Macbeth

A decorated soldier hears that he will be king, murders his way onto the throne, and discovers that the crown cannot quiet the mind that seized it. Macbeth is short, brutal and densely patterned — almost every image of blood, darkness, clothing or children comes back to haunt the plot.

Why it is set. The most widely set GCSE tragedy. Examiners reward precise analysis of imagery, equivocation, and how Shakespeare stages guilt as something you can see and hear.

Plot

1. 1

   The prophecy

   After a battle, Macbeth and Banquo meet three witches who hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and king hereafter. Banquo’s descendants, they say, will be kings. Ross then confirms the Cawdor title. The thought of murder is already alive in Macbeth before Lady Macbeth ever speaks.

2. 2

   Duncan’s murder

   Lady Macbeth calls on spirits to ‘unsex’ her and goads Macbeth when his courage falters. They drug the grooms, Macbeth kills the sleeping Duncan, and she plants the daggers. Macduff discovers the body. Malcolm and Donalbain flee, which conveniently throws suspicion on them. Macbeth is crowned.

3. 3

   Banquo and Banquo’s ghost

   Fear of the prophecy about Banquo’s line drives Macbeth to have him murdered; Fleance escapes. At the banquet Banquo’s ghost appears, visible only to Macbeth. The public mask of kingship cracks in front of the court.

4. 4

   The second prophecy

   The witches show apparitions: beware Macduff; none of woman born shall harm Macbeth; he shall not be vanquished until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Macbeth orders the slaughter of Macduff’s family. Macduff, in England, joins Malcolm.

5. 5

   Collapse

   Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, trying to wash out a spot that will not go. She dies offstage. Malcolm’s army camouflages itself with Birnam branches. Macduff, ‘from his mother’s womb untimely ripped’, kills Macbeth. Malcolm will be crowned at Scone.

Characters

• Macbeth

  Tragic protagonist

  Brave, imaginative, and morally porous. His soliloquies chart the gap between what he knows is right and what he wants. After Duncan’s murder he becomes increasingly isolated, outsourcing violence while his language fragments.

• Lady Macbeth

  Wife and co-conspirator

  The sharper planner at first: she reads Macbeth, manages appearances, and uses masculinity as a weapon. Shakespeare then inverts the pairing — as he hardens, she unravels. Her sleepwalking is guilt made visible.

• The witches

  Supernatural chorus

  They never force Macbeth’s hand. They speak in riddle and paradox (‘fair is foul’) and exploit a mind already ambitious. On stage they unsettle gender, weather and the boundary between natural and unnatural.

• Banquo

  Foils Macbeth

  Hears the same prophecy but will not ‘win’ it by murder. His ghost is the return of the repressed — loyalty, fatherhood, the future Macbeth tried to cancel.

• Macduff

  Avenger

  The man who feels the tyrant’s cost in his own family. His grief (‘He has no children’) is one of the play’s rawest speeches. Born by Caesarean, he literally fulfils the equivocal prophecy.

• Duncan / Malcolm

  Legitimate order

  Duncan’s generous kingship is the moral measure Macbeth fails. Malcolm tests Macduff in England, proving he understands that kingship is a craft, not a grab.

Themes

• Ambition and power

  Ambition is not treated as a simple vice. Macbeth’s desire is fed by prophecy, marriage, and a warrior culture that already glorifies killing. The play asks how far ‘vaulting ambition’ can be separated from the violent masculinity the state rewards.

• Appearance and reality

  Equivocation — saying two things at once — is the play’s method. Castles look pleasant, faces hide hearts, woods move, and men are not ‘born’ of women in the ordinary sense. Look for clothing imagery: titles sit on Macbeth like a ‘giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief’.

• Guilt and the supernatural

  Blood will not wash. The dagger, Banquo’s ghost and the spot on Lady Macbeth’s hand stage inner crime as theatre. Whether the witches are ‘real’ is less important than how they give shape to desire and dread.

• Kingship and the natural order

  Duncan’s murder disorders the state and the weather: darkness, falcons killed by owls, horses eating each other. Written after the Gunpowder Plot, the play flatters James I (Banquo’s supposed descendant) while also showing how fragile a king’s body is.

• Gender

  Lady Macbeth links cruelty to being ‘unsexed’. Macbeth is taunted as less than a man when he hesitates. The play repeatedly asks what kind of man a killer is — and what kind of woman a queen who would dash her baby’s brains out.

Key quotations

Learn speaker, location, and what the line is doing — not the words alone.

• Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

  The witches · I.1

  The play’s thesis in seven words. Moral categories invert, and the line later echoes in Macbeth’s own speech, showing how quickly he inhabits their language.

• Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires.

  Macbeth · I.4

  Ambition arrives before Lady Macbeth’s persuasion. Light/dark imagery makes secrecy a cosmic request — he already wants the universe to look away.

• Look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t.

  Lady Macbeth · I.5

  Appearance versus reality as practical advice. The serpent also glances at Eden — this is a fall, not just a coup.

• Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?

  Macbeth · II.1

  Hallucination or supernatural prompt? Either way, the image turns thought into an object he can almost hold. The dagger ‘marshall’st’ him — violence seems to lead him on.

• Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?

  Macbeth · II.2

  Hyperbole that later inverts: Lady Macbeth said a little water would clear them; by Act 5 she is still washing. Blood becomes a stain on the whole world.

• I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  Macbeth · III.4

  The point of no return. Crime is now a medium he moves through, not a single act. Useful for questions about structure and moral decline.

• Out, damned spot! out, I say!

  Lady Macbeth · V.1

  Prose, not verse: her mind has lost its formal control. The private crime she managed so coolly returns as a public spectacle of sleepwalking.

• Life’s but a walking shadow… a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.

  Macbeth · V.5

  After his wife’s death, time itself feels empty. Theatre imagery (poor player, stage) makes the speech self-aware: we are watching a man realise his plot has no meaning left.

Exam notes

• Track one image cluster (blood, clothing, children, darkness) across the play rather than listing quotes.
• Always name the method: equivocation, soliloquy, dramatic irony, prose vs verse, animal imagery.
• Context is not a bolt-on: James I, witchcraft, the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Chain of Being only earn marks when they change how you read a line.
• Compare Macbeth’s early and late verse: the confident iambic line breaks down as his mind does.

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