Shakespeare, Macbeth

A man hears a prophecy and murders his way to the top. The prophecy didn't tell him to do that. Or did it?

About the work

Macbeth was probably written around 1606 and first performed in that year, possibly at Hampton Court before King James I. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and among his most intense -- there is no comic subplot, no relief from the atmosphere of dread. The play tells the story of Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman and general, who encounters three witches on a battlefield, hears a prophecy that he will become king, and proceeds to murder his way to the throne, only to find that the crown brings him not happiness but paranoia, isolation, and eventual destruction.

The play draws on Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587 edition) for its historical material, though Shakespeare altered the record freely. The real Macbeth ruled Scotland from 1040 to 1057 and was, by the standards of the time, a reasonably successful king. Shakespeare's Macbeth is a study in the psychology of ambition and the mechanics of tyranny. The play's association with James I -- who claimed descent from Banquo and who had a well-documented interest in witchcraft -- has shaped much of its critical reception.

Macbeth is also famously associated with theatrical superstition: actors often refuse to speak its name in a theater, referring to it instead as "the Scottish Play." Whether this is because of a genuine history of misfortune in production or because the play's atmosphere of evil invites such lore is itself an interesting question.

Things to notice

The opening scene. The play begins not with Macbeth but with the three witches, on a heath, planning to meet him. Their chant -- "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" -- establishes the play's governing principle: the inversion of moral and natural order. Notice that the first characters to speak set the terms of the drama before the protagonist even appears. Macbeth enters the play already the witches' target.

The witches and the supernatural. The witches (or "Weird Sisters" -- the word "weird" derives from the Old English wyrd, meaning "fate") are the most debated element of the play. Do they cause Macbeth's actions by putting the idea of kingship in his head? Do they merely foresee what he would do anyway? Or do they manipulate him through riddling prophecies that exploit his ambition? The text does not resolve this. Notice that the witches' first prophecy -- that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor and king -- is partially true immediately (he is soon named Thane of Cawdor), which makes the second part irresistible. The second set of prophecies (in Act 4) are more deceptive: "none of woman born shall harm Macbeth" and "Macbeth shall never vanquished be till Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him." Both are technically true but fatally misleading. Macbeth interprets them as guarantees of invincibility; they are actually descriptions of the conditions under which he will be defeated.

Ambition -- whose and how much. Macbeth himself acknowledges that he has "no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other." This is as clear a statement of motive as the play offers. But notice the role of Lady Macbeth. It is she who, in Act 1, Scene 7, challenges Macbeth's courage and pushes him toward the murder when he is on the verge of backing out. The question of how much of the tragedy is driven by Macbeth's ambition and how much by Lady Macbeth's urging has been debated for centuries, and the balance has shifted in different eras' productions and criticism.

Lady Macbeth's agency and its aftermath. Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most formidable characters in the early acts: she calls on spirits to "unsex" her, to take away her feminine compassion and fill her with cruelty. She plans the murder of Duncan. She returns the daggers when Macbeth freezes. But after the murder, her role diminishes. By Act 5, she is sleepwalking, compulsively washing imagined blood from her hands, and she dies offstage -- probably by suicide. Notice the trajectory: from ruthless agency to psychological collapse. How you read this trajectory matters enormously. Some critics see it as a moral collapse (evil destroying the evildoer). Some see it as a gendered punishment (the woman who rejected femininity is destroyed by the return of repressed feeling). Some see it as a psychologically realistic portrayal of guilt.

Blood imagery. The play is saturated with blood. Macbeth sees a bloody dagger before the murder. He returns from killing Duncan with blood on his hands and says "this is a sorry sight." Lady Macbeth says "a little water clears us of this deed." By Act 5, Lady Macbeth cannot wash the imaginary blood away: "Out, damned spot." Macbeth himself says that all the oceans in the world could not wash the blood from his hand -- his hand would turn the seas red. Notice how blood accumulates as a motif: it moves from literal (actual blood on actual hands) to metaphorical (guilt that cannot be cleansed) to cosmic (a stain on the entire natural order). The murder of Duncan is not just a crime; it is a violation that sends shockwaves through nature itself -- horses eat each other, the sun is darkened, owls kill falcons.

The murder of Banquo and the banquet scene. Macbeth's decision to kill Banquo -- his friend and fellow general -- marks a turning point. The murder of Duncan could be argued as a single, desperate act of ambition. The murder of Banquo is premeditated, political, and personal: Banquo's descendants are prophesied to inherit the throne, and Macbeth cannot bear the thought of having "given peace" and "mined" his own soul only for Banquo's line to benefit. The banquet scene (Act 3, Scene 4), where Banquo's ghost appears to Macbeth alone, is one of the play's most theatrically powerful moments. Notice that only Macbeth sees the ghost. This could mean the ghost is real, or it could mean Macbeth is hallucinating -- the text does not decide.

Time and the acceleration of the plot. Macbeth moves with unusual speed. There is little of the delay that defines Hamlet; once Macbeth decides to act, he acts. But as the play progresses, time itself seems to distort. Macbeth speaks of time as something he is racing against. After Lady Macbeth's death, he delivers the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy -- perhaps the most famous speech about the emptiness of existence in all of Shakespeare. Life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Notice that this speech comes after Macbeth has achieved everything the prophecy promised and found it worthless. The speech is not a philosophical meditation; it is the despair of a man who has sacrificed everything and gained nothing he values.

Macduff and the question of resistance. Macduff, the Thane of Fife, is the play's primary figure of resistance to Macbeth's tyranny. He is the "man of woman born" not because of any supernatural quality but because he was delivered by Cesarean section. Malcolm, Duncan's son and the rightful heir, tests Macduff's loyalty in a remarkable scene (Act 4, Scene 3) in which he claims to be even more vicious than Macbeth to see whether Macduff will still support him. This scene is often cut in production but is important: it raises the question of what makes a legitimate ruler and what justifies rebellion.

Questions to ask

Do the witches cause Macbeth's actions, or do they simply reveal what was already inside him? Does the distinction matter?
Macbeth knows that what he is doing is wrong. He says so, repeatedly. Why does he do it anyway? What is the relationship between knowing something is wrong and being able to stop doing it?
Is Lady Macbeth more ambitious than her husband, or is she pushing him to do what he already wants? Does the play treat her ambition differently from his?
The play begins with the inversion of natural order ("fair is foul"). How much of what follows is the consequence of Macbeth's choices, and how much is the result of a world already turned upside down?
Macbeth is a tyrant, but he is also psychologically complex and sometimes sympathetic. Does the play want you to sympathize with him? What are the effects of making the villain the central consciousness?
What is the role of gender in the play? Lady Macbeth asks to be "unsexed." The witches are bearded. Macbeth's manhood is repeatedly challenged. What does the play say about masculinity and violence?
Is the play's ending a restoration of order or just another violent seizure of power? Malcolm takes the throne at the end, but what has been resolved?

What critics have argued

The political reading and James I. The play was written for a king who believed in witchcraft (James had written a treatise on the subject, Daemonologie, 1597), claimed descent from Banquo, and was concerned about the dangers of regicide (his own mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been executed, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 had been a recent attempt on his life). Several critics have read Macbeth as a work written to flatter and caution James -- presenting Banquo as a noble ancestor and showing the catastrophic consequences of killing a divinely appointed king. Henry Paul, in The Royal Play of Macbeth (1950), argued that the play is essentially a piece of royal propaganda. Other critics have noted that the play's politics are more ambiguous: Macbeth is a tyrant, but Duncan is a weak king, and the world of the play does not clearly endorse the divine right of kings so much as show what happens when order breaks down.

Character criticism and the tragic hero. The Romantic and Victorian tradition read Macbeth as a study in character: a great man brought down by a fatal flaw. A.C. Bradley, in Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), argued that Macbeth's imagination is both his greatness and his weakness -- he can envision the horror of what he is about to do but does it anyway. Bradley's reading emphasizes Macbeth's inner life, his capacity for guilt, and his movement from hesitation to ruthless momentum to despair. Critics who challenge this approach argue that it treats Macbeth too sympathetically and downplays the suffering he inflicts on others.

Feminist criticism and Lady Macbeth. Feminist critics have transformed the reading of Lady Macbeth. Earlier criticism often treated her as a monstrous figure -- the "fiend-like queen" Malcolm calls her at the end -- or as an aberration of femininity. Feminist readings have examined how her invocation to the spirits ("unsex me here") reflects the play's anxiety about women who transgress gender roles, and how her subsequent collapse reflects the impossibility of sustaining that transgression. Janet Adelman, in Suffocating Mothers (1992), read Lady Macbeth through the lens of maternal power and male anxiety about female sexuality. Madelon Dramon, in The Woman's Part (1980), examined how Lady Macbeth's agency is contained and punished.

Metatheatrical and linguistic readings. Some critics have focused on the play's language and its self-consciousness about representation. The witches' riddling language creates a world where words are unstable -- prophecies are technically true but profoundly misleading. Macbeth's own language shifts across the play from noble eloquence to clipped, desperate fragments. Stephen Booth, in King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy (1983), argued that the play's power comes from its systematic undermining of certainty -- about identity, causation, and moral judgment.

Psychoanalytic readings. Freud, in "Some Character-Types Met with in Psychoanalytic Work" (1916), argued that Macbeth is a study in the consequences of childlessness -- Macbeth kills Duncan in part because he has no legitimate heir, and the witches' prophecy that Banquo's descendants will be kings is a taunt about his reproductive failure. This reading is speculative but has been influential. Other psychoanalytic critics have focused on Macbeth's relationship to masculinity and his fear of feminization.

New Historicism and the politics of the body. Stephen Greenblatt and other New Historicist critics have read Macbeth in relation to early modern anxieties about royal power, the body politic, and the natural order. The play's emphasis on bodily violation (Duncan's murder, Banquo's murder, Macduff's birth by Cesarean section, Lady Macbeth's imagined bloodstains) connects the political to the physical. The murder of Duncan is not just a crime against a person; it is a wound in the body of the state.

About the work

Things to notice

Questions to ask

What critics have argued

Further reading