Grade 8/9

• Rank and position of characters


  Reflects the hierarchical structure of society at the time the play was written
• The Macbeths' goal


  To climb the social ladder for their own personal gain, not that of the people they would rule
• The play is not about money, their motivation was to gain power and join the ruling elite
• The play is a piece of bourgeois propaganda, promoting the idea that damnation is the fate of any challenge to the established social hierarchy
• The state reinforces its authority


  Via the belief system of 'divine right' of kingship
• Macbeth's regicide of Duncan


  Is a disruption to the 'natural' order
• Macbeth's association with the witches


  Is a direct challenge to the 'religious' order
• Macbeth succumbs to the temptations of his wife


  Subverts 'patriarchal' order
• For this, Macbeth is punished
• Carl Jung

  Macbeth as the ‘hero’ and ‘villain’; as the play opens he is a brave, loyal nobleman defending Duncan’s realm. Later, he perpetrates crimes to advance and then maintain his position as King of Scotland.

  … Lady Macbeth as the ‘temptress’ and also the ‘mentor’ for it is her wily manipulation of Macbeth which prompts him to commit regicide and at the banquet when Banquo’s ghost appears, she protects him by lying to their guests that he suffers from a “strange affliction.”
• Lady Macbeth


  • Subverts the dominant ideologies associated with femininity in Elizabethan England
  • Defies the submissive female stereotype of the time by manipulating and dominating her husband
  • Rebels from the confines of her gender role
• Lady Macbeth: '"unsex me here"'
• Lady Macbeth desires power

  Over motherhood
• Lady Macbeth is referring to society's expectations of her gender, and not her 'sex'
• Lady Macbeth: '"make thick my blood"'
• This has implications of blood too thick and clotted for menstrual fertility
• Lady Macbeth: '"gall"'
• Lady Macbeth asks that her life-giving maternal milk be replaced by bitter-tasting "gall"
• Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a woman who dehumanizes herself
• As a woman in a patriarchal society, Lady Macbeth has a subservient role but she rebels
• At first, it seems Shakespeare is showing his audiences that women are as capable, as ambitious and as ruthless as men
• Lady Macbeth: '"My hands are of your colour but I shame to wear a heart so white."'
• The fact that Duncan resembled her own "father as he slept" is sufficient to destabilise her
• Lady Macbeth is then presented as a tragic, pathetic figure who is unable to cope and her descent into madness reduces her once again to feminine helplessness
• Sigmund Freud

  the Macbeths’ actions are motivated and driven by the id part of their psyche…

  …the ego is behind Lady Macbeth’s logical murder plans…

  … it is the superego that eventually drives her to experience guilt and despair as her conscience can no longer cope with what they have done
• Aristotle

  Shakespeare creates a tragic hero who suffers a reversal of fortune that, ultimately, leads to his untimely death.

  …. peripeteia is evident when Macbeth says "I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more’’(3.4). He immediately regrets the murder and realises his ‘success’ is tainted.…

  …anagnorisis occurs when it is revealed that Macduff was not of ‘woman born’…
• Nietzsche

  German philosopher
• Macbeth questions the very existence of God


  Because he contemplates that there may not, in fact, be a God and therefore the regicide of Duncan might only entail an earthly punishment if he is discovered to be Duncan's murderer
• Macbeth


  1. Destroys all existing political, social, and religious order

  2. Establishes himself as king

  3. Imposes his own values on his subjects
• Macbeth's existential nihilism


  Seen upon discovery of his wife's death
• Macbeth: '"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."'
• This would have horrified Jacobean audiences
• Macbeth's own death, moments later


  Considered a fitting punishment for such outright rejection of God
• Macbeth and Banquo


  • Presented as a binary pair to generate conflict
  • Their commonality is evident from the outset
  • Both promised a future linked to the royal line
  • Banquo opts to take a moral route
  • Macbeth demonstrates a drive to elevate his hierarchical position
• Macbeth


  • Brave, loyal and noble warrior at the outset of the play
  • Struggles between what he desires and what he knows is right after meeting the witches
• Macbeth's passions triumph over his reason


  Causes the tragedy and the interest of the drama
• John Locke


  Theorised that nurture has a more significant influence on human behaviour than inherent nature
• Macbeth's encounter with the witches


  Sows the seed of regicide
• Lady Macbeth


  Must invoke evil spirits to take possession of her body, shaping her into the murderer she knows she is not naturally
• Lady Macbeth's belief in the diabolical power of evil


  Influences her to act in immoral ways