English Lit

• Macduff defeats Macbeth in single hand-to-hand combat
• Malcolm, the Prince of Cumberland, is arguably the legitimate sovereign and rightful King of Scotland
• When Macbeth kills King Duncan, he takes his power by force and is considered a usurper
• Malcolm serves as a benchmark to measure and judge Macbeth as a ruler
• Macbeth describes the heir as ‘a step / On which I must fall down or else o’er leap’
• At the end of the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are described as a ‘dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen’
• Macbeth presents a flattering representation of Banquo, who is one of King James’s relations
• Malcolm suggests that the graces of a good king are ‘justice, verity, temperance, stableness’
• The Divine Right of Kings:

  • God chooses the rightful king
  • Committing regicide (killing the king) is blasphemous
  • Macbeth disrupts the hierarchy of power/status in the Great Chain of Being
• The Gunpowder Plot:

  • Guy Fawkes plots against Parliament/James I
  • The play was written as a warning against regicide/rebellion
• Supernatural:

  • Seen as powerful and chaotic forces
  • Evoke fear in an audience
  • Witches were controlled by the devil, and they could control nature/weather (fog and thunder)
• James I was the patron of Shakespeare, influencing his biased writing to portray a message
• Gender:

  • Lady Macbeth subverts the stereotype of an Elizabethan woman
  • Banquo conforms to the natural order and serves as a foil to Macbeth
• Biblical allusion:

  • Links the story of Adam and Eve to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
  • The Witches are compared to the devil, manipulating characters like Eve and Adam