MACBETH

• "stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires"


  Macbeth feels guilt at the beginning after hearing the prophecy. He doesn't want that eyes of heaven to see his wicked thoughts
• "a dagger of the mind, a false creation/ proceeding from the heat oppressed brain"


  Macbeth feels guilty before the murder of Duncan
• "will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"


  Blood is a metaphor for guilt. Macbeth feels that he can never wash the blood from his hands. This foreshadows how guilt will destroy macbeth.
• Shakespeare wrote about guilt to teach lessons to the audience, with everlasting morals
• "his virtues will plead like angels"

  He knows that Duncan is a good king and Scotland will mourn him, and yet Macbeth's ambition overpowers him
• "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself"


  He's acknowledging that his ambition is leading to him astray and an evil man
• "Horrid image doth unfix my hair"


  suggests he's currently even guilty at the though of murdering Duncan which foreshadows the extent of his guilt
• AMBITION to a Jacobean Audience

  1. would've been appalled by the extent that Macbeth went to pursue his ambition
  2. shocked by cheating the great chain of being and divine right of kings
  3. shocked by subverted gender stereotypes
• Ambition is Macbeth hamartia and leads to his downfall
• The witches prophecy- manipulates Macbeth through their incantations knowing that he is ambitious for power