macbeth lady macbeth

• Dagger


  Dramatic device used to show Macbeth's hesitation and inner thoughts
• Rhetorical questions in dagger speech


  • Show Macbeth's hesitation due to his morality
  • Disappear at the end, marking a turning point where ambition overrides morality and he commits regicide
• Dramatic apostrophe


  Macbeth calling to someone who isn't there, a hallucination that reflects his inner thoughts
• Macbeth's actions

  • Driven by ambition, leading him down a path of tyranny and murder
  • Represents the negative quality of ambition that leads to his downfall (hamartia)
• Ambition viewed as negative in 17th century, goes against divine right of kings, links to Gunpowder Plot
• Unsex me here


  Lady Macbeth's desire to be more powerful by removing her feminine qualities
• Lady Macbeth


  • Uses imperatives, seems powerful but doesn't need external help
  • Juxtaposition of violent, graphic imagery of infanticide with her maternal instincts and tenderness
  • Exposes her inner vulnerability and inability to escape her feminine qualities in the end
• 17th century society treated women as inferior to men
• "look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it"