Macbeth

• Hamartia


  Fatal flaw of a tragic hero
• Gender performance of Macbeth

  • Ambiguity in exploring masculinity and femininity
• Macbeth's relationship with Lady Macbeth


  Influences his decisions and power dynamics change as the play progresses
• Macbeth's relationship with his wife

  Allows examination of gender roles, marital relations, and power in society
• Macbeth's life seems to be controlled by fate, questioning how much was foretold and how much was of his own making
• Tragic hero


  Starts out in a position of glory and success, but falls from grace due to an error in judgement of his own making
• Macbeth's fear of being emasculated


  • Exploring femininity
• Disputed masculinity is Macbeth's weakness, any challenge to his manhood convinces him of any crime
• Macbeth's journey

  • From hero to villain, from brave warrior to coward, exploring gender, power, and morality
• Philosophy, religion, and morality in Macbeth's character


  Defined by ambition and guilt, exploring predestination and fate
• Unchecked ambition


  Macbeth's fatal flaw
• Macbeth's fatal flaw

  Ambition
• Macbeth symbolises the perils of ambition
• Macbeth as a symbol for toxic and repressive masculinity


  • Associating manhood with violence
• Ambition is Macbeth's fatal flaw
• Macbeth worries about the destination of his immortal soul
• Religion was significant in Jacobean England
• The concept of the tragic hero was popular in Shakespeare's plays and Renaissance theatre
• Macbeth has a moral crisis and an identity crisis after the murder
• Macbeth's moral crisis comes from the ideal of male friendship
• Macbeth acknowledges that Heaven will object to his plans
• Scotland is constructed as a godless, Hellish land after the murder
• Macbeth's ambition strives more to be indisputably 'manly' than to be king
• Male friendships were a huge part of Jacobean culture
• Macbeth allows himself to be manipulated by his superior

  She has the power to strip him of his masculinity
• Macbeth copes with turning his back on God
• Killing Duncan is a conscious choice to embrace corrupt temptation
• Killing Banquo is shocking as Macbeth is supposed to be his closest friend
• Living without God is suggested as the worst fate a man can have
• Male solidarity and loyalty were important values influenced by military standards
• Macbeth's life as he knows it is over after the murder
• Macbeth rarely mentions God by name
• Faith is mentioned in the play full of sinners and treachery
• Disputed masculinity is Macbeth's weakness
• Killing Duncan is a landmark decision in Macbeth's moral path
• Macbeth's inability to cope is shown by how he will "sleep no more" and could not "say Amen"
• Macbeth sacrifices eternal life in Heaven for power and status on Earth
• Tragic hero's journey includes hamartia, hubris, peripeteia, anagnorisis, and nemesis
• Men in Jacobean society were emotionally and psychologically attuned to each other
• Macbeth's mental state mirrors the state of his kingdom