Macbeth /məkˈbɛθ/ (full title The Tragedy of Macbeth) is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.
Set mainly in Scotland, the play dramatises the damaging physical and
psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for
its own sake.
The play is believed to have been written between 1599 and 1606. The earliest account of a performance of what was probably Shakespeare's play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing such a play at the Globe Theatre. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book. It was most likely written during the reign of James I, who had been James VI of Scotland before he succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James was a patron of Shakespeare's acting company, and of all the plays Shakespeare wrote during James's reign, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright's relationship with the sovereign.
Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.
Shakespeare's source for the tragedy is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. In recent scholarship, the events of the tragedy are usually associated more closely with the execution of Henry Garnett for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.[1]
In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "the Scottish play". Over the course o
The play opens amidst thunder and lightning, and the Three Witches
decide that their next meeting shall be with Macbeth. In the following
scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland that his
generals—Macbeth, who is the Thane of Glamis, and Banquo—have just
defeated the allied forces of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the
traitorous Macdonald and the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, the King's
kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess.
In the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter and greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he shall "be King hereafter." Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet happier, less successful, yet more. He will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor, as the previous Thane of Cawdor shall be put to death for treason. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously skeptical, immediately begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.
King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness; he also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty, and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband's objections by challenging his manhood, and successfully persuades him to kill the king that very night. 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. They will be defenseless, as they will remember nothing.
While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while sceptical of the new King Macbeth, he remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne, this makes him suspicious of Macbeth.
Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy. Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet,
where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be
riding out that night. Fearing Banquo's suspicions, Macbeth arranges to
have him murdered, so he hires three men to kill them. The assassins
succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes. Macbeth becomes furious:
he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo
remains alive. At the banquet, Macbeth invites his lords and Lady
Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo's ghost
enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully, startling
his guests, as the ghost is only visible to himself. 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. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing
the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth
tells the lords to leave, and they do so.
Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them
to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions,
they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and
further prophecies to allay Macbeth's fears. First, they conjure an
armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (4.1.72). Second, a
bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman shall be able to harm
him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will
be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill.
Macbeth is relieved and feels secure, because he knows that all men are
born of women and forests cannot move. Macbeth also asks if 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. Macbeth realises that
these are all Banquo's descendants having acquired kingship in numerous
countries. After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox
enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth
orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to
slaughter Macduff, as well as Macduff's wife and children. Although
Macduff is no longer in the castle, everyone in Macduff's castle is put
to death, including Lady Macduff and their young son.
Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth becomes wracked with guilt from the crimes
she and her husband have committed. At night, in the king's palace at
Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth's strange
habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a
candle in her hand. 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. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her
descent into madness. Her belief that nothing can wash away the blood on
her hands is an ironic reversal of her earlier claim to Macbeth that
"[a] little water clears us of this deed" (2.2.66).
In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; [his] wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (4.3.204–5). When this news of his family's execution reaches him, Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan's son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth's forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth's tyrannical and murderous behaviour. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward (the Elder), the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers.
Before Macbeth's opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady Macbeth
has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic
despair and deliver his "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy
(5.5.17–28). Though he reflects on the brevity and meaninglessness of
life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is
certain that the witches' prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is
struck with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on
Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood, in apparent
fulfillment of one of the prophecies.
A battle culminates in Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth, who kills Young Siward in combat, the English forces overwhelm his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (5.8.15–16), (i.e., born by Caesarean section) and is not "of woman born" (an example of a literary quibble), fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realises too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realises that he is doomed, he continues to fight. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy.
Macduff carries Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals "'tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life" (5.9.71–72), but the method of her suicide is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.
Although Malcolm, and not Fleance, is placed on the throne, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo ("Thou shalt get kings") was known to the audience of Shakespeare's time to be true: James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.[2]
Macbeth has been compared to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
Both Antony and Macbeth as characters seek a new world, even at the
cost of the old one. Both are fighting for a throne and have a 'nemesis'
to face to achieve that throne. For Antony, the nemesis is Octavius;
for Macbeth, it is Banquo. At one point Macbeth even compares himself to
Antony, saying "under Banquo / My Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said /
Mark Antony's was by Caesar." Lastly, both plays contain powerful and
manipulative female figures: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth.[4]
Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in Holinshed's Chronicles, a popular history of the British Isles known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In Chronicles,
a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his
king, King Duff, for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his
wife, he and four of his servants kill the King in his own house. In Chronicles,
Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face
of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who
make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth
and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's
urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being
overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two
versions are clear. However, some scholars think that George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.[5]
No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at Inverness, not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.[6]
Shakespeare made another important change. In Chronicles, Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan, and plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows.[7] In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be an ancestor of the Stuart King James I. [8] (In the 19th century it was established that Banquo is an unhistorical character, the Stuarts are actually descended from a Breton family which migrated to Scotland slightly later than Macbeth's time.) The Banquo portrayed in earlier sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as Jean de Schelandre in his Stuartide, also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons.[9] Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.[7]
Other scholars maintain that a strong argument can be made for associating the tragedy with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.[1] As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "[S]cholars cite the existence of several topical references in Macbeth to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Rev. Henry Garnett for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene."[1]
Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivocator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8–13), has been argued to be an allusion to the 28 March 1606 trial and execution on 3 May 1606 of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, who used the alias "Farmer", with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of "equivocation".[17][18] The porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9–10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10–11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath."[19] The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.[20]
When James became king of England, a feeling of uncertainty settled over the nation. James was a Scottish king and the son of Mary Queen of Scots, a staunch Catholic and English traitor. In the words of critic Jonathan Gil Harris, "Macbeth was a play for a post-Elizabethan England facing up to what it might mean to have a Scottish king. England seems comparatively benign, while its northern neighbour is mired in a bloody, monarch-killing past...Macbeth may have been set in medieval Scotland, but it was filled with material of interest to England and England's ruler."[21] Critics argue that the content of the play is clearly a message to James, the new Scottish King of England. Garry Wills provides further evidence that "Macbeth" is a Gunpowder Play (a type of play that emerged immediately following the events of the Gunpowder Plot). He points out that every Gunpowder Play contains "a necromancy scene, regicide attempted or completed, references to equivocation, scenes that test loyalty by use of deceptive language, and a character who sees through plots—along with a vocabulary similar to the Plot in its immediate aftermath (words like train, blow, vault) and an ironic recoil of the Plot upon the Plotters (who fall into the pit they dug)."[12]
The play utilizes a few key words that the audience at the time would recognize as allusions to the Plot. In one sermon in 1605, Lancelot Andrewes stated, regarding the failure of the Plotters on God's day, "Be they fair or foul, glad or sad (as the poet calleth Him) the great Diespiter, 'the Father of days' hath made them both." Shakespeare begins the play by using the words "fair" and "foul" in the first speeches of the witches and Macbeth. In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation. The play even echoes certain keywords from the scandal-the 'vault' beneath the House of Parliament in which Guy Fawkes stored thirty kegs of gunpowder and the 'blow' about which one of the conspirators had secretly warned a relative who planned to attend the House of Parliament on 5 November...Even though the Plot is never alluded to directly, its presence is everywhere in the play, like a pervasive odor."[22] Further, the play could not have been written after this time, due to references to it seen in other works, notably Francis Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was written in 1607-1608. Lines 21-30 are a clear allusion to the scene in which Banquo's ghost visits and haunts Macbeth at the dinner table:
Scholars also cite an entertainment seen by King James at Oxford in the summer of 1605 that featured three "sibyls"
like the weird sisters; Kermode surmises that Shakespeare could have
heard about this and alluded to it with the weird sisters.[24]
However, A. R. Braunmuller in the New Cambridge edition finds the
1605–6 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of
1603.[25]
The play is not considered to have been written any later than 1607,
since, as Kermode notes, there are "fairly clear allusions to the play
in 1607."[24]
In addition, one suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is
the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee,
witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master
o' the Tiger" (1.6–7). This has been thought to allude to the Tiger,
a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage
in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the
witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary
se'nnights nine times nine" (1.21–2). The real ship was at sea 567 days,
the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the
allusion, which if correct, confirms that the witch scenes were either
written or amended later than July 1606.[26]
Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. The text that survives had been plainly altered by later hands. Most notable is the inclusion of two songs from Thomas Middleton's play The Witch (1615); Middleton is conjectured to have inserted an extra scene involving the witches and Hecate, for these scenes had proven highly popular with audiences. These revisions, which since the Clarendon edition of 1869 have been assumed to include all of Act III, scene v, and a portion of Act IV, scene I, are often indicated in modern texts.[27] On this basis, many scholars reject all three of the interludes with the goddess Hecate as inauthentic. Even with the Hecate material, the play is conspicuously short, and so the Folio text may derive from a prompt book that had been substantially cut for performance, or an adapter cut the text himself.
The pronunciation of many words evolves over time. In Shakespeare's day, for example, "heath" was pronounced as "heth" ("or a slightly elongated 'e' as in the modern 'get'"[29]), so it rhymed with "Macbeth" in the sentences by the Witches at the beginning of the play:[30]
In the theater programme notes, "much was made of how OP [Original Pronunciation] performance reintroduces lost rhymes such as the final couplet: 'So thanks to all at once, and each to one, / Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone'" (5.11.40-1) where 'one' sounds like 'own'. The Witches, the play's great purveyors of rhyme, benefited most in this regard. So, 'babe' (4.1.30) sounded like 'bab' and rhymed with 'drab' (4.1.31)..."[30]
Eoin Price wrote, "I found the OP rendition of Banquo's brilliant question 'Or have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the raison prisoner?' unduly amusing"; and he adds,
Macbeth is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear, and only slightly more than half as long as Hamlet.
This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is
based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular
performance. That brevity has also been connected to other unusual
features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be
"stripped for action"; the comparative flatness of the characters other
than Macbeth; and the oddness of Macbeth himself compared with other
Shakespearean tragic heroes.[clarification needed]
Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.
Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. Robert Bridges, for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. John Dover Wilson hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises: "I am in blood/Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, Boris Pasternak compared Macbeth to Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine . . . one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself." According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.[32]
Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a mystery play on the harrowing of hell. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the tyrant plays within the medieval liturgical drama.
The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.
In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses.[33]
Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During
Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most
notorious traytor and rebell that can be."[34]
They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well.
Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to
straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They
are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they
control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic,
not being subject to the rules of the real world.[35]
The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for
the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the
play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while
good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble,"
communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the
mortals around them.[36] The witches' spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play Fidele and Fortunio published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.
While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.[36]
According to J. A. Bryant Jr., Macbeth also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of Christ:
The play is believed to have been written between 1599 and 1606. The earliest account of a performance of what was probably Shakespeare's play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing such a play at the Globe Theatre. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book. It was most likely written during the reign of James I, who had been James VI of Scotland before he succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James was a patron of Shakespeare's acting company, and of all the plays Shakespeare wrote during James's reign, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright's relationship with the sovereign.
Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.
Shakespeare's source for the tragedy is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. In recent scholarship, the events of the tragedy are usually associated more closely with the execution of Henry Garnett for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.[1]
In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "the Scottish play". Over the course o
Characters
- Duncan – King of Scotland
- Macbeth – a general in the army of King Duncan; originally Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor, and later King of Scotland
- Lady Macbeth – Macbeth's wife, and later Queen of Scotland
- Banquo – Macbeth's friend and a general in the army of King Duncan
- Fleance – Banquo's son
- Macduff – Thane of Fife
- Lady Macduff – Macduff's wife
- Macduff's son
- Ross, Lennox, Angus, Menteith, Caithness – Scottish Thanes
- Siward – general of the English forces
- Young Siward – Siward's son
- Seyton – Macbeth's armourer
- Hecate – Queen of the witches
- Three Witches
- Captain – in the Scottish army
- Three Murderers – employed by Macbeth
- Two Murderers – attack Lady Macduff
- Porter – gatekeeper at Macbeth's home
- Doctor – Lady Macbeth's doctor
- Doctor – at the English court
- Gentlewoman – Lady Macbeth's caretaker
- Lord – opposed to Macbeth
- First Apparition – armed head
- Second Apparition – bloody child
- Third Apparition – crowned child
- Attendants, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers
Plot
Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches for the first time
In the following scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath, the Three Witches enter and greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first, they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he shall "be King hereafter." Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet happier, less successful, yet more. He will father a line of kings, though he himself will not be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor, as the previous Thane of Cawdor shall be put to death for treason. The first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously skeptical, immediately begins to harbour ambitions of becoming king.
King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and declares that he will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness; he also names his son Malcolm as his heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches' prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty, and wishes him to murder Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her husband's objections by challenging his manhood, and successfully persuades him to kill the king that very night. 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. They will be defenseless, as they will remember nothing.
While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger over their misdeeds. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland, respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs' flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while sceptical of the new King Macbeth, he remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would inherit the throne, this makes him suspicious of Macbeth.
Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), Macbeth seeing the Ghost of Banquo, 1854
Macbeth consulting the Vision of the Armed Head by Johann Heinrich Füssli
Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them
to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions,
they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers predictions and
further prophecies to allay Macbeth's fears. First, they conjure an
armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff (4.1.72). Second, a
bloody child tells him that no one born of a woman shall be able to harm
him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states that Macbeth will
be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill.
Macbeth is relieved and feels secure, because he knows that all men are
born of women and forests cannot move. Macbeth also asks if 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. Macbeth realises that
these are all Banquo's descendants having acquired kingship in numerous
countries. After the witches perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox
enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth
orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to
slaughter Macduff, as well as Macduff's wife and children. Although
Macduff is no longer in the castle, everyone in Macduff's castle is put
to death, including Lady Macduff and their young son.
Lady Macbeth sleepwalking by Johann Heinrich Füssli
In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; [his] wife and babes / Savagely slaughter'd" (4.3.204–5). When this news of his family's execution reaches him, Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan's son, has succeeded in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge Macbeth's forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and frightened by Macbeth's tyrannical and murderous behaviour. Malcolm leads an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward (the Elder), the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers.
Before Macbeth's opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady Macbeth
has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic
despair and deliver his "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy
(5.5.17–28). Though he reflects on the brevity and meaninglessness of
life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is
certain that the witches' prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is
struck with fear when he learns that the English army is advancing on
Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam Wood, in apparent
fulfillment of one of the prophecies.A battle culminates in Macduff's confrontation with Macbeth, who kills Young Siward in combat, the English forces overwhelm his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (5.8.15–16), (i.e., born by Caesarean section) and is not "of woman born" (an example of a literary quibble), fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realises too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realises that he is doomed, he continues to fight. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy.
Macduff carries Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals "'tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life" (5.9.71–72), but the method of her suicide is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.
Although Malcolm, and not Fleance, is placed on the throne, the witches' prophecy concerning Banquo ("Thou shalt get kings") was known to the audience of Shakespeare's time to be true: James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.[2]
Sources
The first edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, printed in 1577.
"Macbeth and Banquo encountering the witches" from Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)[3]
Shakespeare borrowed the story from several tales in Holinshed's Chronicles, a popular history of the British Isles known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In Chronicles,
a man named Donwald finds several of his family put to death by his
king, King Duff, for dealing with witches. After being pressured by his
wife, he and four of his servants kill the King in his own house. In Chronicles,
Macbeth is portrayed as struggling to support the kingdom in the face
of King Duncan's ineptitude. He and Banquo meet the three witches, who
make exactly the same prophecies as in Shakespeare's version. Macbeth
and Banquo then together plot the murder of Duncan, at Lady Macbeth's
urging. Macbeth has a long, ten-year reign before eventually being
overthrown by Macduff and Malcolm. The parallels between the two
versions are clear. However, some scholars think that George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia matches Shakespeare's version more closely. Buchanan's work was available in Latin in Shakespeare's day.[5]No other version of the story has Macbeth kill the king in Macbeth's own castle. Scholars have seen this change of Shakespeare's as adding to the darkness of Macbeth's crime as the worst violation of hospitality. Versions of the story that were common at the time had Duncan being killed in an ambush at Inverness, not in a castle. Shakespeare conflated the story of Donwald and King Duff in what was a significant change to the story.[6]
Shakespeare made another important change. In Chronicles, Banquo is an accomplice in Macbeth's murder of King Duncan, and plays an important part in ensuring that Macbeth, not Malcolm, takes the throne in the coup that follows.[7] In Shakespeare's day, Banquo was thought to be an ancestor of the Stuart King James I. [8] (In the 19th century it was established that Banquo is an unhistorical character, the Stuarts are actually descended from a Breton family which migrated to Scotland slightly later than Macbeth's time.) The Banquo portrayed in earlier sources is significantly different from the Banquo created by Shakespeare. Critics have proposed several reasons for this change. First, to portray the king's ancestor as a murderer would have been risky. Other authors of the time who wrote about Banquo, such as Jean de Schelandre in his Stuartide, also changed history by portraying Banquo as a noble man, not a murderer, probably for the same reasons.[9] Second, Shakespeare may have altered Banquo's character simply because there was no dramatic need for another accomplice to the murder; there was, however, a need to give a dramatic contrast to Macbeth—a role which many scholars argue is filled by Banquo.[7]
Other scholars maintain that a strong argument can be made for associating the tragedy with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.[1] As presented by Harold Bloom in 2008: "[S]cholars cite the existence of several topical references in Macbeth to the events of that year, namely the execution of the Rev. Henry Garnett for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, as referenced in the porter's scene."[1]
Date and text
Macbeth cannot be dated precisely, owing to significant evidence of later revisions.[citation needed] Some scholars have placed the original writing of the play as early as 1599.[1] As the play may celebrate King James' ancestors and the Stuart accession to the throne in 1603 (James believed himself to be descended from Banquo),[10] some scholars believe that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603 and suggest that the parade of eight kings—which the witches show Macbeth in a vision in Act IV—is a compliment to King James. Some critics think the play was written in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot because of possible internal allusions to the 1605 plot and its ensuing trials.[11] In fact, there are a great deal of allusions and possible evidences alluding to the Plot, and, for this reason, a great number of critics agree that "Macbeth" was written in the year 1606.[12][13][14][15] Lady Macbeth's instructions to her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (1.5.74–5), may be an allusion to a medal that was struck in 1605 to commemorate King James' escape that depicted a serpent hiding among lilies and roses .[16]Particularly, the Porter's speech (2.3.1–21) in which he welcomes an "equivocator", a farmer, and a tailor to hell (2.3.8–13), has been argued to be an allusion to the 28 March 1606 trial and execution on 3 May 1606 of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, who used the alias "Farmer", with "equivocator" referring to Garnet's defence of "equivocation".[17][18] The porter says that the equivocator "committed treason enough for God's sake" (2.3.9–10), which specifically connects equivocation and treason and ties it to the Jesuit belief that equivocation was only lawful when used "for God's sake", strengthening the allusion to Garnet. The porter goes on to say that the equivocator "yet could not equivocate to heaven" (2.3.10–11), echoing grim jokes that were current on the eve of Garnet's execution: i.e. that Garnet would be "hanged without equivocation" and at his execution he was asked "not to equivocate with his last breath."[19] The "English tailor" the porter admits to hell (2.3.13), has been seen as an allusion to Hugh Griffin, a tailor who was questioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 27 November and 3 December 1607 for the part he played in Garnet's "miraculous straw", an infamous head of straw that was stained with Garnet's blood that had congealed into a form resembling Garnet's portrait, which was hailed by Catholics as a miracle. The tailor Griffin became notorious and the subject of verses published with his portrait on the title page.[20]
When James became king of England, a feeling of uncertainty settled over the nation. James was a Scottish king and the son of Mary Queen of Scots, a staunch Catholic and English traitor. In the words of critic Jonathan Gil Harris, "Macbeth was a play for a post-Elizabethan England facing up to what it might mean to have a Scottish king. England seems comparatively benign, while its northern neighbour is mired in a bloody, monarch-killing past...Macbeth may have been set in medieval Scotland, but it was filled with material of interest to England and England's ruler."[21] Critics argue that the content of the play is clearly a message to James, the new Scottish King of England. Garry Wills provides further evidence that "Macbeth" is a Gunpowder Play (a type of play that emerged immediately following the events of the Gunpowder Plot). He points out that every Gunpowder Play contains "a necromancy scene, regicide attempted or completed, references to equivocation, scenes that test loyalty by use of deceptive language, and a character who sees through plots—along with a vocabulary similar to the Plot in its immediate aftermath (words like train, blow, vault) and an ironic recoil of the Plot upon the Plotters (who fall into the pit they dug)."[12]
The play utilizes a few key words that the audience at the time would recognize as allusions to the Plot. In one sermon in 1605, Lancelot Andrewes stated, regarding the failure of the Plotters on God's day, "Be they fair or foul, glad or sad (as the poet calleth Him) the great Diespiter, 'the Father of days' hath made them both." Shakespeare begins the play by using the words "fair" and "foul" in the first speeches of the witches and Macbeth. In the words of Jonathan Gil Harris, the play expresses the "horror unleashed by a supposedly loyal subject who seeks to kill a king and the treasonous role of equivocation. The play even echoes certain keywords from the scandal-the 'vault' beneath the House of Parliament in which Guy Fawkes stored thirty kegs of gunpowder and the 'blow' about which one of the conspirators had secretly warned a relative who planned to attend the House of Parliament on 5 November...Even though the Plot is never alluded to directly, its presence is everywhere in the play, like a pervasive odor."[22] Further, the play could not have been written after this time, due to references to it seen in other works, notably Francis Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was written in 1607-1608. Lines 21-30 are a clear allusion to the scene in which Banquo's ghost visits and haunts Macbeth at the dinner table:
In any place, but I will visit thee
With ghastly looks, and put into thy mind
The great offences which thou didst to me:
When thou art at thy table with thy friends,
Merry in heart, and filled with swelling wine,
I'll come in midst of all thy pride and mirth,
Invisible to all men but thyself,
And whisper such a sad tale in thine ear
Shall make thee let the cup fall from thy hand,
And stand as mute and pale as death itself.[23]
The first page of Macbeth, printed in the Second Folio of 1632
In addition, one suggested allusion supporting a date in late 1606 is
the first witch's dialogue about a sailor's wife: "'Aroint thee,
witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries./Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master
o' the Tiger" (1.6–7). This has been thought to allude to the Tiger,
a ship that returned to England 27 June 1606 after a disastrous voyage
in which many of the crew were killed by pirates. A few lines later the
witch speaks of the sailor, "He shall live a man forbid:/Weary
se'nnights nine times nine" (1.21–2). The real ship was at sea 567 days,
the product of 7x9x9, which has been taken as a confirmation of the
allusion, which if correct, confirms that the witch scenes were either
written or amended later than July 1606.[26]Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. The text that survives had been plainly altered by later hands. Most notable is the inclusion of two songs from Thomas Middleton's play The Witch (1615); Middleton is conjectured to have inserted an extra scene involving the witches and Hecate, for these scenes had proven highly popular with audiences. These revisions, which since the Clarendon edition of 1869 have been assumed to include all of Act III, scene v, and a portion of Act IV, scene I, are often indicated in modern texts.[27] On this basis, many scholars reject all three of the interludes with the goddess Hecate as inauthentic. Even with the Hecate material, the play is conspicuously short, and so the Folio text may derive from a prompt book that had been substantially cut for performance, or an adapter cut the text himself.
Pronunciations
The 'reconstructive movement' was concerned with the recreation of Elizabethan acting conditions, and would eventually lead to the creation of Shakespeare's Globe and similar replicas. One of the movement's offshoots was in the reconstruction of Elizabethan pronunciation: for example Bernard Miles' 1951 Macbeth, for which linguists from University College London were employed to create a transcript of the play in Elizabethan English, then an audio recording of that transcription, from which the actors, in turn, learned their lines.[28]The pronunciation of many words evolves over time. In Shakespeare's day, for example, "heath" was pronounced as "heth" ("or a slightly elongated 'e' as in the modern 'get'"[29]), so it rhymed with "Macbeth" in the sentences by the Witches at the beginning of the play:[30]
Second Witch: Upon the heath.A scholar of antique pronunciation writes, "Heath would have made a close (if not exact) rhyme with the "-eth" of Macbeth, which was pronounced with a short 'i' as in 'it'."[29]
Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.
In the theater programme notes, "much was made of how OP [Original Pronunciation] performance reintroduces lost rhymes such as the final couplet: 'So thanks to all at once, and each to one, / Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone'" (5.11.40-1) where 'one' sounds like 'own'. The Witches, the play's great purveyors of rhyme, benefited most in this regard. So, 'babe' (4.1.30) sounded like 'bab' and rhymed with 'drab' (4.1.31)..."[30]
Eoin Price wrote, "I found the OP rendition of Banquo's brilliant question 'Or have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the raison prisoner?' unduly amusing"; and he adds,
:... 'fear' had two pronunciations: the standard modern pronunciation being one, and 'fair' being the other. Mostly, the actors seemed to pronounce it in a way which accords with the modern standard, but during one speech, Macbeth said 'fair'. This seems especially significant in a play determined to complicate the relationship between 'fair' and 'foul'. I wonder, then, if the punning could be extended throughout the production. Would Banquo's lines, 'Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?' (1.3.49-50) be fascinatingly illuminated, or merely muddled, by this punning? Perhaps this is a possibility the cast already experimented with and chose to discard, but, for sure, an awareness of the possibility of a 'fair/fear' pun can have interesting ramifications for the play.
Themes and motifs
"Macbeth
The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."
The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."
—Macbeth, Act I, Scene IV
As a tragedy of character
At least since the days of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character. Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled. This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to Caroline Spurgeon, is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several nimisms he applies: His garments seem either too big or too small for him – as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. When he feels as if "dressed in borrowed robes", after his new title as Thane of Cawdor, prophesied by the witches, has been confirmed by Ross (I, 3, ll. 108–109), Banquo comments: "New honours come upon him, / Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, / But with the aid of use" (I, 3, ll. 145–146). And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause / Within the belt of rule" (V, 2, ll. 14–15), while Angus, in a similar nimism, sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power: "now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / upon a dwarfish thief" (V, 2, ll. 18–20).[31]Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.
Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. Robert Bridges, for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. John Dover Wilson hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises: "I am in blood/Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, Boris Pasternak compared Macbeth to Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine . . . one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself." According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.[32]
As a tragedy of moral order
The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the great chain of being, although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the divine right of kings, although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally accepted. As in Julius Caesar, though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a mystery play on the harrowing of hell. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the tyrant plays within the medieval liturgical drama.
The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.
As a poetic tragedy
Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with Andrew Cecil Bradley, is clear as early as the time of Mary Cowden Clarke, who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.Witchcraft and evil
Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches by Henry Fuseli
While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.[36]
According to J. A. Bryant Jr., Macbeth also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of Christ:
No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, Macbeth is distinctively Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of Saul and Jezebel as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.[37][38]f many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comic books, and other media.
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