Literature Review
Macbeth, set primarily in Scotland, mixes witchcraft, prophecy, and murder. Three “Weïrd Sisters” appear to Macbeth and his comrade Banquo after a battle and prophesy that Macbeth will be king and that the descendants of Banquo will also reign. When Macbeth arrives at his castle, he and Lady Macbeth plot to assassinate King Duncan, soon to be their guest, so that Macbeth can become king.
After Macbeth murders Duncan, the king’s two sons flee, and Macbeth is crowned. Fearing that Banquo’s descendants will, according to the Weïrd Sisters’ predictions, take over the kingdom, Macbeth has Banquo killed. At a royal banquet that evening, Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost appear covered in blood. Macbeth determines to consult the Weïrd Sisters again. They comfort him with ambiguous promises.
Another nobleman, Macduff, rides to England to join Duncan’s older son, Malcolm. Macbeth has Macduff’s wife and children murdered. Malcolm and Macduff lead an army against Macbeth, as Lady Macbeth goes mad and commits suicide.
Macbeth confronts Malcolm’s army, trusting in the Weïrd Sisters’ comforting promises. He learns that the promises are tricks, but continues to fight. Macduff kills Macbeth and Malcolm becomes Scotland’s king.
Macbeth Summary
Three witches tell the Scottish general Macbeth that he will be King of Scotland. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth kills the king, becomes the new king, and kills more people out of paranoia. Civil war erupts to overthrow Macbeth, resulting in more death.
Act I
On a bleak Scottish moorland, Macbeth and Banquo, two of King Duncan’s generals, discover three strange women (witches). The witches prophesy that Macbeth will be promoted twice: to Thane of Cawdor (a rank of the aristocracy bestowed by grateful kings) and King of Scotland. Banquo’s descendants will be kings, but Banquo isn’t promised any kingdom himself. The generals want to hear more, but the “weird sisters” disappear.
Soon afterwards, King Duncan names Macbeth Thane of Cawdor as a reward for his success in the recent battles. The promotion seems to support the prophecy. The King then proposes to make a brief visit that night to Macbeth’s castle at Inverness. Lady Macbeth receives news from her husband about the prophecy and his new title. She vows to help him become king by whatever means are necessary (*ominous music*).
Is this a dagger which I see before me?
Act II
Macbeth returns to his castle, followed almost immediately by King Duncan. The Macbeths plot together to kill Duncan and wait until everyone is asleep. At the appointed time, Lady Macbeth gives the guards drugged wine so Macbeth can enter and kill the King. He regrets this almost immediately, but his wife reassures him. She leaves the bloody daggers by the dead king just before Macduff, a nobleman, arrives. When Macduff discovers the murder, Macbeth kills the drunken guards in a show of rage and retribution. Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, flee, fearing for their own lives; but they are, nevertheless, blamed for the murder.
Act III
Macbeth becomes King of Scotland but is plagued by feelings of insecurity. He remembers the prophecy that Banquo’s descendants will inherit the throne and arranges for Banquo and his son Fleance to be killed. In the darkness, Banquo is murdered, but his son escapes the assassins. At his state banquet that night, Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo and worries the courtiers with his mad response. Lady Macbeth dismisses the court and unsuccessfully tries to calm her husband.
Act IV
Macbeth seeks out the witches who say that he will be safe until a local wood, Birnam Wood, marches into battle against him. He also need not fear anyone born of woman (that sounds secure, no loop-holes here). They also prophesy that the Scottish succession will still come from Banquo’s son. Macbeth embarks on a reign of terror, slaughtering many, including Macduff’s family. Macduff had gone to seek Malcolm (one of Duncan’s sons who fled) at the court of the English king. Malcolm is young and unsure of himself, but Macduff, pained with grief, persuades him to lead an army against Macbeth.
Act V
Macbeth feels safe in his remote castle at Dunsinane until he is told that Birnam Wood is moving towards him. Malcolm’s army is carrying branches from the forest as camouflage for their assault on Macbeth’s stronghold. Meanwhile, an overwrought and conscience-ridden Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep and tells her secrets to her doctor. She commits suicide. As the final battle commences, Macbeth hears of Lady Macbeth’s suicide and mourns.
Significance of the Study
Chapter 1
The Three Witches—often referred to as the Weird Sisters—are the supernatural forces driving Macbeth, acting as both prophetic figures and symbols of moral chaos. They appear at the play’s start, accompanied by thunder and lightning, instantly creating a sense of disorder and inversion with their line, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Their presence is far from superficial; each prophecy they utter pushes the plot ahead.
In Act I, they greet Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and the future “king hereafter,” while telling Banquo that he will sire a line of kings. These statements spark ambition in Macbeth. By Act III, they serve Hecate, their supernatural leader, who criticizes them for acting without her approval. In Act IV, they summon three apparitions that instill false confidence in Macbeth: warning him about Macduff, assuring him that no man “of woman born” can hurt him, and promising safety until Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane. While each prophecy is technically correct, they are also intentionally misleading, making the Witches creators of dramatic irony.
Their key characteristics include ambiguity (their gender confuses Banquo), enigmatic speech, and a pleasure in equivocation. They don’t compel Macbeth to act; instead, they tap into desires that are already simmering within him, raising the play’s core question of free will versus fate. Their disappearing acts (they “melt… into the air”) emphasize their elusive, uncontrollable essence. Ultimately, they serve as a reflection of human corruption: they expose what characters truly desire and observe the ensuing chaos.
1.2 Who is The Three Witches?
The Three Witches—the Weird Sisters—are the play’s most visually and philosophically disruptive presences. They open Macbeth in Act I, Scene 1 amid thunder and lightning, establishing from the first breath of the drama that the natural order is fractured. Their collective identity is deliberately unstable: Banquo notes in Act I, Scene 3 that they “look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth” and that they seem to have beards, yet appear to be women. This gendered ambiguity is a structural feature of their characterisation—they exist outside every boundary Shakespeare’s audience would recognise, occupying a space between human and inhuman, prophecy and manipulation, truth and deceit. Their chanted motto, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” functions as both their philosophy and a warning to the audience: nothing in this play can be taken at face value. Their mode of speech—riddling, rhyming, syntactically inverted—mirrors the moral inversion they embody. They do not lie outright; they equivocate, and that distinction is everything.
1.3 What is The Three Witches’s arc and motivation?
The Witches do not undergo a conventional dramatic arc, and that absence is meaningful. Where every other character is transformed by the events of the play, the Witches remain constant—unchanging observers and orchestrators of chaos. Their motivation, insofar as one can be identified, appears to be the exposure and amplification of human corruption rather than the creation of it. In Act I they seek out Macbeth specifically, suggesting they already know what appetites he harbours. By Act III, Hecate rebukes them for operating independently and asserts control over their next intervention, reframing their purpose explicitly: they will “draw him on to his confusion” by encouraging his overconfidence. The Act IV apparitions—the armed head, the bloody child, the crowned child with a tree—represent the Witches at their most artful, offering truths so carefully packaged in half-context that Macbeth hears only reassurance. Their arc, then, is less a journey than a sustained demonstration: they set the mechanism running in Act I and fine-tune it in Act IV, watching as Macbeth dismantles himself.
1.4 What are The Three Witches’s key moments?
The foundational moment is the triple greeting in Act I, Scene 3: “All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter.” The prophecy does not create Macbeth’s ambition, but it names it, and naming it gives it permission. The aside Macbeth delivers immediately afterwards—”why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair?”—confirms that the Witches have struck something already present in him. Their simultaneous prophecy to Banquo, that he will be “lesser than Macbeth, and greater,” plants the secondary seed of paranoia that will eventually drive Macbeth to order Banquo’s murder in Act III. In Act IV, Scene 1, the cauldron scene with its incantation “Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble” is arguably the play’s most theatrically concentrated piece of atmosphere, and the three apparitions it produces represent the Witches’ most sophisticated piece of equivocation—each statement technically accurate, each one catastrophically misread by Macbeth. The parade of eight kings that follows, with Banquo’s ghost smiling in the glass, is the Witches’ cruelest visual joke: showing Macbeth precisely the dynastic future he has committed murder to prevent.
1.5 What are The Three Witches’s most important relationships?
Macbeth is the Witches’ primary subject, and the relationship is parasitic rather than causal. They feed on his existing desires, never commanding action. Every catastrophe he enacts—Duncan’s murder, Banquo’s assassination, the slaughter of Macduff’s family—is a decision he reaches without their direct instruction. This is the play’s most challenging philosophical proposition: the Witches are implicated in everything and technically responsible for nothing.
Banquo represents the road not taken. He hears identical prophecies and responds with immediate suspicion, warning in Act I that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths… to betray us in deepest consequence.” His resistance to the Witches’ influence makes his murder more tragic and their power more legible by contrast.
Hecate introduces a hierarchical structure to the supernatural world in Act III, Scene 5, rebuking the Witches for their unsanctioned interference. Her intervention clarifies that what follows in Act IV is not random mischief but coordinated strategy: the false security offered to Macbeth is a deliberate trap.
Macduff is the answer the Witches bury inside their most reassuring prophecy. The warning to “beware Macduff” is technically given, then immediately neutralised by the promise that no man “of woman born” shall harm Macbeth. When Macduff reveals he was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” the Witches’ equivocation is fully exposed—they told the truth in every word and deceived in every implication.
How are the Witches like this? | Evidence | Analysis | |
| Supernatural | The Witches are clearly unlike any other characters in the play. Their physical appearance, their style of speech, their actions and their apparent ability to predict the future sets them apart from the humans they seek to control. | Round about the cauldron go; / In, the poisoned entrails throw. / Toad, that under cold stone / Days and nights hast thirty-one / Sweltered venom sleeping got, / Boil thou first i’th’charmèd pot. / Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. (Act 4 Scene 1) | The Witches meet around one of the most well-known symbols of witchcraft – a cauldron. Into this they throw all manner of foul and evil objects (‘poisoned entrails’) and cast a spell. Although it is not clear what the spell is for, it is obvious they are up to no good. The Witches’ chant is in a different rhythm to the way the other characters speak – this also suggests their supernatural nature. |
| Ambiguous | When the Witches make their predictions, they only say what will happen and not how it will happen. Macbeth falls into their trap and believes that he is safer than he actually is. | THIRD APPARITION: Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care / Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are. / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him. MACBETH: That will never be. (Act 4 Scene 1) | The Witches have conjured up three ghostly visions that make ambiguous predictions. Macbeth is told that he need not fear anything (‘take no care who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are’) until a forest of trees uproots itself and moves. As this seems to be a physical impossibility Macbeth instantly dismisses it ever happening (‘That will never be’). The prediction will come true – but not quite in the way Macbeth expects. |
Chapter 2
Lady Macbeth is even more ambitious and ruthless than her husband. As soon as an opportunity to gain power presents itself, she has a plan in mind. She uses her influence to persuade Macbeth that they are taking the right course of action and even takes part in the crime herself.
For a while she is able to suppress her actions but eventually she becomes unable to deal with the guilt of what she has done. She becomes unable to sleep, and mentally unstable, eventually dying in tragic circumstances.
How is Lady Macbeth like this? | Evidence | Analysis | |
| Ambitious | Lady Macbeth is, perhaps, even more determined than her husband. She can only be Queen if he becomes King so when he hesitates she displays enough ambition for both of them. Once she has worked out a plan, nothing will turn her from that course until her ambition is fulfilled. | Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be / What thou art promised; yet do I fear thy nature, / It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, / Art not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it. (Act 1 Scene 5) | Lady Macbeth’s determination to succeed is clear here. She is insistent that Macbeth will become King (‘shalt be what thou art promised’) However, she recognises that he is ‘too full o’th’milk of human kindness’ and that this could stand in their way. It is interesting that she describes the necessary ruthless streak as an ‘illness’. This suggests that even at this stage she knows what she is doing is wrong. |
| Cunning | To the outside world, Lady Macbeth seems like the ideal supportive wife but this is part of her ability to be deceptive. When Macbeth expresses doubts, she uses every trick she can think of to make sure he carries out their plan to murder Duncan. When he hesitates, she is there to urge Macbeth on. | All our service, / In every point twice done and then done double, / Were poor and single business to contend / Against those honours deep and broad wherewith / Your majesty loads our house. (Act 1 Scene 6) | Lady Macbeth welcomes Duncan to her home and flatters him so that he will not suspect a thing. She almost overdoes it when she exaggerates ‘In every point twice done and then done double’. The word ‘double’ also links Lady Macbeth to the evil of the witches – they use the word repeatedly in one of their spells. |
| Conscience-stricken | Lady Macbeth seems to go from being someone with no conscience at all to someone who is overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. She cannot bear to think of what she has done and eventually dies alone and unmourned even by her husband. | Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear? Who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (Act 5 Scene 1) | As the guilt-stricken Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, she remembers all the evil things she and her husband have done and tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands (Out, damned spot: out, I say!). In particular, she recalls the night of Duncan’s murder and the part she played in persuading her husband to act. She is also aware that she will be going to hell for her sins. |
Macbeth‘s wife is one of the most powerful female characters in literature. Unlike her husband, she lacks all humanity, as we see well in her opening scene, where she calls upon the “Spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to deprive her of her feminine instinct to care. Her burning ambition to be queen is the single feature that Shakespeare developed far beyond that of her counterpart in the historical story he used as his source. Lady Macbeth persistently taunts her husband for his lack of courage, even though we know of his bloody deeds on the battlefield. But in public, she is able to act as the consummate hostess, enticing her victim, the king, into her castle. When she faints immediately after the murder of Duncan, the audience is left wondering whether this, too, is part of her act.
Ultimately, she fails the test of her own hardened ruthlessness. Having upbraided her husband one last time during the banquet (Act III, Scene 4), the pace of events becomes too much even for her: She becomes mentally deranged, a mere shadow of her former commanding self, gibbering in Act V, Scene 1 as she “confesses” her part in the murder. Her death is the event that causes Macbeth to ruminate for one last time on the nature of time and mortality in the speech “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” (Act V, Scene 5).
Lady Macbeth’s character is central to the plot of Macbeth. Without her ambition and manipulation, it is unlikely that Macbeth would have ever become king. Lady Macbeth’s character also raises important questions about gender roles and power dynamics, as she seeks to take on a traditionally masculine role in order to achieve her goals. Lady Macbeth’s guilt and descent into a mental breakdown also adds a layer of complexity to the play, as readers are shown the consequences of ambition and betrayal.
Lady M is often compared to other strong and complex female characters in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Cleopatra from Antony and Cleopatra and Volumnia from Coriolanus. Like Lady Macbeth, these characters are ambitious and powerful, but also suffer from their own flaws and weaknesses. However, Lady Macbeth is unique in her willingness to manipulate and control others in order to achieve her goals, making her one of the most complex and intriguing female characters in all of literature.
2.2 Lady Macbeth’s Soliloquies
Lady Macbeth has several famous soliloquies throughout the play, including her “unsex me” soliloquy in Act 1 and her sleepwalking scene in Act 5. These soliloquies offer a glimpse into Lady Macbeth’s inner thoughts and motivations, revealing her ambition, guilt, and descent into mental instability. Literary analyses of these soliloquies have revealed the complex and multi-faceted nature of Lady Macbeth’s character, as well as the themes of gender roles, power dynamics, and the consequences of ambition.
Lady Macbeth in Act 1, scene 5-7
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!
Make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it!
In this soliloquy, Lady Macbeth offers herself to be possessed by evil spirits. Why would a person offer themselves to evil spirits? Lady Macbeth wanted Duncan dead – as a King, God protected him, so for Lady Macbeth to penetrate that protection she had to appeal to the dark side to assist her in her plan. When she says to the spirits, “unsex me”, she wanted them to take away from her the fragile heart of a woman and instead give her the ruthlessness that is associated with men. Lady Macbeth’s determination to get rid of Duncan in order for Macbeth to become King became toxic and dangerous.
Lady Macbeth in Act 5, scene 1
There is a spot
Come off you damned spot! Come off, I said! One ring, two rings. Well then, it must be time to do it. Hell is a murky place! Come on, my love, come on! You are a soldier and you’re afraid? Why should we be afraid that someone will find us out when no one can challenge our power? Still, who would have thought old Duncan would bleed so much?
The Thane of Fife also had a wife. What happened to her? What will these hands never be clean? Stop that my love, stop that. You are going to ruin everything by showing so much fear.
I can still smell the blood. All the perfume in Arabia could not stop my hand from smelling.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Wash your hands and put on your robe, do not look so sick with fear. I will say it again, Banquo is buried in the ground and he is not going to come out of his grave!
Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come hold my hand. We cannot undo what we have done. Go to bed, go to bed, go to bed.
(Modern Translation)
In this soliloquy, the audience and readers can now see how the guilt of killing Duncan and Banquo is haunting Lady Macbeth. Her conscience gets the better of her, she starts hallucinating and she unconsciously reveals everything in her sleep. Her guilty conscience drove her to mental instability because her mind was struggling to come to terms with what her and her husband had done, all in the name of power. Being over ambitious can mentally destabilize a person.
2.3 Character Analysis
Lady Macbeth, with her unwavering ambition, manipulative tactics, and ultimate descent into guilt and madness, stands as a compelling and complex character in Shakespeare’s canon. Her portrayal challenges societal expectations of gender, offering a nuanced exploration of power and its consequences. Lady Macbeth’s legacy endures as a timeless symbol of ambition and the human capacity for both triumph and tragedy. Lady Macbeth`s downfall serves as a cautionary tale, a stark reminder of the consequences that await those who choose to abandon their moral compass in the pursuit of power. Her journey serves as a potent reminder of the fragile balance between ambition and morality. Through her character, Shakespeare invites readers and viewers to ponder on the intricacies of the human psyche and the price one pays for succumbing to unchecked desires.
Some might say Lady Macbeth was not evil, rather, she was a mentally ill someone who was overly ambitious – what do you say?
Lady Macbeth’s fatal flaw
The tragedy of Lady Macbeth lies in the wilful and even naive suppression of her compassionate human nature in playing the role of accomplice to her husband’s ambitions. This leads to an internal conflict, where she is trapped between acknowledging her innate intuition to show compassion and kindness and her willingness to violate her humanity to ensure that her husband gains the throne. Her willingness to deny her femininity and human nature can be described as her fatal flaw.
Just as Lady Macbeth believes that her husband can will himself into doing what needs to be done to gain the throne, she also feels that she can will herself into being unnatural and annihilating her sense of guilt and human compassion. This has already been shown where she boasts about her preparedness to bash in the head of her suckling babe in the name of ambition.
Before that, she delivers a famous aside appealing to demons to steel her for the enterprise of killing Duncan:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!” (Act 1, Scene 5)
Lady Macbeth, in this speech, equates human compassion and goodness with femininity and weakness, while asking for her feminine nature to be cancelled out. Her language becomes quite vivid in the process. She goes so far as asking to be unsexed and “stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,” an image with grimly violent sexual undertones.
Lastly, she asks for milk in her breasts to be turned into gall. This is significant because earlier in that same scene, she worries that Macbeth doesn’t have the stomach to kill Duncan, for he is too full of “the milk of human kindness.” Later, as we have already discussed, she resorts to the awful and horror image of bashing in the head of her suckling child. In short, Lady Macbeth is fully committed to the enterprise of dehumanizing herself and her husband.
The negative references to babies and motherhood belong to a broader theme or motifs of unnaturalness in Macbeth. However, Lady Macbeth’s strong sense of conviction hides her own innate sense of morality. While chastising Macbeth for his reluctance and weakness, she ponders out loud at her own reluctance to kill Duncan:
Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done ’t. (Act 2, Scene 2)
The milk of human kindness that she mocks in Macbeth also prevents her from killing an innocent man who resembles her father. We can go so far as to say that the face that Lady Macbeth puts up is nothing but bravado and even hyperbole. She adopts vigorously the role of the attendant wife pushing her husband toward his ambition without considering the consequences of this action. Lady Macbeth’s ambition is not for herself. After the murder of Duncan, we see her slip into the background and watch the once-reluctant Macbeth take on the grim role of evil tyrant with absolute enthusiasm all by himself.
Macbeth, who is a seasoned soldier and who understands the meaning of death and killing, is full of trepidation just before and after the murder of Duncan, while Lady Macbeth makes light of it. He understands that killing his king means sacrificing his soul for ambition. As he says after the murder of Duncan, “To know my deed ’twere best not know myself” (Act 2, Scene 2).
While Macbeth claims that his guilt and bloody hands will stain the whole sea red, Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, claims, “A little water clears us of this deed” (Act 2, Scene 2). Later, in the play, the humanity that Lady Macbeth attempted so hard to suppress emerges in the form of her sleepwalking, where she confesses to her crime and expresses guilt and remorse. As Macbeth slowly gains his sanity after the murder, Lady Macbeth slowly begins to lose her own. It’s as if Macbeth is able to predict the insanity that he will be punished with for his evil crimes and attempts to outrun it successfully with his intense show of remorse and grief just after murdering Duncan.
Lady Macbeth does the opposite. She resorts to hyperbole and playing the hollow part of a callous man, ignoring any appeal to compassion and pushing down any sense of guilt or humane feelings. The reference to a sleeping Duncan was a hint to her suppressed conscience, which eventually leads to her madness. It can be said that Lady Macbeth had a premonition of such a thing when she warns Macbeth, “These deeds must not be thought / After these ways; so, it will make us mad.”