Macbeth

• "Out damned spot!" - Lady Macbeth
• Tragedy aims to stir up feelings of fear and pity in the audience, a process known as catharsis.
• "I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself And falls on th' other" - Macbeth


  • Shakespeare has Macbeth, state his hamartia (“ambition”) to audience
  • There is no other motivation for Macbeth (“no spur”)
  • Macbeth’s fatal flaw (“ambition”) overcomes all of his other, positive character traits
  • Later in the soliloquy, this ambition “overleaps itself” suggesting Macbeth is aware that he is doomed if he commits regicide
• Macbeth's fatal flaw is his ambition, which drives the action forward.
• "O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!" - Macbeth Act 3 Scene 2
• Macbeth achieves his ambition to become king, but at the expense of his happiness, as he feels he needs to murder, lie and behave brutally to others in order to keep his power.
• Macbeth's downfall comes when he slaughters Macduff's family, causing Macduff to take up a position as the play's antagonist.
• Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't - Lady Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5
• Yet I do fear thy nature. It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness - Lady Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5
• Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? - Macbeth Act 2 Scene 3
• his silver skin laced with his golden blood, and his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature for ruin's entrance - Macbeth Act 2 Scene 3
• “When you durst do it, then you were a man” Lady Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII


  • Lady Macbeth is attacking Macbeth’s masculinity
  • It would hurt Macbeth’s pride; in the Jacobean era, manliness would have been equated with strength, so here Lady Macbeth is calling Macbeth weak
  • It is role reversal: Lady Macbeth, unusually for a woman, is manipulating and dominating a man
  • As a woman, Lady Macbeth’s power is in her skills of deception and manipulation
• “Life [...] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” Macbeth, Act V, Scene V


  • This is nihilism: a belief that life is pointless (“signifying nothing”)
  • For a largely Christian Jacobean audience, this rejection of God’s plan and the suggestion of a rejection of Heaven and Hell, would be shocking
  • It is a moment of pathos: the audience, despite his blasphemy, sympathize for a once noble general who lost his wife
  • It is a moment of anagnorisis: a tragic hero’s realization that his actions were for “nothing” and he will be defeated 
• Macbeth: 'Stars hide your fires; let not light see my dark and deep desires'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Come, thick night and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell [...] nor Heaven peep through'
• Soliloquy reveals true feelings


  Macbeth echoes Lady Macbeth, showing they are still close from shared ideas (unlike later)
• Macbeth speaks after Lady Macbeth

  Macbeth is led/controlled by her
• Religious symbolism


  • ("light", "Heaven") shows both are aware of the significance/consequences ("Hell") of regicide
• Imperatives


  • ("hide", "come") to command the natural world - blasphemous+disrupts the Great Chain of Being
• “The dead butcher and his fiend-like queen” - Malcolm, Act V, Scene IX


  • “butcher” =someone who kills without feeling or remorse. suggesting that, due to ambition, Macbeth turned from noble general to common murderer
  • Malcolm doesn’t refer to either character by name: this omission shows their immediate fall in status
  • Lady Macbeth is described as a “fiend”: a demon. She is being compared to the evil forces present in the play – the witches – who aim to bring chaos to the kingdom of Scotland