise
...

• Lady Macbeth: “what cannot you and I perform upon th’unguarded Duncan?” - Lady
Macbeth reassures Macbeth that the murder of Duncan will be easy
...

• Macbeth: bring forth men-children only, for thy undaunted mettle should compose
nothing but males – complimenting her masculinity, so strong she should only bear male
children
...

• Macbeth: I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat – Macbeth
resolves to commit the murder
...

• Macbeth: mock the time with fairest show, false face must hide what the false heart doth
know – deception
...
Rhyming couplets compound sense of finality
...

• He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge
...

• Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife,
arrive
...

• Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did
so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds
...

• The rightful heirs' flight make them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of
Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king
...


Scene 1:
• Banquo: There’s husbandry in heaven, their candles are all out – It’s dark, Macbeth’s request
that the “stars hide their fires” has been accepted, it is the perfect condition for murder
...
It is heavily implied by the epithet “cursed” that he is
thinking the same things as Macbeth
...
Argument for free will – Banquo and Macbeth as the depiction of
the choice of good vs evil
...
This diamond he greets your
wife withal – Duncan has given generous gifts to the servants that wait on Macbeth and a
Diamond to his wife
...

• Banquo: I dreamed last night of the weird sisters – confirms that his thoughts are specifically
related to the prophecy
...

• Macbeth: “is this a dagger which I see before me?” “the handle toward my hand?” art thou
not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false
creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” – syntax marked by questions – state of
uncertainty
...
1) the dagger is a dagger of Macbeth’s
imagination; 2) the dagger is conjured by the Witches to spur Macbeth on to kill Duncan
...

Ambiguity of free will vs fate is reflective of the ambiguity of the time – religious division, great
chain of being etc
...

• Macbeth: it is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes - Macbeth thinks that the
dagger is just a hallucination due to his thoughts about murder
...

• Macbeth: with Tarquin’s ravishing strides – a roman prince who raped Lucrece – attributing
notion of murder to sex and delight
...

• Macbeth: I go, and it is done
...

• Macbeth: Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell, that summons thee to heaven or hell – Knell’s
are associated with funerals and death
...

• Duncan’s death takes place offstage – highlights the taboo nature of Macbeth’s crime
...

• Macbeth: I have done the deed – confirms that he has murdered Duncan
...

• Lady Macbeth: I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry - Unnatural, gothic sounds
accompany Duncan's murder
...

Composition of dialogue is fragmented
...
Macbeth can't face the blood on his hands
...

• Macbeth: I could not say ‘Amen’ when they did say ‘God bless us
...

• Macbeth: I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' stuck in my throat - Macbeth's inability to
pray after killing Duncan signals his damnation
...
'it will […] 'us' - recognises the potential for psychological
turmoil
...

• Macbeth: ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep’, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth
shall sleep no more – referring to all of his possible identities to reinforce how he will get no
sleep
...

• Lady Macbeth: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers - Lady Macbeth takes charge
...

• Lady Macbeth: The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures; ‘tis the eye of childhood that
fears a painted devil – thinks Macbeth’s fear of looking at the murdered Duncan is childish
...
incarnadine - a fleshy red
colour
...

• Lady Macbeth: a little water clears us of this deed – thinks she can get rid of their sin just by
washing the blood off of her hands, ironic as she later goes mad over the thought of blood and
begins to obsess over her hands – “out damned spot!” (5
...

• Macbeth: to know my deed, ‘twere best not know myself – does not recognise himself
...


Scene 3:
• Lennox: “unruly” “strange screams” “dire combustion” “feverous and did shake” - Lexical
field of auditory imagery and disruption
...
Auditory lexical
field enhances disruption as it is not only described but heard
...

• Lennox: the earth was feverous and did shake – there is disruption to the earth as a result of
Duncan’s murder
...
We are reminded that the Jacobeans believed in a divine order
...
A crime against the king,

therefore, was a crime against God
...
Satan was deemed responsible for unrest and it was believed that he worked through
witches and evil spirits to attack the divine order that God had installed
...
Shakespeare gives us a glimpse of what is to
happen during Macbeth’s reign as king
...

• Lennox: obscure bird - owl, omen of death
...
Macduff’s senses have been frozen, as shown by his inability
to articulate himself by the use of the exclamatory apostrophe and the epizeuxis of “horror,
horror, horror”
...

• Macduff: “lord” “temple” “most sacrilegious murder” – when he can get his thoughts together
he uses a lexical field of religious language to note the sacrilege of the murder
...

• Macduff: approach the chamber and destroy your sight / With a new Gorgon – Gorgon =
medusa
...

• Macduff uses exclamatory language with a lot of punctuation
...
Ben
Jonson “sudden outcries of genuine passion
...

• Macbeth uses poetic language, contemplating the insignificance of own human existence –
“there’s nothing serious in mortality”
...
Relates to
Act 1 scene 7 “we shall make our griefs and clamour roar”
...

• Macbeth: I do repent me of my fury, that I did kill them” – Macbeth has also murdered the
sleeping guards to conceal his actions
...

• Macbeth: his silver skin laced with his golden blood – regal colours associated with royalty
...

• Malcolm: why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim This argument for ours? - saying
that him and Donaldbain could be blamed
...
Banquo
suspects foul play in the murder of Duncan
...


Scene 4:
• Old Man: used by Shakespeare to represent the common man and his point of view
...

• Ross: Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act - great chain of being – nature has
been disrupted by Macbeth’s act of regicide
...
The soft alliteration of “living light” is starkly opposed to the plosive
“darkness does” – jarring contrast between the plosive sounds of reality and soft alliterative and
sibilant “living light should kiss it”
...
Shakespeare allows his audience to see that when God’s
appointed representative is murdered, the whole of nature is disturbed
...
The consequences of killing a king are portrayed as so terrible that the
attempt would not be worth contemplating
...

• Macduff: those that Macbeth hath slain – Dry observation that confirms Macduff’s suspicion
because he does not mention who Macbeth kills (the guards), instead directly attributing the act
of murder with Macbeth
...
Ross is saying that it
is a stupid ambition that causes a son to kill the father who supports him
...
Ross is implying that
Macbeth might not be innocent
...


Act 3:
• Despite his success Macbeth, aware of Banquo's prophecy, remains uneasy
...

• Fearing Banquo's suspicions, Macbeth arranges to have him murdered, by hiring two men to kill
them, later sending a Third Murderer
...

• Macbeth becomes furious; he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo
remains alive
...

• Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place
...

• The others panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady
Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady
...


• This time Lady Macbeth tells the Lords to leave, and they do so
...
Banquo in
soliloquy thinks that Macbeth gained the crown through foul play
...

• Banquo: “but hush, no more” – says this after he considers whether the witches’ prophecy
about him will come true
...

• Macbeth: “Ride you this afternoon?” “is’t far you ride?” - Macbeth ascertains questions that
centre around Banquo’s whereabouts so that he can plan his murder
...
Obsessive nature of Macbeth’s desire to remain king
...

• Macbeth: our fears in Banquo stick deep – like a dagger
...

• Macbeth: in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be feared - his natural king like
ability is to be feared by Macbeth
...

• Macbeth: under him my genius is rebuked, as it is said Mark Anthony’s was by Caesar –
believed that you could be manipulated by someone who has a stronger spirit than you and here
he makes a comparison to Mark Anthony and Caesar as Mark Anthony thought his spirit was
overpowered by Caesar and, in turn, had him killed
...

• Macbeth: he chid the sisters when they first put the name of king upon me – Banquo, at that
point, saw the witches for what they were – evil spirits
...

• Macbeth: “upon my head they place a fruitless crown” “barren” “unlineal hand” – put a
barren crown and spectre upon him that will be taken by someone else
...
Lexical field of barrenness, reflects his deep-seated obsession with remaining king
...
His obsession isn’t to do with a threat from Banquo, as he has heard that Banquo “shall
get kings, though thou be none
...
Macbeth's imagery of barrenness
shows that he fears that his descendants won't be kings
...

• Macbeth: in the catalogue ye go for men, as hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels… - bestial
imagery
...
Becoming increasingly feral and wild as he is becoming
less rational and more impulsive
...

• Macbeth: in such bloody distance that every minute of his being thrusts against my near’st of

life – bloody distance refers to distance between swordsman; every moment Banquo exists he
threatens Macbeth
...
Both literal and metaphysical meaning; they will literally be
ambushed in the darkness of night and dark hour = evil
...


Scene 2:
• Lady Macbeth: Nought’s had, all’s spent where our desire is got without content – they are
not comfortable yet, and there is still uncertainty and insecurity
...
Captures both Macbeth’s brutality and his fear for the future
...
The snake can be interpreted as symbolic of Banquo and more generally the
Witches’ predictions concerning Banquo’s children
...
Selfish, contradicts the kingly attributes he should uphold
...


• Macbeth: better be with the dead whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the
torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy – better to be dead than exist in psychological
turmoil
...


• Macbeth: nor steel nor poison, malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further –
all of what caused Duncan trouble cannot touch him anymore
...

• Macbeth: make our faces vizards to our hearts, disguising what they are – look like one thing
but be another
...
Macbeth's bestial imagery conveys his mental
turmoil
...

• Macbeth: be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed – Macbeth
hides his plan to have Banquo murdered from Lady Macbeth
...
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship is weakening
...

• Macbeth: Come, seeling night - Macbeth calls on night-time to give him the courage to commit
further evil acts
...


• Macbeth: Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill - Macbeth realises that the more evil
you do, the more evil you become, and the better you become at committing evil acts
...

Scene 4:
• Macbeth: ‘Tis better thee without, than he within – better on your face than in his body
...

• First murderer: twenty trenched gashes on his head – the murderer describes Banquo's
mutilated corpse
...

• Macbeth: There the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled / Hath nature that in time will
venom breed – Banquo is the serpent, Fleance the worm
...

• Stage directions: enter the Ghost of Banquo and sits in Macbeth’s place – Banquo’s
descendants will unseat Macbeth
...
In Jacobean drama
characters seeing ghosts is confirmation of their guilt
...

• Lady Macbeth: this is the very painting of your fear – just a visual representation of your fear
...

• Macbeth: our monuments shall be the maws of kites – a graphically macabre metaphor
...

• Macbeth: Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear […] rhinoceros […] tiger, take any
shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble – come at me like a bear or in any
savage animal form and I’ll be fine
...
The supernatural scares him
...

• Macbeth: it will have blood they say: blood will have blood – revenge – chiasmus =
symmetrical sentence
...

• Macbeth: stones have been known to move and trees to speak – his disorder is reflected in the
way he sees nature
...
Unemotive when talking about acts of evil
...
Macbeth compares his course of action with wading
across a river of blood, creating a vivid image of his bloody reign
...

• Macbeth: strange things I have in head that will to hand – his thoughts will become actions
...
1 when she walks and talks in her sleep
...
Macbeth's final line suggests
his acceptance that he will commit further acts of evil
...


Scene 5:
• Scene believed to be written later by Thomas Middleton
...

• Hecate: as by the strength of their illusion, shall draw him on to his confusion – they plan to
purposefully mislead him
...

• Hecate: security is mortals’ chiefest enemy – over-confidence is what often causes man to fail
...

• Lennox: did he not straight in pious rage the two delinquents tear, that were the slaves of
drink and thralls of sleep? – Heavy implication of Macbeth’s guilt
...


Act 4:
• Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them to reveal the truth of their
prophecies to him
...

• They conjure an armoured head to tell Macbeth to Beware Macduff, a bloody child that tells him
that none of woman born can harm him, and a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth
will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill
...

• Macbeth also asks whether Banquo's sons will ever reign in Scotland; the witches conjure a
procession of eight crowned kings, all similar in appearance to Banquo, and the last carrying a
mirror that reflects even more kings
...

• After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff
has fled to England
...

• Although Macduff is no longer in the castle, everyone in Macduff's castle is put to death,
including Lady Macduff and their young son
...

• Macbeth: How now, you secret, black and midnight hags! – Weird level of familiarity
...
Macbeth is willing to bring suffering to the earth if it means he will learn his
future
...

• First Apparition: Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth: beware Macduff – The use of the word
'beware' acts as a warning, explicitly indicating to the characters that they should be cautious and
alert to dangers
...

• Macbeth: Thou hast harp'd my fear aright - The first apparition's warning about Macduff
frightens Macbeth
...

• Second apparition: none of woman born shall harm Macbeth – contradicts the first warning
about Macduff because surely he was born of a woman? Evidence of the Witches using
equivocal language to mislead Macbeth
...
He has
become desensitised to the idea of violence
...

• Third Apparition: Macbeth shall never be vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high
Dunsinane hill shall come against him – will not be defeated until woodland arrives at his
Castle – witches are referring the cutting down of Branches to conceal Malcolm, Macduff and
the oncoming English army
...

• Macbeth: our high-placed Macbeth - has a deluded sense of self-confidence as shown by use of
third person
...

• Macbeth: Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs
...

• Macbeth: damned all those that trust them – ironic as he trusted the witches and is damned
because of it
...

• Macbeth: give to th’edge o’th’sword his wife, his babes and all unfortunate souls that trace
him in his line – tricolon (his wife his babes and all unfortunate souls) women and children
traditionally associated with vulnerability
...
Talking about killing Macduff’s family as if it is a
certainty
...

• Lady Macduff: how will you live? Son: As birds do mother Lady Macduff: what, with worms
and flies? – Grimly prophetic of their death
...
Macduff’s son is witty and clever
...

• Lady Macduff: I have done no harm – Lady Macduff states her innocence, emphasising the
extent to how evil and unnecessary her death is
...
Macduff's child courageously defends his
father's honour even as he is about to be killed
...
Highlights the
goodness of Macduff’s son and makes his murder seem even more villainous
...
Divine chain of being – sufferings of humans affect the
universe
...
Anaphora of new expresses suffering of Scotland
...

• Macduff: I would not be the villain that thou think’st for the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s
grasp and the rich East to boot – Macduff would not be as bad as Macbeth in the same
position
...

Scotland compared to a metaphorical open wound with ongoing and increasing suffering
...
Horrid hell and devil more damned, harsh
alliteration, almost spitting
...

• Malcolm: noble passion – Malcolm’s description of Macduff
...

• Malcolm talking about King Edward: he hath a heavenly gift of prophecy – antithesis of the
witches, highlights his good nature
...

• Ross talking about Scotland: it cannot be called our mother, but our grave – juxtaposition

between the mother (life) and the grave (death)
...

• Ross: good men’s lives expire before the flowers in their caps – Ross comments on the brevity
of human life in Macbeth's rule
...

• Ross: your wife and babes savagely slaughtered – sinister sibilance
...

• Macduff: But I must also feel it as a man - Macduff says that he needs to grieve for his wife
and children
...
`
• At night, at the King's palace in Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth's
strange habit of sleepwalking
...

• Bemoaning the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff and Banquo, she tries to wash off imaginary
bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she knows she pressed
her husband to do
...

• Her belief that nothing can wash away the blood on her hands

Scene 1:
• Doctor: A great perturbation in nature - The doctor says that Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking
reflects her psychological disturbance
...

• Lady Macbeth: “out, damned spot” “what will these hands ne’er be clean? –Lady Macbeth
tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands
...
Clearly
her control has broken down and she is being destroyed through guilt
...

• Lady Macbeth: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand – similar to
Macbeth’s earlier imagery about Neptune’s ocean, nothing will rid her of her evil deed
...

• Lady Macbeth: there’s knocking at the gate – knocking on hell’s gate
...

• Lady Macbeth: more needs she the divine than the physician – needs God
...

• Doctor: remove from her the means of all annoyance – the doctor is aware that Lady Macbeth
might commit suicide
...

• Caithness: he cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule – he cannot govern
his frenzied behaviour
...

• Angus: those he commands move only in command, nothing in love - Angus reports that
Macbeth has no truly loyal supporters
...
Reminiscent of what Macbeth had said earlier in the play;
when he knew he was unfit to be king he described himself as being dressed in borrowed robes
...

• Caithness: “med’cine” “sickly” “purge” – doctor and patient imagery, similar to previous
scene
...


Scene 3:
• Macbeth: till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear – trying to persuade
himself that he is not afraid
...

• Macbeth: I have lived long enough: my way of life is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf –
yellow leaf refers to autumn, metaphorically the period just before death
...
Life, for him, has lost its meaning and he feels it’s withering and
falling away like a yellow leaf in autumn
...
He has grown tired of life and feels the best has gone
...

• Macbeth: and that which should accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience, troops of
friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep - In his old age,
instead of friends, Macbeth has curses
...


Scene 4:
Nothing of great importance
...

• Macbeth: I have almost forgotten the taste of fears: the time has been, my senses would have
cooled to hear a night shriek and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as
life were in’t
...
A significant change from the beginning of the play when he stated
that the idea of murder doth unfix my hair
...
Could not even utter the term 'murder' before – now easily refers to his
thoughts as slaughterous, slaughter perhaps even more brutal than the term murder
...

• Macbeth: tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day –
thinks life is insignificant
...
The repetition of 3 tomorrows conveys a sense of
monotonous meaningless repetition regarding life
...

• Macbeth: life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the
stage and then is heard no more – Macbeth is saying that life is nothing other than an illusion
...
Shakespeare
intends us to have sympathy for Macbeth at this point
...

• Macbeth: life […] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing - it is
devoid of any meaning, full of contrived struggles
...
Also creates a fall into silence
which emphasises the nihilism and descent into meaninglessness that is being described
...
Perhaps, although the teller is an idiot, suggesting a lack
of control or purpose
...


Scene 6:
Nothing of great importance
...
He knows he is surrounded
and is going to give all he has in him
...

• Young Siward: thou call’st thyself a hotter name than any is in hell – Macbeth’s name is more
hateful than any in hell
...

• Macduff: if thou be’st slain, and with no stroke of mine, my wife and children’s ghosts will
haunt me still – the only way Macduff will be able to relieve himself of his guilt over his wife
and children’s deaths is to kill Macbeth
...

• Macbeth: my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already – Macbeth is already guilty
of killing his family
...

• Macbeth: I bear a charmed life which must not yield to one of woman born – overconfidence
gained from witches’ prophecies
...

• Macbeth: be these juggling fiends no more believed – the witches are meddling creatures
...

• Macbeth: I will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet – refuses to surrender
...


Scene 9:
• Stage Directions: Enter Macduff, with Macbeth's head
...

• Malcolm: henceforth be earls - The new King Malcolm gives the thanes new titles
...




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