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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shakespear’s genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion.

—William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth completes William Shakespeare’s great tragic quartet while expanding, echoing, and altering key elements of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear into one of the most terrifying stage experiences. Like Hamlet, Macbeth treats the  consequences  of  regicide,  but  from  the  perspective  of  the  usurpers,  not  the  dispossessed.  Like  Othello,  Macbeth   centers  its  intrigue  on  the  intimate  relations  of  husband  and  wife.  Like  Lear,  Macbeth   explores  female  villainy,  creating in Lady Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most complex, powerful, and frightening woman characters. Different from Hamlet and Othello, in which the tragic action is reserved for their climaxes and an emphasis on cause over effect, Macbeth, like Lear, locates the tragic tipping point at the play’s outset to concentrate on inexorable consequences. Like Othello, Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, achieves an almost unbearable intensity by eliminating subplots, inessential characters, and tonal shifts to focus almost exclusively on the crime’s devastating impact on husband and wife.

What is singular about Macbeth, compared to the other three great Shakespearean tragedies, is its villain-hero. If Hamlet mainly executes rather than murders,  if  Othello  is  “more  sinned  against  than  sinning,”  and  if  Lear  is  “a  very foolish fond old man” buffeted by surrounding evil, Macbeth knowingly chooses  evil  and  becomes  the  bloodiest  and  most  dehumanized  of  Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists. Macbeth treats coldblooded, premeditated murder from the killer’s perspective, anticipating the psychological dissection and guilt-ridden expressionism that Feodor Dostoevsky will employ in Crime and Punishment . Critic Harold Bloom groups the protagonist as “the culminating figure  in  the  sequence  of  what  might  be  called  Shakespeare’s  Grand  Negations: Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth.” With Macbeth, however, Shakespeare takes us further inside a villain’s mind and imagination, while daringly engaging  our  sympathy  and  identification  with  a  murderer.  “The  problem  Shakespeare  gave  himself  in  Macbeth  was  a  tremendous  one,”  Critic  Wayne  C. Booth has stated.

Take a good man, a noble man, a man admired by all who know him—and  destroy  him,  not  only  physically  and  emotionally,  as  the  Greeks  destroyed their heroes, but also morally and intellectually. As if this were not difficult enough as a dramatic hurdle, while transforming him into one of the most despicable mortals conceivable, maintain him as a tragic hero—that is, keep him so sympathetic that, when he comes to his death, the audience will pity rather than detest him and will be relieved to see him out of his misery rather than pleased to see him destroyed.

Unlike Richard III, Iago, or Edmund, Macbeth is less a virtuoso of villainy or an amoral nihilist than a man with a conscience who succumbs to evil and obliterates the humanity that he is compelled to suppress. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s  greatest  psychological  portrait  of  self-destruction  and  the  human  capacity for evil seen from inside with an intimacy that horrifies because of our forced identification with Macbeth.

Although  there  is  no  certainty  in  dating  the  composition  or  the  first performance  of  Macbeth,   allusions  in  the  play  to  contemporary  events  fix the  likely  date  of  both  as  1606,  shortly  after  the  completion  and  debut  of  King Lear. Scholars have suggested that Macbeth was acted before James I at Hampton  Court  on  August  7,  1606,  during  the  royal  visit  of  King  Christian IV of Denmark and that it may have been especially written for a royal performance. Its subject, as well as its version of Scottish history, suggest an effort both to flatter and to avoid offending the Scottish king James. Macbeth is a chronicle play in which Shakespeare took his major plot elements from Raphael  Holinshed’s  Chronicles  of  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland  (1587),  but  with  significant  modifications.  The  usurping  Macbeth’s  decade-long  (and  largely  successful)  reign  is  abbreviated  with  an  emphasis  on  the  internal  and external destruction caused by Macbeth’s seizing the throne and trying to hold onto it. For the details of King Duncan’s death, Shakespeare used Holinshed’s  account  of  the  murder  of  an  earlier  king  Duff  by  Donwald,  who cast suspicion on drunken servants and whose ambitious wife played a significant role in the crime. Shakespeare also eliminated Banquo as the historical Macbeth’s co-conspirator in the murder to promote Banquo’s innocence and nobility in originating a kingly line from which James traced his legitimacy. Additional prominence is also given to the Weird Sisters, whom Holinshed only mentions in their initial meeting of Macbeth on the heath. The prophetic warning “beware Macduff” is attributed to “certain wizards in whose words Macbeth put great confidence.” The importance of the witches and  the  occult  in  Macbeth   must  have  been  meant  to  appeal  to  a  king  who  produced a treatise, Daemonologie (1597), on witch-craft.

The uncanny sets the tone of moral ambiguity from the play’s outset as the three witches gather to encounter Macbeth “When the battle’s lost and won” in an inverted world in which “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Nothing in the play will be what it seems, and the tragedy results from the confusion and  conflict  between  the  fair—honor,  nobility,  duty—and  the  foul—rank  ambition and bloody murder. Throughout the play nature reflects the disorder and violence of the action. Opening with thunder and lightning, the drama is set in a Scotland contending with the rebellion of the thane (feudal lord) of Cawdor, whom the fearless and courageous Macbeth has vanquished on the battlefield. The play, therefore, initially establishes Macbeth as a dutiful and trusted vassal of the king, Duncan of Scotland, deserving to be rewarded with the rebel’s title for restoring peace and order in the realm. “What he hath lost,” Duncan declares, “noble Macbeth hath won.” News of this honor reaches Macbeth through the witches, who greet him both as the thane of Cawdor and “king hereafter” and his comrade-in-arms Banquo as one who “shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Like the ghost in Hamlet , the  Weird  Sisters  are  left  purposefully  ambiguous  and  problematic.  Are  they  agents  of  fate  that  determine  Macbeth’s  doom,  predicting  and  even  dictating  the  inevitable,  or  do  they  merely  signal  a  latency  in  Macbeth’s  ambitious character?

When he is greeted by the king’s emissaries as thane of Cawdor, Macbeth begins to wonder if the first predictions of the witches came true and what will come of the second of “king hereafter”:

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.

Macbeth  will  be  defined  by  his  “horrible  imaginings,”  by  his  considerable  intellectual and imaginative capacity both to understand what he knows to be true and right and his opposed desires and their frightful consequences. Only Hamlet has as fully a developed interior life and dramatized mental processes as  Macbeth  in  Shakespeare’s  plays.  Macbeth’s  ambition  is  initially  checked  by his conscience and by his fear of the unforeseen consequence of violating moral  laws.  Shakespeare  brilliantly  dramatizes  Macbeth’s  mental  conflict in near stream of consciousness, associational fashion:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success: that but this blow Might be the be all and the end all, here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other.

Macbeth’s “spur” comes in the form of Lady Macbeth, who plays on her husband’s selfimage of courage and virility to commit to the murder. She also reveals her own shocking cancellation of gender imperatives in shaming her husband into action, in one of the most shocking passages of the play:

. . . I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this.

Horrified  at  his  wife’s  resolve  and  cold-blooded  calculation  in  devising  the  plot,  Macbeth  urges  his  wife  to  “Bring  forth  menchildren  only,  /  For  thy  undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males,” but commits “Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”

With the decision to kill the king taken, the play accelerates unrelentingly through a succession of powerful scenes: Duncan’s and Banquo’s murders, the banquet scene in which Banquo’s ghost appears, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, and Macbeth’s final battle with Macduff, Thane of Fife. Duncan’s offstage murder  contrasts  Macbeth’s  “horrible  imaginings”  concerning  the  implications and Lady Macbeth’s chilling practicality. Macbeth’s question, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” is answered by his wife: “A little water clears us of this deed; / How easy is it then!” The knocking at the door of the castle, ominously signaling the revelation of the crime, prompts the play’s one comic respite in the Porter’s drunken foolery that he is at the door of “Hell’s Gate” controlling the entrance of the damned. With the fl ight of Duncan’s sons, who fear for their lives, causing them to be suspected as murderers, Macbeth is named king, and the play’s focus shifts to Macbeth’s keeping and consolidating the power he has seized. Having gained what the witches prophesied, Macbeth next tries to prevent their prediction that Banquo’s descendants will reign by setting assassins to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. The plan goes awry, and Fleance escapes, leaving Macbeth again at the mercy of the witches’ prophecy. His psychic breakdown is dramatized by his seeing Banquo’s ghost occupying Macbeth’s place at the banquet. Pushed to  the  edge  of  mental  collapse,  Macbeth  steels  himself  to  meet  the  witches  again to learn what is in store for him: “Iam in blood,” he declares, “Stepp’d in so far that, should Iwade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The witches reassure him that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will never be vanquished until “Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.” Confident that he is invulnerable, Macbeth  responds  to  the  rebellion  mounted  by  Duncan’s  son  Malcolm  and  Macduff, who has joined him in England, by ordering the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children. Macbeth has progressed from a murderer in fulfillment of the witches predictions to a murderer (of Banquo) in order to subvert their predictions and then to pointless butchery that serves no other purpose than as an exercise in willful destruction. Ironically, Macbeth, whom his wife feared  was  “too  full  o’  the  milk  of  human  kindness  /  To  catch  the  nearest  way” to serve his ambition, displays the same cold calculation that frightened him  about  his  wife,  while  Lady  Macbeth  succumbs  psychically  to  her  own  “horrible  imaginings.”  Lady  Macbeth  relives  the  murder  as  she  sleepwalks,  Shakespeare’s version of the workings of the unconscious. The blood in her tormented  conscience  that  formerly  could  be  removed  with  a  little  water  is  now a permanent noxious stain in which “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.” Women’s cries announcing her offstage death are greeted by Macbeth with detached indifference:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a nightshriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t. Ihave supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

Macbeth reveals himself here as an emotional and moral void. Confirmation that “The Queen, my lord, is dead” prompts only the bitter comment, “She should have died hereafter.” For Macbeth, life has lost all meaning, refl ected in the bleakest lines Shakespeare ever composed:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. 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.

Time and the world that Macbeth had sought to rule are revealed to him as empty and futile, embodied in a metaphor from the theater with life as a histrionic, talentless actor in a tedious, pointless play.

Macbeth’s final testing comes when Malcolm orders his troops to camoufl  age  their  movement  by  carrying  boughs  from  Birnam  Woods  in  their march toward Dunsinane and from Macduff, whom he faces in combat and reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d,” that is, born by cesarean section and therefore not “of woman born.” This revelation, the final fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies, causes Macbeth to fl ee, but he is prompted  by  Macduff’s  taunt  of  cowardice  and  order  to  surrender  to  meet  Macduff’s challenge, despite knowing the deadly outcome:

Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

Macbeth  returns  to  the  world  of  combat  where  his  initial  distinctions  were  honorably earned and tragically lost.

The play concludes with order restored to Scotland, as Macduff presents Macbeth’s severed head to Malcolm, who is hailed as king. Malcolm may assert his control and diminish Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as “this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,” but the audience knows more than that. We know what  Malcolm  does  not,  that  it  will  not  be  his  royal  line  but  Banquo’s  that  will eventually rule Scotland, and inevitably another round of rebellion and murder is to come. We also know in horrifying human terms the making of a butcher and a fiend who refuse to be so easily dismissed as aberrations.

Macbeth Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth Ebook pdf (8MB)

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Macbeth Research Paper Topics

Exploring Macbeth research paper topics is an insightful journey into one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies. This guide delves into the complexities of ambition, power, and moral decay, providing students and researchers a foundational understanding to embark on deeper academic investigations. Whether one aims to dissect character dynamics, themes, or the play’s historical context, Macbeth  continues to offer a wealth of material for scholarly exploration.

100 Macbeth Research Paper Topics

Shakespeare’s Macbeth has long been a cornerstone of English literature, captivating readers and audiences for centuries with its intricate web of ambition, power, and destiny. A rich canvas of characters, themes, and motifs makes it a perfect subject for academic exploration, resulting in an abundance of Macbeth research paper topics. The play’s depth, ranging from its multifaceted characters to its profound thematic concerns, offers students a unique opportunity to delve into various areas of study, each brimming with potential insights and revelations.

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1. Character Analysis:

• The transformation of Macbeth: From hero to villain.
• Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness.
• The role of the three witches in shaping Macbeth’s fate.
• Banquo’s inner conflict: Loyalty to friend vs. ambition for his lineage.
• How secondary characters, like Ross and Lennox, reflect the political unrest.
• Duncan’s leadership style vs. Macbeth’s reign of terror.
• The significance of Malcolm and Donalbain’s reactions to their father’s death.
• The silent power: Lady Macduff’s minimal but poignant presence.
• Comparing Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s reactions to guilt.
• The role and significance of the Porter: Comic relief or deeper implications?

2. Themes and Motifs:

• The corrupting influence of unchecked ambition.
• The dichotomy of appearance vs. reality.
• The role of fate and free will in Macbeth’s downfall.
• The recurring motif of blood and its symbolism.
• The theme of masculinity and its distortions in the play.
• Sleep and sleeplessness: A reflection of conscience and guilt.
• The impact of nature and the supernatural.
• The exploration of political legitimacy and usurpation.
• The cycle of violence and its perpetuation.
• The moral implications of ambition and power.

3. Symbolism:

• The haunting significance of the dagger scene.
• Blood as a symbol of guilt and murder.
• The role of darkness and night in the play.
• The symbolic meaning of the three witches.
• The relevance of weather patterns, especially storms.
• The dead children: Macduff’s offspring and Lady Macbeth’s child.
• The significance of sleepwalking in the play.
• Hallucinations and their psychological implications.
• The role of prophecies and their double meanings.
• The crown: A symbol of power or a heavy burden?

4. Historical Context:

• The true history of King Macbeth of Scotland.
• How the Gunpowder Plot influenced the play.
• The role of King James I in the creation of Macbeth.
• The Elizabethan worldview on witchcraft and its representation.
• The political climate of Shakespeare’s England reflected in Macbeth .
• The historical practices of kingship and succession.
• Views on masculinity and leadership in Elizabethan times.
• Superstitions and beliefs about the supernatural in the 17th century.
• The role of women in society and politics during Shakespeare’s time.
• How historical inaccuracies in Macbeth shape its narrative.

5. The Supernatural:

• Analyzing the role of the three witches.
• The importance of prophecies in shaping the play’s trajectory.
• The ghost of Banquo: Guilt or supernatural intervention?
• The cultural beliefs about witchcraft in the Elizabethan era.
• Hecate’s role and her influence on the witches.
• The supernatural vs. psychological interpretations of the play.
• How the supernatural elements intensify the play’s tragic nature.
• Apparitions in the play and their meanings.
• The role of omens and their significance.
• The blurring lines between reality and the supernatural.

6. Literary Devices:

• The use of soliloquies in revealing character depth.
• Dramatic irony in Macbeth .
• The significance of foreshadowing in the narrative.
• The role of metaphors and similes in enhancing the text.
• Symbolism used by Shakespeare to enrich the tragedy.
• The linguistic choices and their effect on the play’s tone.
• Use of paradoxes and their impact.
• The structural significance of the five acts.
• How Macbeth’s character is revealed through dialogue.
• The significance of rhymes and chants.

7. Comparative Analysis:

• Macbeth vs. Othello : A study in tragic flaws.
• Lady Macbeth and Ophelia: Madness in Shakespeare’s plays.
• The supernatural in Macbeth vs. Hamlet .
• Macbeth and King Lear : A study in power dynamics.
• The tragic heroes: Macbeth vs. Romeo.
• Themes of ambition in Macbeth and Julius Caesar .
• Lady Macbeth vs. Desdemona: The strength of female characters.
• The role of prophecies in Macbeth and Oedipus Rex .
• Comparing the downfall of Macbeth and Faustus.
• The moral landscape in Macbeth vs. The Merchant of Venice .

8. Critical Perspectives:

• A feminist reading of Macbeth .
• Macbeth through the lens of psychoanalytic theory.
• A Marxist interpretation of Macbeth’s quest for power.
• New Historicism’s take on Macbeth .
• Postcolonial views on Macbeth’s imperial ambitions.
• The ecological readings of nature in Macbeth .
• Applying structuralism to the play’s narrative.
• Macbeth from a queer theory perspective.
• A postmodernist interpretation of the play.
• Analyzing Macbeth through the lens of disability studies.

9. Performance and Adaptation:

• Macbeth on stage: Evolution over the centuries.
• Film adaptations: From Orson Welles to Justin Kurzel.
• Gender-swapped versions of Macbeth : A new perspective.
• Adapting Macbeth for a contemporary audience.
• The challenges of staging Macbeth ‘s supernatural elements.
• Macbeth in opera and ballet.
• Global adaptations: Macbeth in non-English speaking countries.
• Setting Macbeth in different time periods.
• The influence of Macbeth on modern media.
• The characterization of Macbeth in popular culture.

10. Philosophical Undertones:

• The existential crisis in Macbeth .
• Macbeth and the Nietzschean concept of will to power.
• The Stoic philosophy in the face of Macbeth’s tragedies.
• Macbeth and the debate of determinism vs. free will.
• The play’s exploration of the human psyche.
• Macbeth’s moral relativism.
• The concept of ambition and its philosophical implications.
• The nature of evil in Macbeth .
• The clash of honor and morality in Macbeth’s decisions.
• Shakespeare’s insight into the human soul through Macbeth’s journey.

In choosing Macbeth research paper topics from this expansive list, students embark on a journey into the heart of Shakespearean tragedy, delving into the complex interplay of ambition, morality, and fate. As scholars peel back the layers of this iconic play, new interpretations and perspectives emerge, reaffirming Macbeth as a timeless work that continues to inspire and challenge us.

Macbeth – A Tapestry of Complex Themes and Research Opportunities

Macbeth stands as one of Shakespeare’s most riveting tragedies, an intricate interplay of characters, themes, and motifs that has made it a favorite subject for research and analysis. These complexities have given rise to a plethora of Macbeth research paper topics, inviting scholars and students alike to probe deeper into the psychological, philosophical, and sociopolitical dimensions of the play. But what is it about Macbeth that renders it such a fertile ground for investigation?

A Journey into the Human Psyche

At the heart of Macbeth lies a profound exploration of the human psyche. Shakespeare delves deep into the mind of his titular character, illustrating the transformative power of unchecked ambition. This obsession, once lit, can push an individual to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty. The descent of Macbeth, from a noble and valiant general to a tyrannical murderer, offers a rich terrain for psychological analysis. When diving into Macbeth research paper topics surrounding this theme, one can explore the psychological triggers of Macbeth’s downfall, the role of external influencers, or even draw comparisons with modern understandings of ambition-driven disorders.

The Omnipresence of Supernatural Elements

The world of Macbeth is one shrouded in mysticism and the supernatural. From the eerie prophecies of the three witches to the haunting specter of Banquo’s ghost, these elements underscore the play’s themes and shape its characters’ fates. Scholars exploring Macbeth research paper topics in this domain can consider how the supernatural acts as a catalyst for Macbeth’s actions or as a reflection of his internal guilt and paranoia. The witches, in particular, can be analyzed from multiple angles – as embodiments of fate, as manipulative entities, or as mere figments of Macbeth’s imagination.

The Dynamics of Power and Morality

Macbeth  presents a brutal critique of the corrosive nature of power and the lengths to which individuals might go to obtain it. However, Shakespeare doesn’t stop there. He further delves into the ethical ramifications of such pursuits. The moral quandaries faced by Macbeth and his wife have given rise to numerous Macbeth research paper topics. Discussions can encompass the mutable nature of morality, the conflicts between personal ambition and ethical considerations, and the eventual consequences of moral degradation.

Gender Roles and Ambition

Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most formidable female characters, shatters the contemporary conventions of femininity. Through her, Shakespeare examines the intersection of gender and power, suggesting that ambition is not the sole domain of men. When diving into Macbeth research paper topics that focus on Lady Macbeth, one can explore the subversion of gender norms, the dynamics of power within the Macbeths’ marriage, and the societal expectations of women during Shakespeare’s era.

The Inescapability of Fate

Is Macbeth a puppet of fate, or does he exercise free will? This age-old debate stems from the play’s intricate dance between destiny and agency. Macbeth research paper topics on this theme can traverse the philosophical terrains of determinism, the self-fulfilling nature of prophecies, or the extent to which characters are architects of their doom.

The brilliance of Macbeth lies not just in its masterful storytelling but in its layered thematic richness. Whether dissecting the intricacies of its characters, its thematic tapestry, or its socio-political critiques, Macbeth research paper topics offer a treasure trove of research avenues. It stands as a testament to Shakespeare’s genius that hundreds of years after its first performance, Macbeth continues to captivate, inspire, and provide inexhaustible material for scholarly exploration.

How to Choose Macbeth Research Paper Topics

Delving into Shakespeare’s Macbeth offers an almost endless wealth of themes, motifs, character analyses, and historical contexts to explore. With such an expansive range of potential subjects, choosing the ideal Macbeth research paper topic can be both an exhilarating and daunting task. The vastness of this play’s content provides freedom, but this same vastness requires strategic selection to ensure your research is both original and comprehensive. Here are some guidelines to aid in that decision-making process.

• Passion and Personal Interest: Always choose a topic that you are passionate about. Your interest will not only make the research process more enjoyable but also reflect in the quality of your paper.
• Scope of the Topic: It’s easy to get lost in the wide array of Macbeth research paper topics. When selecting, ensure that your topic is neither too broad that it lacks depth nor too narrow that it lacks sufficient content.
• Academic Relevance: Ensure that the topic aligns with the guidelines provided by your instructor or institution. It should challenge you academically and push the boundaries of what is already known.
• Available Resources: Before finalizing a topic, conduct preliminary research to ensure there are enough resources available. These can be literary critiques, academic journals, or reputable online sources.
• Originality: While many topics from Macbeth have been extensively covered, aim for a fresh perspective or a unique angle. This will make your paper stand out and contribute a new voice to the existing discourse.
• Historical and Cultural Context: Consider exploring topics that delve into the historical and cultural background during Shakespeare’s time. This provides a richer understanding of the play’s themes and character motivations.
• Character Analysis: Choose a character that intrigues you. Instead of general traits, dive deep into their psychology, relationships, and evolution throughout the play.
• Comparative Analysis: Compare Macbeth with another of Shakespeare’s plays or even a modern work. Highlight parallels, contrasts, and insights that such a comparison brings.
• Themes and Motifs: Macbeth is rife with intricate themes like power, ambition, supernatural elements, and more. Choose a theme and explore its representation, evolution, and relevance throughout the play.
• Feedback: Before finalizing your choice among the many Macbeth research paper topics, seek feedback. Discussing with peers, instructors, or mentors can provide valuable insights or angles you hadn’t considered.

Choosing the right Macbeth research paper topic is a crucial first step in your academic journey. It sets the tone for the research, analysis, and writing phases that follow. While the plethora of options might seem overwhelming, by following the above guidelines and remaining true to your interests and academic goals, you’re sure to land on a topic that’s both engaging and rewarding. Remember, the essence of Macbeth is its depth and complexity; mirror these traits in your research, and you’re on the path to academic success.

How to Write a Macbeth Research Paper

Writing a research paper on Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an exercise in exploring deep human emotions, intricate relationships, and the nuances of ambition, power, and morality. Tackling such a multifaceted work requires an organized approach, a keen analytical eye, and the ability to weave your observations into a compelling narrative. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you craft a masterful Macbeth research paper.

Begin with a solid understanding of Macbeth . Before even commencing the writing process, immerse yourself in the play. Read it multiple times, and perhaps watch different theatrical renditions to grasp the emotional undertones and character dynamics.

• Thesis Statement: The foundation of your research paper. Based on your readings, determine what angle or aspect of Macbeth you wish to explore. Your thesis should be clear, arguable, and specific.
• Outline Your Paper: Plan your research paper by breaking it down into sections. Decide on the main points you want to cover, the arguments you wish to make, and the evidence you’ll use to support these arguments.
• Dive Deep into Analysis: Don’t just scratch the surface. Explore the symbols, motifs, character arcs, and historical context. How does the theme of ambition drive Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? How do supernatural elements influence the narrative?
• Use Supporting Evidence: Every assertion you make should be backed by textual evidence. Use quotations from Macbeth judiciously, ensuring they align with your arguments.
• Consider Historical Context: Understanding the sociopolitical climate of Shakespeare’s time can provide deeper insights into the play’s themes and characters. Delve into the beliefs, norms, and values of that era.
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Ambitious For Power in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

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Murderous Thinking in Macbeth

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William E. Cain, Murderous Thinking in Macbeth , Literary Imagination , Volume 10, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 255–263, https://doi.org/10.1093/litimag/imn045

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One of the unnerving fascinations of Macbeth is that from start to finish we are sympathetically connected to its protagonist, a serial killer. Macbeth “holds our imaginative sympathy,” Cleanth Brooks has said, “even after he has degenerated into a bloody tyrant and has become the slayer of Macduff's wife and children.” 1 There is a “peculiar intimacy” between this murderer and the audience, notes John Bayley, a “feeling that we are closer to Macbeth than to any other character in Shakespeare.” 2 In part this is because Shakespeare dramatizes Macbeth's horror at the prospect of killing Duncan. Macbeth does not take to cruelty with the gleeful contempt of Richard III or the wicked delight of Edmund. Nor does he resemble Aaron and Iago, heartless incarnations of malice. Macbeth recoils from the sickening nature of the act even as he commits himself to it.

We would respond less sympathetically to Macbeth if we watched him cutting, carving, hacking his victims. But the murder of Duncan occurs off-stage. Shakespeare could have confronted us with the vicious deed, as he depicts the blinding of Gloucester, for example, and the deaths of Julius Caesar, Polonius, and Desdemona. With Macbeth, we must make the murder happen in our imaginations. Visualizing murder in the mind's eye makes us give our own color and movement to the action we know that Macbeth performs. What he does, assumes a shape we design for it.

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Further Reading: Macbeth

Adelman, Janet. “ ‘Born of Woman’: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth. ” In Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance , edited by Marjorie Garber, pp. 90–121. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Focusing on Macbeth’s repeated question, “What’s he / That was not born of woman?” Adelman argues that Macbeth simultaneously represents the fantasy of absolute, destructive maternal power and the male fantasy of absolute escape from this power. Only through the ruthless elimination of all female presence are the primitive fears of male identity ultimately assuaged and contained. Initially the witches, with their prophecy that Macbeth fulfills, and Lady Macbeth, impelling him to murder by her equation of masculinity and regicide, appear to wield great power over him as their pawn, and the play’s images of masculinity and femininity are terribly disturbed. While Duncan combines attributes of the father and the mother in harmonious relation, male and female break apart with his assassination, the female becoming either helpless or poisonous, the male bloodthirsty. There is the suggestion that Duncan has failed to provide protective masculine authority. This father-king cannot shield either his vulnerable female self or his sons from the violence provoked in Macbeth by the maternal malevolence of the witches and Lady Macbeth, who are identified with each other. “Through this identification, Shakespeare in effect locates the source of his culture’s fear of witchcraft in individual human history, in the infant’s long dependence on female figures felt as all-powerful: what the witches suggest about the vulnerability of men to female power on the cosmic plane, Lady Macbeth doubles on the psychological plane.” Adelman then charts the declining power of the witches as the play enters its fourth act, when we discover they have masters and they become less terrifying and more comic. They have only ever been English witches, Adelman observes, and not the more menacing Continental witches associated with “the ritual murder and eating of infants, the attacks specifically on the male genitals, the perverse sexual relationship with demons.” Such threatening features are instead transferred to Lady Macbeth in her relationship to Macbeth, who comes to imagine “her as male and then reconstitutes himself as the invulnerable male child of such a mother.” While the play punishes Macbeth for his fantasy of absolute escape from maternal power, it nonetheless “curiously enacts the fantasy that it seems to deny,” specifically in the figure of Macduff: “in affirming that Macduff has indeed had a mother, [the play] denies the fantasy of male self-generation; but in attributing his power to his having been untimely ripped from that mother, it sustains the sense that violent separation from the mother is the mark of the successful male.”

Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. 1904. Reprint, London: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.

Bradley finds Macbeth simpler than Shakespeare’s other tragedies, “broader and more massive in effect.” “The whole tragedy is sublime.” He focuses on the psychological makeup of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, finding that Duncan’s murder is a moment of radical change in the protagonists’ characters. With his emphasis on psychology, Bradley is concerned to make Macbeth entirely free of any coercion by the witches, leaving him responsible for Duncan’s murder and those that follow: “Shakespeare nowhere shows . . . any interest in the speculative problems of foreknowledge, predestination and freedom.” The witches are neither “fate, whom Macbeth is powerless to resist,” nor “symbolic representations of the . . . half-conscious guilt of Macbeth.” According to Bradley, Macbeth is “a great warrior, somewhat masterful, rough, and abrupt,” but with the imagination of a poet—an imagination through which conscience works to affect him with horror at evil. “But he has never . . . accepted as the principle of his conduct the morality which takes shape in his imaginative fears.” The instant he murders Duncan, the futility of his act “is revealed to Macbeth as clearly as its vileness had been revealed beforehand.” There ensues a “perpetual agony of restlessness . . . which urges him to causeless action in search of oblivion.” Yet “there remains something sublime in the defiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earth and hell and heaven.” Lady Macbeth is initially characterized by “an inflexibility of will, which appears to hold imagination, feeling, and conscience completely in check.” She is appalling and sublime, apparently invincible but also apparently inhuman. “We find no trace of pity . . . ; no consciousness of the treachery and baseness of the murder; . . . no shrinking even from the condemnation or hatred of the world.” However, she is shocked by the hideousness of Duncan’s murder when she sees it reflected, upon its discovery, in the faces of others, and “her nature begins to sink.” She loses the initiative—“the stem of her being seems to be cut through”—while the opposite occurs with her husband, who “comes into the foreground.”

Brown, John Russell. Macbeth. Shakespeare Handbooks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Brown’s handbook devotes chapters to the play’s date of composition and textual provenance, a scene-by-scene commentary, cultural contexts and sources, and the afterlife of Macbeth in the theater, on film, and in criticism. Brown thinks that the play was probably written and first performed late in 1606 or early the following year; he reprints Dr. Simon Forman’s diary account of a revival at the Globe on April 20, 1611, the earliest documented performance of the play. Public interest in witchcraft during the early years of the century, changing views toward Scotland, challenges to royal absolutism, debates about the qualities required for a good monarch, and interest stirred by the Gunpowder Plot trial early in 1606 are all part of the play’s cultural context. While Shakespeare borrows from the Bible and Book of Common Prayer (see, for example, the Porter episode in 2.3, which reflects “Christian beliefs and superstitions more specifically than elsewhere” in the play), his primary source was Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (extensively excerpted by Brown in order to reveal Shakespeare’s choices). The author speculates that Shakespeare might have approved additions to the original text—e.g., songs taken from Middleton’s The Witch and two entries for Hecate in 3.5 and 4.1.38 SD–43—even if he did not actually write them. The text’s “unusual brevity could also be a consequence of a revision that had to accommodate additional singing, dancing and spectacle for performances at court or Blackfriars.” The eighty-page commentary, informed by textual issues and theatrical concerns, demonstrates how the dialogue, at crucial moments in the plot, “repeatedly quickens the senses and frees the imagination of those who speak and those who hear,” and how Shakespeare’s handling of the onstage action “repeatedly directs attention to innermost thoughts and physical sensations.” The chapter on key productions and performances includes discussion of William Davenant’s staging (late 1660s) and the performances of David Garrick and Sarah Siddons (eighteenth century), Henry Irving and Ellen Terry (nineteenth century), Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh (1955), Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in Trevor Nunn’s Royal Shakespeare Company production (1976), and Antony Sher and Harriet Walter in Gregory Doran’s revival for the same company (1999) and for the Young Vic (London, 2000). Adaptations singled out for comment include Charles Marowitz’s A Macbeth (1969), Eugène Ionesco’s Macbett (1972), Tom Stoppard’s Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth (1979), Welcome Msomi’s frequently revived Umabatha (1970), and a well-received Japanese version by Yukio Ninagawa (1980) that enjoyed a re-production in 1998. The chapter on cinematic treatments considers three films: Akira Kurosawa’s “masterpiece,” Throne of Blood (1957); Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971); and Trevor Nunn’s 1978 video version of his 1976 staging noted above. In the final chapter, Brown examines a selected number of critical views (most dating from the 1950s on) under the headings of verbal language, characters, arguments and themes, structure and genre, and theatrical events in the play’s afterlife. A briefly annotated bibliography rounds out the volume.

Calderwood, James L. If It Were Done: “Macbeth” and Tragic Action. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.

Calderwood addresses Macbeth from three different—but not entirely discrete—perspectives. First, he argues for the play’s indebtedness to Hamlet , not because of similarities but because the two tragedies are almost systematically opposed; Macbeth is the “photographic negative of Hamlet ” or the “counter- Hamlet. ” Hamlet’s words are opposed to Macbeth’s action. Hamlet is full of “pre-action,” the revenge not coming until the end, while in Macbeth the regicide comes early and its consequences linger on. Hamlet appears to sleep in inaction for most of his play; Macbeth, having killed Duncan, can sleep no more. “In Hamlet the middle—the interim, the gap, the space between two persons or events—is always clogged. . . . Macbeth features an increasingly easy erasure of inbetweenness in the interests of immediacy.” Second, Calderwood discusses the play as a tragedy “about the nature of tragedy,” finding Macbeth to deviate relentlessly from the Aristotelian observation that tragedy is an imitation of an action that is whole and complete in itself, with a beginning that does not follow from something else, a middle, and an end from which nothing follows. Macbeth “does not begin where it seems to begin because its action has already begun,” as the Weïrd Sisters in its first scene are waiting until “the hurly-burly’s done” and “the battle” between Duncan’s forces and the rebels has been “lost and won.” Furthermore, the end of Macbeth so closely resembles its beginning that we are left to wonder how its action can be complete: at the beginning Macbeth wins a battle to secure Duncan on the throne, and at the end Macduff wins another battle to install Malcolm on the throne. Macbeth also appears incomplete because Shakespeare does not stage the play’s central action, the murder of Duncan, and because Macbeth himself does not understand his murder of Duncan to be the completion of necessary action, but has to supplement that murder with the murders of Banquo (itself left incomplete by the escape of Fleance) and of Macduff’s wife and family (that crime left unfinished by Macbeth’s failure to kill Macduff). Third, Calderwood questions “the assumption that Macbeth’s evil can be sharply divided from the prevailing Scots good.” He observes that the narration of the play’s opening battle presents “Scots culture as founded on savagery” insofar as it figures Macbeth and Banquo “as priestly leaders of the royal forces . . . [who] preside over a ceremony in which the Scots are purged and exalted by the shedding of sacred blood in the king’s cause.” Therefore, while in murdering Duncan, “Macbeth violates basic cultural tabus, . . . his deed issues . . . from an impulse to transcend bestiality and achieve cultural distinction” through violence, which the play has represented as the means through which the distinction is made between king and subject in Scotland. Finally, the play seems to move toward a ritual as it ends with the violent invasion of Scotland to “terminate violence by purging the country of the pharmakos ,” the scapegoat, Macbeth. However, tragedy cannot be reduced to ritual: “we witness a divided Macbeth, a tyrant yet one who acknowledges repellence in himself as well as in the world outside him.” As his enemies view him as “merely a ‘cursed usurper,’ a ‘butcher,’ . . . in some measure Macbeth shares their judgment [and] he transcends their judgment. It is the destiny of tragic heroes to be isolated in self-division and nuance, as the world they have violated returns to an oblivious but healing wholeness.”

Charlton, H. B. “ Macbeth. ” In Shakespearian Tragedy , pp. 141–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948.

For Charlton, “ Macbeth explores imaginatively and dramatically the operations of the human conscience as it worked in a spiritual epoch before it had been precisely named.” Macbeth’s conscience is “mainly a feeling of fear,” and evil in Macbeth is “unnaturalness rather than unrighteousness. . . . The afterworld remains mistily beyond the edges of the known, and exerts no pressure on the minds and the feelings of living men.” The measure of human worth is “unswerving courage against greatest odds,” and Macbeth is only vaguely aware that other conditions limit the scope within which bravery may properly act. Among these conditions are the obligations of “kinship, of loyalty, and of hostship,” as well as the desire to be worthy of the tribute of fame. Macbeth’s conscience operates as much through his corporeal as his spiritual agencies, his fear of violating natural obligations registering itself in the breakdown of harmony in his “state of man”: “The hand is incapable of performing the willed movement; the eye distorts the image it perceives; the very hair erects itself unseasonably; the blood flushes or leaves pale the face, unsubjected to a controlling will. . . . Imagination intensifies the fear inordinately until function is smothered in enervating surmise.” Even as Macbeth becomes habituated to murder, he is incapable of destroying his human nature, which, as it endures the accumulating unnaturalness of his action, only increases his sensitivity and spiritual awareness. “Through Macbeth, man appears to be discovering human nature and the principles or laws which are its very essence. In the end, these laws emerge as something not hostile to, but as it were, precedent to all and every formulation of them in terms of religious dogma. . . . Macbeth appears to stand as the symbol of a crucial moment in human history, the moment at which mankind discovered itself to be possessed of capacities for entering on unending vistas of spiritual progress.”

Coleridge, S. T. “Notes for a Lecture on Macbeth ” [c. 1813]. In Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare , edited by Terence Hawkes, pp. 188–99. New York: Capricorn, 1959.

Despising 2.3.1 –43 (with the character of the Porter), Coleridge focuses on the Weïrd Sisters, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Banquo. He offers to generalize the principles underlying the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: “Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings, and after the deed, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers—like delirious men that run away from the phantoms of their own brain, or, raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their own reach; while Lady Macbeth merely endeavours to reconcile him and her own sinkings of heart by anticipation of the worst shapes and thoughts, and affected bravado in confronting them.” Coleridge describes a Macbeth who “is powerful in all things but [who] has strength in none. Morally he is selfish ; i.e., as far as his weakness will permit him to be. Could he have everything he wanted, he would rather have it innocently. . . . Lady Macbeth . . . is . . . of high rank, left much alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the realties of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded with ambition; she shames her husband with a super-human audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal agony.” It is the first appearance of the Weïrd Sisters that establishes the “keynote of the character of the whole play.” Coleridge sets the powerful invocation of the imagination in this scene in contrast to the comparatively mundane opening of Hamlet. He goes on to contrast the openness with which Banquo responds to the Weïrd Sisters with Macbeth’s brooding melancholy, concluding that Macbeth has already been tempted by ambitious thoughts.

Garber, Marjorie. “Macbeth: The Male Medusa.” In Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality , pp. 116–65. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Sigmund Freud famously denied any relation between the literary appearance of ghosts or apparitions and the Unheimlich , or uncanny. In response Garber argues that Macbeth , with its witches, ghost, and apparitions, “is the play of the uncanny—the uncanniest in the canon”—and that “the uncanny is nothing less than the thematized subtext of” the play, which is about the transgression of boundaries and about dislocation, “something let out to wander,” like the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth or the ghost of Banquo at the banquet. The essay begins with a review of the stage traditions surrounding Macbeth , particularly the prohibition against using the name Macbeth in the theater outside of performance. The play itself stages the revelation of that which is not to be looked upon in, for example, what the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé calls “a seemingly fortuitous violation” through which we see the witches prematurely at the beginning of the play, or later in what Macduff, unexpectedly finding Duncan murdered, calls “a new Gorgon,” one of the feminized mythological monsters the sight of which turned the observer to stone. Macduff’s mythological allusion becomes the occasion in Garber’s essay for a wide-ranging exploration of the Gorgon Medusa’s significance in classical and Renaissance art and literature, with each significance related to Macbeth. Garber canvasses the Italian mythographer Caesare Ripa, the English Francis Bacon, the Scottish James I in his book Basilikon Doron , and even the archaeological remains of Roman Britain that include many images of the female Medusa and some of a male one. From Macbeth Garber produces a seemingly endless list of manifestations of the uncanny: “the witches’ riddling prophecies, the puzzling, spectacular apparitions, the walking of trees and sleepers, the persistent sense of doubling that pervades the whole play: two Thanes of Cawdor; two kings and two kingdoms, England and Scotland themselves doubled and divided; two heirs apparent to Duncan; the recurrent prefix ‘Mac’ itself which means ‘son of’; the sexually ambiguous witches replicated in the willfully unsexed Lady Macbeth.”

Harris, Jonathan Gil. “The Smell of Macbeth. ” Shakespeare Quarterly 58 (2007): 465–86. The original essay is incorporated into Harris, Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare, chapter 4, “The Smell of Gunpowder: Macbeth and the Palimpsests of Olfaction” (pp. 119–39) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

Arguing that the smell of “thunder and lightning” at the beginning of Macbeth is as theatrically significant as its acoustic power, Harris widens the usual auditory and visual emphasis of historical phenomenological studies to include the olfactory. With Proust’s repeated allusions to smell and memory as a reference point, Harris “locate[s] in smell . . . a polychronicity: that is, a palimpsesting of diverse moments in time.” The author’s polychronic reading of Macbeth ’s “smellscape” reveals “an explosive temporality through which the past can be made to act upon, and shatter the self-identity of, the present.” The malodorous smell of gunpowder and fireworks used in the seventeenth century to create the “fog and filthy air” and the illusion of thunder and lightning in the first scene would have entailed for the playgoer “a palimpsesting of temporally discrete events and conventions: the contemporary Gunpowder Plot, the older stage tradition of firework-throwing devils and Vices, and the abandoned sacred time of Catholic ritual in which fair and foul smells [of burning incense] signified, respectively, divine and satanic presence.” Each of these memories would have rendered the play’s pyrotechnics “untimely” in the sense of being transformed “into something else, something unstuck in [or out of] time.” The stink emitted by the detonated squib allowed “a supposedly superseded religious past to intervene in and pluralize the Protestant present.” Harris concludes that a polychronic approach to the “time-traveling” associations of smell in Macbeth makes us more sensitive to “the extent to which the vagaries of matter, time, and memory on the Shakespearean stage . . . demand special, and necessarily incomplete, practices of interpretation.”

Hawkins, Michael. “History, Politics, and Macbeth. ” In Focus on Macbeth , edited by John Russell Brown, pp. 155–88. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Examining political questions that concerned Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Hawkins discusses how these debates are dealt with in Macbeth. He finds Macbeth treating four issues in particular: (1) Macbeth’s taking decisive action, commended as likely to bring success in the midst of political uncertainty; (2) Macbeth as a “free agent,” the witches notwithstanding; (3) Macbeth as having the political advantage over his opponents in that he knows the future; and (4) Macbeth as successful when following the prophecies, “unsuccessful when he tries to thwart them.” Hawkins goes on to consider Shakespeare’s exploration of political concerns in three coexisting phases of politics in Macbeth : the prefeudal, characterized by blood and kinship relations; the feudal, in which personal obligations extend beyond kinship relations to include outsiders; and the postfeudal, with the role of king greatly enhanced. Relevant to the prefeudal phase is the murder of Duncan as a kinsman that gives rise to the “classic solution of the blood feud,” with Duncan and Malcolm avenged on Macbeth through their agent Macduff, who is also avenging the murder of his own family. Also associated with prefeudal politics, for Hawkins, are “the dangers of wifely domination and uxoriousness and the hollowness of childlessness,” although, argues Hawkins, it is precisely because Macbeth is childless that the blood feud ends with his death.

Feudal politics are manifest in the play through the “existence of a thanely class, supposedly possessed of the chivalric virtues of personal courage, loyalty, and honour.” In debate within feudal politics are manliness (in the sense of personal courage) and its relation to ambition, as opposed to loyalty. While Macbeth questions his wife’s absolute relation of manliness to violence, nonetheless the beginning and the end of the play present such a relation in Macbeth’s feats of war and Macduff’s attack on him. Feudal politics also characterize personal courage as arising from “the admired virtues of love of greatness, magnanimity, and desire for fame,” all forms of ambition that may be a threat to loyalty. Finally, in terms of postfeudal politics centered on monarchy, Macbeth explores the legitimacy of the monarch, the extent to which his judgment (poor in Duncan’s case) is subject to the review of his subjects, and the extent to which they enjoy the right to resist, especially through violence. These topics arise in the play not only from Macbeth’s assassination of Duncan but also from the invasion of Scotland later by a largely English army to seat Malcolm on the throne.

Leggatt, Alexander. “ Macbeth : A Deed without a Name.” In Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Violation and Identity , chapter 7 (pp. 177–204). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Central to Leggatt’s examination of the intertwined themes of violation and identity in Shakespeare’s tragedies is the idea that just as the actor playing a role is and is not the character, so a “character is and is not so and so.” This “doubleness” in the character’s identity “links with the doubleness of the act of atrocity that breaks him/her,” the violation “becom[ing] figuratively connected with other acts, including acts of love” (e.g., Romeo and Juliet’s first sexual encounter and the shedding of Tybalt’s blood). As the idea of violation pervades not only the individual character violated but that character’s other relationships, “relationship itself comes into question.” In Macbeth , the murder of Duncan, an act even its perpetrators find difficult to name, haunts the play, taking on a life of its own. With echoes of Doomsday permeating the scene of discovery ( 2.3.89 –92, 94 , and 148 ), the regicide “become[s] the essence of all crime, and crime itself, in a breakdown of meaning, infiltrates the idea of judgment.” Emphasizing the importance of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as a couple, Leggatt reads the violation of Duncan as a “displaced sexual act” that “consummate[s] their marriage.” Although the marital relationship begins to unravel in the aftermath of the murder, the couple’s reaching out to each other in Act 5, when each is most alone, shows that the bond firmly established in the initial scenes is not completely destroyed. Although physically absent, Macbeth is the addressee in the “one-sided conversation” of his wife’s sleepwalking sequence (5.1); similarly, Lady Macbeth, though dead, pervades all of the ideas expressed in the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech ( 5.5.22 –31). In these scenes, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, after struggling throughout the play to deny their humanity, exemplify “the human bond” in a way that continues to haunt readers and audiences alike. The final section of the chapter takes up the unsettled nature of the play’s ending: i.e., the troubling absence of Donalbain, the “inhuman stoicism” of Siward, the unreassuring echo of the Witches in the repeated cries of “Hail” ( 5.8.65 , 70 , and 71 ), and the chilling virginity of Malcolm. What appears on the surface to be a loud public play, beginning and ending with the sounds and sights of battle, “has at its still, frightening center a murder in a domestic space, and turns out on closer inspection to be one of Shakespeare’s most intimate dramas, his fullest examination of a marriage,” one “sealed in blood.”

McEachern, Claire. “The Englishness of the Scottish Play: Macbeth and the Poetics of Jacobean Union.” In The Stuart Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century: Awkward Neighbors , edited by Allan I. Macinnes and Jane Ohlmeyer, pp. 94–112. Portland, Ore.: Four Courts Press, 2002.

Responding to the doubleness often identified as the play’s signature quality, McEachern reads Macbeth ’s “refractive vision” as one of national identity; “its source, that of a newly Jacobean England’s sense of cultural difference.” With the 1603 accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England as James I, England’s awkward neighbor to the north, once “alien and . . . other,” was now “admirable . . . and self.” As England “begins to be imagined not as an exclusively self-determining property” (the elect nation and sole occupant of the island celebrated in John of Gaunt’s “sceptered isle” tribute [ Richard II 2.1.45]), she finds herself entering into a new relationship that requires a new national perspective. In the Elizabethan period, a distinguishing marker of Scottish versus English thinking was Scotland’s inclusive rather than exclusive concern with boundaries. McEachern underscores this distinction in describing the idea of Scotland at that time as custodial, rooted in “fierce kin-bonds,” while that of England was monarchal, embodied in a chaste and royally resistant authority that emphasizes the alliance of monarchy with exclusion. When James became King of England, however, the monarch’s body was no longer one of “exclusion but of forceful inclusion.”

McEachern concentrates on four scenes near the end of Macbeth (4.3 through 5.3) to argue that the tragedy “comprehends that of Elizabethan patriotism itself.” Malcolm and the Scottish rebels, in their fight against Macbeth’s tyranny (5.2), seek “an infusion of English manhood to supply the loss of Scotland’s own,” something “gracious England” is ready to supply ( 4.3.53 –54); Macbeth, on the other hand, as he fights for a Scotland defined by “images of bounded security” ( 5.5.2 –8), targets his anger not only at the rebels but even more at the invading “English epicures” ( 5.3.9 ). Whereas Malcolm mirrors Scottish inclusion in his first royal act, the naming of former thanes as earls ( 5.8.74 –77), Macbeth reflects English exclusivity in his fierce drive to preserve the purity of Scotland’s borders. The disassociated mind and body of the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, the cut branches of Birnam Wood, and the decapitated head of Macbeth all figure “the severing of a language of nationhood from its original roots.” In short, Shakespeare uses the “death of a Scottish patriot . . . [to make] us feel the loss of a thoroughly English nation.”

Moschovakis, Nick, ed. Macbeth: New Critical Essays. Shakespeare Criticism Series 32. New York: Routledge, 2008.

The editor opens this anthology with a “discursive bibliographic essay,” organized around the “shifting relationship [over four centuries] between two conflicting strains” in the play’s critical and theatrical reception: the “dualistic” Macbeth , which “assures us . . . that we can tell ‘good’ from ‘evil,’ ” versus the “problematic” Macbeth , which “throw[s] doubt on our ability to distinguish” the two, thereby “substantiating the weird sisters’ contention that ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ ( 1.1.12 ).” The majority of the seventeen essays that follow the introduction focus on the discourses of politics, class, gender, the emotions, and the economy: Rebecca Lemon, “Sovereignty and Treason in Macbeth ”; Jonathan Baldo, “ ‘A rooted sorrow’: Scotland’s Unusable Past”; Rebecca Ann Bach, “The ‘Peerless’ Macbeth: Friendship and Family in Macbeth ”; Julie Barmazel, “ ‘The servant to defect’: Macbeth, Impotence, and the Body Politic”; Abraham Stoll, “Macbeth ’s Equivocal Conscience”; Lois Feuer, “Hired for Mischief: The Masterless Man in Macbeth ”; Stephen Deng, “Healing Angels and ‘Golden Blood’: Money and Mystical Kingship in Macbeth ”; Lisa A. Tomaszewski, “ ‘Throw physic to the dogs!’: Moral Physicians and Medical Malpractice in Macbeth ”; and Lynne Dickson Bruckner, “ ‘Let grief convert to anger’: Authority and Affect in Macbeth. ” Two essays consider topics in performance theory: Michael David Fox, “Like a Poor Player: Audience Emotional Response, Nonrepresentational Performance, and the Staging of Suffering in Macbeth ”; and James Wells, “ ‘To be thus is nothing’: Macbeth and the Trials of Dramatic Identity.” Other selections deal with particular productions and adaptations: Laura Engel’s analysis of Sarah Siddons’s Lady Macbeth, Stephen M. Buhler’s examination of Barbara Garson’s MacBird and Seth Greenland’s Jungle Rot , BI-QI Beatrice Lei’s look at Macbeth in Chinese opera, Kim Fedderson and J. Michael Richardson’s account of recent “migrations of the cinematic brand,” and Bruno Lessard’s exploration of “hypermedia Macbeth. ” In the final essay, “Sunshine in Macbeth ,” Pamela Mason “offers perspectives on the First Folio text, its handling by modern editors, and the relationship between text and performance.”

Newstok, Scott L., and Ayanna Thompson, eds. Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

The Newstok and Thompson anthology of twenty-six new essays provides an interdisciplinary approach to “the various ways Macbeth has been adapted and appropriated within the context of American racial constructions.” In the introductory essay “What is a ‘Weyward’ Macbeth ?” Ayanna Thompson defines “weyward” as “weird, fated, fateful, perverse, intractable, willful, erratic, unlicensed, fugitive, troublesome, and wayward.” Such semantic diversity (mirroring the typographical “multiplicity and instability” of the Folio’s “weyward” and “weyard”) makes it “precisely the correct word for Macbeth ’s role in American racial formations.” A companion essay by Celia R. Daileader (“Weird Brothers: What Thomas Middleton’s The Witch Can Tell Us about Race, Sex, and Gender in Macbeth ”) tackles the “weyward” qualities of the playtext itself. The next five essays (grouped under the heading “Early American Intersections”) explore how debates about freedom, slavery, and racial/national identity haunt nineteenth-and early twentieth-century treatments of the Scottish play: Heather S. Nathans, “ ‘Blood will have blood’: Violence, Slavery, and Macbeth in the Antebellum American Imagination”; John C. Briggs, “The Exorcism of Macbeth: Frederick Douglass’s Appropriation of Shakespeare”; Bernth Lindfors, “Ira Aldridge as Macbeth”; Joyce Green MacDonald, “Minstrel Show Macbeth ”; and Nick Moschovakis, “Reading Macbeth in Texts by and about African Americans, 1903–44: Race and the Problematics of Allusive Identification.” Section Three, titled “Federal Theatre Project(s),” includes Lisa N. Simmons, “Before Welles: A 1935 Boston Production”; Marguerite Rippy, “Black Cast Conjures White Genius: Unraveling the Mystique of Orson Welles’s ‘Voodoo’ Macbeth ”; Scott L. Newstok, “After Welles: Re-do Voodoo Macbeth s”; and Lenwood Sloan, “The Vo-Du Macbeth! : Travels and Travails of a Choreo-Drama Inspired by the FTP Production.” Moving to early twenty-first-century stagings, Section Four “provide[s] . . . snapshots of five distinctly racialized adaptations of Macbeth ”: Harry J. Lennix, “A Black Actor’s Guide to the Scottish Play, or, Why Macbeth Matters”; Alexander C. Y. Huang, “Asian-American Theatre Reimagined: Shogun Macbeth in New York”; Anita Maynard-Losh, “The Tlingit Play: Macbeth and Native Americanism”; José A. Esquea, “A Post-Apocalyptic Macbeth : Teatro LA TEA’s Macbeth 2029”; and William C. Carroll, “Multicultural, Multilingual Macbeth. ” The essays in the remaining three sections address “different facets of Macbeth ’s allusive force in music, film, and drama”: Wallace McClain Cheatham, “Reflections on Verdi, Macbeth , and Non-Traditional Casting in Opera”; Douglas Lanier, “Ellington’s Dark Lady”; Todd Landon Barnes, “Hip-Hop Macbeth s, ‘Digitized Blackness,’ and the Millennial Minstrel: Illegal Culture Sharing in the Virtual Classroom”; Francesca Royster, “Riddling Whiteness, Riddling Certainty: Roman Polanski’s Macbeth ”; Courtney Lehmann, “Semper Die: Marines Incarnadine in Nina Menkes’s The Bloody Child: An Interior of Violence ”; Amy Scott-Douglass, “Shades of Shakespeare: Colorblind Casting and Interracial Couples in Macbeth in Manhattan, Grey’s Anatomy , and Prison Macbeth ”; Charita Gainey-O’Toole and Elizabeth Alexander, “Three Weyward Sisters: African-American Female Poets Conjure with Macbeth ”; Philip C. Kolin, “ ‘Black up again’: Combating Macbeth in Contemporary African-American Plays”; and Peter Erickson, “Black Characters in Search of an Author: Black Plays on Black Performers of Shakespeare.” Richard Burt’s epilogue, “Oba Macbeth: National Transition as National Traumission,” considers “the weyward nature of historical transmission” in the context of the “current socio-political moment: the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.” An appendix on selected productions of Macbeth featuring nontraditional casting rounds out the volume.

Norbrook, David. “ Macbeth and the Politics of Historiography.” In Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England , edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, pp. 78–116. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Norbrook separates himself from the practitioners of cultural materialism and new historicism prominent in the 1980s. Of the cultural-materialist readings of Shakespeare’s plays, he writes that “The very plays that a generation ago were acclaimed as bastions of traditional values in a declining world are now seen as radically subverting all values and authority.” Of the new-historicist readings, he says that “when this [cultural-materialist] approach seems inadequate, it may be argued that this [new-historicist] subversion in fact subtly reinforced the very power structures that were being challenged.” Norbrook is uncomfortable with both approaches because “they effectively reduplicate the stark oppositions presented by absolutist propagandists: either monarchy or anarchy.” To situate Macbeth in the context of the political debates of its own time, Norbrook draws extensively on histories of Scotland that include accounts of Macbeth’s rule written in the sixteenth century by such highly educated and politically engaged humanist historians as John Major, Hector Boece, and George Buchanan, all of whom had “studied at the Sorbonne [in Paris] when it was a center of radical political thought.” Norbrook locates in the work of these historians of Scotland radical political theories. For example, Buchanan argued that kings were to be chosen by their nobles and could reign only at the pleasure of their nobles, who had the right to overthrow and even kill kings corrupted by power. According to Norbrook, Shakespeare, who “took a sophisticated political interest in Scottish history,” revised the radicalism found in these historical accounts; nonetheless, Macbeth engages with such accounts “in a subtle, oblique, carefully weighed manner, rather than through violent reaction.” Some anomalies and contradictions in the play arise from difficulties in their source material; an example is the play’s ambivalence about whether the throne of Scotland is inherited through patrilineal descent or is awarded through election by the nobles—an issue often in dispute in Scottish history. All in all, for Norbrook, “Macbeth was a figure bound to evoke ambivalent responses from a Renaissance humanist. If the audience can sympathize with Macbeth even though he outrages the play’s moral order, it may be because vestiges remain of a worldview in which regicide could be a noble rather than an evil act.”

Sinfield, Alan. “ Macbeth : History, Ideology and Intellectuals.” Critical Quarterly 28 (1986): 63–77.

Sinfield sets out to disturb the conventional reading of Macbeth by arguing that it is grounded in certain distinctions that are called into question by the play itself. The first such distinction is between allegedly legitimate violence used in the service of the State (such as Macbeth’s “unseaming” the rebel Macdonwald “from the nave [i.e., navel] to the chops [i.e., jaws]” on the battlefield) and so-called illegitimate violence against the State (such as Macbeth’s assassination of Duncan). The play, though, according to Sinfield, breaks down this distinction by presenting the violence used against Macbeth’s State as legitimate. A second distinction postulated by the conventional reading of the play is between a monarch whose claim to the throne is legitimate and whose rule is therefore just (Duncan) and a tyrant who usurps the throne and goes on to oppress his people (Macbeth). Again, according to Sinfield, the play does not maintain this distinction consistently, for it appears to have Macbeth both enjoy proper election to the monarchy by the thanes and nonetheless tyrannize Scotland. Sinfield traces the conventional reading of the play to writing by James I of England and VI of Scotland, particularly his The Trew Law of Free Monarchies , and finds a historical basis for questioning these views in the writing of George Buchanan, whose published works on Scottish history James sought to suppress.

Stallybrass, Peter. “ Macbeth and Witchcraft.” In Focus on Macbeth , edited by John Russell Brown, pp. 189–209. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Viewing witchcraft in Macbeth as an expression of a dominantly patriarchal society, Stallybrass describes both the actual Renaissance beliefs about witches and “the function of such beliefs.” One Renaissance belief is that witches are opposed to monarchy: witches “might kill the king or forecast the hour of his death or seek to know who would succeed the living monarch.” The belief in such an antithesis between monarchy and witchcraft had as its corollary the following: “If kingship is legitimated by analogy to God’s rule over the earth, and the father’s rule over the family and the head’s rule over the body, witchcraft establishes the opposite analogies, whereby the Devil attempts to rule over the earth, and the woman over the family, and the body over the head.” Macbeth gathers up in its representation of witches a wide range of beliefs about them, associating witches (and therefore Macbeth, who seeks to preserve his connection to them) with the grand (disorders in nature, prophecy) and the inconsequential (familiars—Graymalkin and Paddock—“withered” old women, petty vendettas, swine-killing). Lady Macbeth is shown to practice witchcraft when she invokes the overthrow of nature within herself. Yet in the latter half of the play witchcraft is shown to fail: in the sleepwalking scene, for example, Lady Macbeth is reduced by the return of “the compunctious visitations of nature,” and the witches themselves become the agents who present the providential future of Scotland’s monarchy—the witches now reduced to what was their antithesis. Before Stallybrass attempts to generalize about the function of witchcraft in Macbeth , he also canvasses the representation of witchcraft in the most notorious Continental scholarly work on the subject, Krämer and Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum (1486), and in anthropological writing on social functions of witchcraft in Ghana and Nupe. In these cases and in Macbeth , he concludes, the sociological function of witchcraft is the confirmation of the prevailing patriarchal ideology through the repression of women by means of moving the debate about gender hierarchy to “the undisputed ground of ‘Nature,’ ” in, for example, as noted above, Macbeth ’s sleepwalking scene. Stallybrass resists critical attempts to find in Macbeth any historically or politically transcendent meaning.

Wheeler, Richard. “ ‘Since first we were dissevered’: Trust and Autonomy in Shakespearean Tragedy and Romance.” In Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytical Essays, edited by Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn, pp. 170–87. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Wheeler’s goal is “to identify polarized trends in Shakespeare’s development, separated by generic distinctions in the earlier work [e.g., comedies, histories], which confront each other in the drama of the tragic period,” which represent “modes of seeking self-fulfillment in conditions of extreme crisis.” At one extreme, “a deeply feared longing for merger subverts relations of trust; at the other, failed autonomy gives way to helpless isolation,” as in Macbeth. “Macbeth’s desperate reliance on the will of his powerful wife” is a relation of unqualified trust, which ultimately proves destructive as he experiences “absolute aloneness” or “empty isolation . . . bereft even of desire for relations with others.” “The quest for royal manhood in Macbeth requires that Macbeth’s ambition be nurtured into action by others. After the first exchange with the witches, Macbeth is driven to achieve a magically compelling ideal of manhood articulated for him by his wife. Macbeth cannot refuse this ideal, but he cannot pursue it except by making himself a child to the demonic motherhood held out to him by Lady Macbeth.” Wheeler continues by noting that “As the merger of the two characters dissolves, Macbeth’s sustained violence, always exercised in the context of family relations—a fatherly king [Duncan], a father and son [Banquo and Fleance], and finally a mother and her ‘babes’ [Lady Macduff and her children]—only serves to isolate him further, until even the illusion of omnipotence nurtured by the witches collapses before the force of a man ‘not born of woman,’ ” Macduff. Wheeler thereby relates Shakespearean tragedy, including Macbeth , to accounts of early childhood development, like those of Margaret Mahler, who tells us that “As the ego develops along the boundaries that distinguish the world from the self, crises in the process of separation [from the mother] can engender the wish to reinhabit the symbiotic unity of infant and mother; crises within the environment provided by the mother, including those that provoke fears of ‘reengulfment,’ can lead to the defiant repudiation of essential others and to fantasies of a powerful autonomous self that magically incorporates symbiotic omnipotence.”

Wilder, Lina Perkins. “ ‘Flaws and Starts’: Fragmented Recollection in Macbeth. ” In Wilder, Shakespeare’s Memory Theatre: Recollection, Properties, and Character, chapter 6 (pp. 156–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Wilder’s study of Shakespeare’s use of mnemonic objects to “help audiences recall, or imagine, staged and unstaged pasts” examines how “props, the players, and the physical space of the stage provide the vocabulary of Shakespeare’s memory theatre.” Central to this materialist-cognitive reading of Macbeth is the role of Lady Macbeth as a “memory pedagogue”: in the first part of the play, she instructs her husband in the “masculine discipline” of forgetting; in the banquet scene, as his “sweet remembrancer” ( 3.4.42 ), she reminds him of his duties as host, thereby functioning as a “human . . . memento who shapes and directs his remembering in ways that reinforce social stability.” Probing the pathological nature of the fragmentary memories that “punctuate” the play, Wilder argues that neither Lady Macbeth’s recollection of having given suck nor Macbeth’s of the witches’ enigmatic prophecies embodies a “fully imagined past”; on the contrary, both cases exemplify “a memory culture in which masculine control and deliberate forgetting have become the norm.” The play’s chief irony is that she who urged her husband not to “be governed by undisciplined, uncontrolled remembrance” is in the end “entirely constituted by and finally destroyed by uncontrolled remembering.” The sleepwalking scene (5.1), which Wilder discusses at some length as the “ultimate expression” of “simultaneous recollection and invention,” not only “construct[s in part] an unstaged past” but also “recalls the entire play in single words” (e.g., the recurring “ones” and “twos,” “time,” “do,” and “it”). In the course of the chapter, the author examines such “mnemonically charged” devices as the absent child of Lady Macbeth’s early discourse (the violence done to the sucking babe [ 1.7.62 –66] reverberating in Macduff’s declaration of his violent cesarean birth at 5.8.19 –20), the “absent prop” of blood specified in the dialogue following the offstage murder but not in the stage directions of 2.2, the onstage “banquet” that recalls the name of the dead man who haunts Macbeth in 3.4, the evocative images conjured by the witches in 4.1 (which, taken together, make the remainder of the play “an explicitly mnemonic form as each further catastrophe recalls an element of the prophecy”), and the letters referred to by the Gentlewoman in 5.1.4 –9, whose contents remain tantalizingly inaccessible. Wilder concludes that unlike the “narrative elaboration and rhetorical mastery” marking the recollections of characters in other plays by Shakespeare (e.g., Othello and Iago), recollection in Macbeth —a play in which “the past shatters”—“never quite becomes narrative.”

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Macbeth: the Quintessential Tragic Hero

How it works

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Macbeth’s Noble Beginnings
• 3 The Fatal Flaw: Ambition
• 4 Inevitable Downfall and Isolation
• 5 Conclusion

Introduction

Hey there! So, let’s talk about Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. It’s a great example of what people call the “tragic hero.” According to this old guy Aristotle, a tragic hero is someone important who screws up because of a big flaw. In Macbeth, the main guy, Macbeth, totally fits this description. He starts off as a pretty noble dude but ends up crashing hard because of his ambition, bad choices, and other stuff. We’ll look at why Macbeth is seen as a tragic hero, checking out his good start, his big mistakes, and his eventual crash.

Macbeth’s Noble Beginnings

First off, Macbeth starts out as a pretty noble guy, which is key for a tragic hero. At the beginning of the play, he’s this brave warrior and super loyal to King Duncan. Because of his bravery, he gets the title “Thane of Cawdor.” This shows he’s got a good spot in society. This nobility makes us like him and feel bad when things go south. Then, these witches show up and tell him he’s gonna be king. This prophecy kicks off the whole tragic story. Macbeth’s noble start makes his downfall even sadder.

The Fatal Flaw: Ambition

Now, let’s talk about Macbeth’s big flaw: ambition. When he hears the witches’ prophecy, he gets super ambitious. But, this ambition isn’t balanced by any moral thinking. He starts thinking about killing the king. His wife, Lady Macbeth, sees this ambition and pushes him to go through with the murder. Killing King Duncan is where things start to go downhill for him. Macbeth’s ambition makes him blind to the mess he’s creating. He gets caught up in lies, paranoia, and more killing. His flaw not only brings him down but messes up the lives of people around him, like his wife and those who once trusted him.

Inevitable Downfall and Isolation

Macbeth’s fall is pretty much unavoidable, which is a big part of being a tragic hero. After he takes the throne, he’s filled with guilt and fear. He gets super paranoid and starts killing more people, like his buddy Banquo and Macduff’s family. These acts make him more isolated and strip away whatever nobility he had left. You can see his mental torture in his hallucinations and guilty conscience. His rule turns into a nightmare, and everyone ends up hating him. He goes from a noble hero to a despised tyrant. In the end, he’s killed by Macduff, which seals his fate as a tragic hero.

So, to wrap it all up, Macbeth is a tragic hero because he starts off noble, has a big flaw—unchecked ambition—and faces an inevitable downfall. Shakespeare does a great job of making us feel for Macbeth at first, which makes his fall even more tragic. His ambition, stirred up by the witches and his own weak morals, leads him to ruin. Macbeth’s story is a strong warning about the dangers of too much ambition and losing your moral direction. Through Macbeth, Shakespeare not only gives us a memorable tragic hero but also delves into the complicated nature of ambition and power.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Plays — Macbeth

Essays on Macbeth

Hook examples for "macbeth" essays, the ambition that consumes hook.

Explore the theme of unchecked ambition in "Macbeth" and how it leads to the tragic downfall of the main character. Discuss Macbeth's relentless pursuit of power and its consequences.

The Supernatural and Witches' Prophecies Hook

Highlight the role of the supernatural in "Macbeth" and the influence of the witches' prophecies on Macbeth's actions. Discuss the themes of fate, free will, and manipulation.

The Transformation of Lady Macbeth Hook

Examine the character of Lady Macbeth and her transformation from a ruthless instigator to a guilt-ridden figure. Discuss her role in Macbeth's descent into madness.

The Tragic Hero's Fatal Flaw Hook

Analyze Macbeth as a tragic hero and his fatal flaw of ambition. Discuss how his character aligns with Aristotle's definition of tragic heroes and why audiences sympathize with him despite his actions.

The Symbolism of Blood Hook

Explore the recurring motif of blood in "Macbeth" and its symbolism. Discuss how blood represents guilt, violence, and the consequences of immoral deeds throughout the play.

The Role of Kingship Hook

Discuss the theme of kingship in "Macbeth" and how the desire for the throne drives the characters' actions. Examine the contrast between good and bad kingship as portrayed in the play.

The Power of Manipulation Hook

Highlight the manipulative tactics used by characters like Lady Macbeth and the witches to influence Macbeth's decisions. Discuss how manipulation is a central theme in the play.

The Political and Social Context Hook

Provide historical and social context for "Macbeth" by discussing the political turmoil and societal expectations of Shakespearean England, which influenced the play's themes and characters.

The Relevance of "Macbeth" Today Hook

Connect the themes of "Macbeth" to contemporary issues, such as the corrupting influence of power, ambition in politics, or the consequences of moral compromises. Explain how the play remains relevant today.

The Lessons of Tragedy Hook

End your essay by reflecting on the lessons and universal truths that "Macbeth" conveys. Discuss the enduring impact of Shakespeare's exploration of human nature and ambition.

How Does Macbeth Kill Macduff's Family

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Unveiling The Mind: Examples of Hallucinations in Macbeth

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The Tragic Downfall of Macbeth in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

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Macbeth Motif of Sleep

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1623, William Shakespeare

Play/ Shakespearean tragedy

Lady Macbet, Macduff, Macbeth, Banquo, Duncan, Malcolm, Three Witches

Ambition, Light and Darkness, Loyalty, Sleep, Blood

The story follows the protagonist, Macbeth, a noble and loyal soldier, who becomes consumed by his ambition for power. Encouraged by the prophecies of three witches and his wife, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth plots to seize the throne by any means necessary. Driven by his unchecked ambition, Macbeth commits regicide, killing King Duncan and usurping the crown. However, the guilt and paranoia from his actions torment him, leading to a descent into madness. As Macbeth's tyrannical rule continues, he becomes increasingly isolated and haunted by his guilt, leading to a series of tragic consequences. Macbeth's reign is challenged by a rebellion led by nobleman Macduff, who seeks to restore order and justice. In a final battle, Macbeth confronts Macduff and learns that the witches' prophecies have been cunningly misleading. Defeated and facing his inevitable demise, Macbeth displays a moment of remorse and accepts his tragic fate.

Set in medieval Scotland, the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare takes place in a world of castles, battlefields, and supernatural elements. The setting plays a crucial role in creating the dark and foreboding atmosphere that permeates the story. The majority of the action occurs in various locations, including Macbeth's castle, the royal palace, and the battlefield. The eerie and mysterious ambiance is enhanced by the presence of supernatural elements, such as the three witches who appear in desolate landscapes like heath and caverns. These supernatural occurrences contribute to the overall sense of uncertainty and the blurred boundaries between reality and illusion. Additionally, the setting reflects the political and social context of the time, where power struggles and the desire for dominance were prevalent. The castles represent both security and confinement, as characters navigate the treacherous corridors of power. The battlefield scenes underscore the brutal nature of war and the consequences of ambition.

Symbolism (the dagger, the owl), imagery, dramatic irony, paradoxes ("fair is foul and foul is fair").

Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare's most renowned plays, has had a profound influence on literature, theater, and even popular culture. Its enduring impact can be observed through various adaptations, references, and reinterpretations over the centuries. One significant aspect of Macbeth's influence lies in its exploration of human ambition, moral corruption, and the consequences of unchecked power. These themes continue to resonate with audiences, offering insights into the complexities of human nature and the allure and perils of ambition. The play's exploration of the corrupting influence of power has influenced subsequent works, serving as a cautionary tale and a source of introspection. Macbeth's language and poetic imagery have also left an indelible mark on literature. Shakespeare's evocative descriptions, powerful soliloquies, and memorable quotes, such as "Out, damned spot!" and "Double, double toil and trouble," have become iconic and continue to be referenced and admired. Furthermore, Macbeth has influenced various artistic mediums beyond the stage. It has inspired numerous film adaptations, theatrical productions, and operas, showcasing its enduring appeal and ability to resonate with diverse audiences. The play's exploration of themes like guilt, ambition, and fate has provided fertile ground for reinterpretation and exploration in different cultural contexts.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” "False face must hide what the false heart doth know." “What! can the devil speak true?” “I bear a charmed life, which must not yield, To one of woman born.” “I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.”

1. Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays, consisting of only about 2,108 lines. Despite its brevity, it is packed with intense drama, complex characters, and profound themes, making it a gripping and impactful work. 2. The play features a significant number of supernatural elements, including the famous three witches who prophesy Macbeth's rise and downfall. These supernatural elements contribute to the eerie atmosphere and the exploration of themes such as fate, free will, and the consequences of one's actions. 3. Macbeth is known for its high body count. Throughout the play, numerous characters meet their demise, including King Duncan, Banquo, Lady Macduff, and Macbeth himself. The portrayal of violence and its consequences adds to the play's dark and tragic nature, highlighting the destructive power of unchecked ambition.

Shakespeare's Macbeth is a play of enduring significance that continues to captivate audiences and scholars alike. Exploring themes of ambition, power, guilt, and the corrupting nature of unchecked ambition, Macbeth delves into the darkest corners of the human psyche. Writing an essay about Macbeth provides an opportunity to delve into the complexities of character development, dramatic tension, and the profound insights into human nature that Shakespeare masterfully weaves throughout the play. The exploration of Macbeth's tragic downfall, driven by his unchecked ambition and the manipulation of supernatural forces, raises thought-provoking questions about the human condition and the consequences of moral transgressions. Moreover, Macbeth offers a rich tapestry of literary techniques and devices, including vivid imagery, soliloquies, and dramatic irony, which provide ample material for in-depth analysis and critical interpretation. Through the study of Macbeth, one can gain a deeper understanding of Shakespeare's artistry, the power of language, and the timeless themes that continue to resonate with contemporary audiences.

1. Kranz, D. L. (2003). The Sounds of Supernatural Soliciting in “Macbeth.” Studies in Philology, 100(3), 346–383. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4174762) 2. Carr, S., & Knapp, P. (1981). Seeing through Macbeth. PMLA, 96(5). (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/seeing-through-macbeth/D4761FAB007DD207E240598D876BFA56) 3. Roberts, J.A. (2002). Sex and the Female Tragic Hero. In: Liebler, N.C. (eds) The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-04957-5_10) 4. Bristol, M. (2011). Macbeth the Philosopher: Rethinking Context. New Literary History 42(4), 641-662. (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/465746/summary) 5. Gaskill, M. (2008). Witchcraft and evidence in early modern England. Past and Present, 198(1). (https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/198/1/33/1514400) 6. GASKILL, M. (2008). THE PURSUIT OF REALITY: RECENT RESEARCH INTO THE HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT. The Historical Journal, 51(4), 1069-1088. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/abs/pursuit-of-reality-recent-research-into-the-history-of-witchcraft/41B06ED6E083CF7F5C0173ACE805C1A2) 7. Booth, W. C. (1951). MACBETH AS TRAGIC HERO. The Journal of General Education, 6(1), 17–25. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27795368) 8. M a Sandra Peña Cervel (2010) Macbeth Revisited: A Cognitive Analysis, Metaphor and Symbol, 26:1 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10926488.2011.535412) 9. Cheung, K.-K. (1984). Shakespeare and Kierkegaard: “Dread” in Macbeth. Shakespeare Quarterly, 35(4), 430–439. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2870162)

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This volume offers a wealth of critical analysis, supported with ample historical and bibliographical information about one of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular and globally influential plays. Its eighteen new chapters represent a broad spectrum of current scholarly and interpretive approaches, from historicist criticism to performance theory to cultural studies. A substantial section addresses early modern themes, with attention to the protagonists and the discourses of politics, class, gender, the emotions, and the economy, along with discussions of significant ‘minor’ characters and less commonly examined textual passages. Further chapters scrutinize Macbeth’s performance, adaptation and transformation across several media—stage, film, text, and hypertext—in cultural settings ranging from early nineteenth-century England to late twentieth-century China. The editor’s extensive introduction surveys critical, theatrical, and cinematic interpretations from the late seventeenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, while advancing a synthetic argument to explain the shifting relationship between two conflicting strains in the tragedy’s reception. Written to a level that will be both accessible to advanced undergraduates and, at the same time, useful to post-graduates and specialists in the field, this book will greatly enhance any study of Macbeth .

Contributors: Rebecca Lemon, Jonathan Baldo, Rebecca Ann Bach, Julie Barmazel, Abraham Stoll, Lois Feuer, Stephen Deng, Lisa Tomaszewski, Lynne Bruckner, Michael David Fox, James Wells, Laura Engel, Stephen Buhler, Bi-qi Beatrice Lei, Kim Fedderson and J. Michael Richardson, Bruno Lessard, Pamela Mason.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 | 72  pages, introduction: dualistic macbeth problematic macbeth, chapter 2 | 15  pages, sovereignty and treason in macbeth, chapter 3 | 16  pages, “a rooted sorrow”: scotland’s unusable past, chapter 4 | 14  pages, the “peerless” macbeth: friendship and family in macbeth, chapter 5 | 14  pages, “the servant to defect”: macbeth, impotence, and the body politic julie barmazel, chapter 6 | 19  pages, macbeth’s equivocal conscience, chapter 7 | 12  pages, hired for mischief: the masterless man in macbeth, chapter 8 | 19  pages, healing angels and “golden blood”: money and mystical kingship in macbeth, chapter 9 | 10  pages, “throw physic to the dogs”: moral physicians and medical malpractice in macbeth, chapter 10 | 16  pages, “let grief convert to anger”: authority and affect in macbeth, chapter 11 | 16  pages, like a poor player: audience emotional response, nonrepresentational performance, and the staging of suffering in macbeth, chapter 12 | 16  pages, “to be thus is nothing”: macbeth and the trials of dramatic identity, chapter 13 | 18  pages, the personating of queens: lady macbeth, sarah siddons, and the creation of female celebrity in the late eighteenth century, chapter 14 | 18  pages, politicizing macbeth on u.s. stages: garson’s macbird and greenland’s jungle rot, chapter 15 | 24  pages, macbeth in chinese opera, chapter 16 | 18  pages, macbeth: recent migrations of the cinematic brand, chapter 17 | 17  pages, hypermedia macbeth: cognition and performance, chapter 18 | 15  pages, sunshine in macbeth.

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Essay Prompts

Preliminary Essay Assignment

Directions: Because writing a research paper involves utilizing both primary and secondary sources, it is important for you to develop a sound argument before attempting to incorporate other people’s opinions. For this assignment, you are to write a multi-paragraph essay utilizing only Macbeth to answer one of the following prompts. These are your research paper prompts and this essay is the first step in the research paper process.

1. Do the witches (or weird sisters) control the events in the play? Why or why not?

2. Does Shakespeare want us to believe that the witches are real, supernatural, and/or projections of Macbeth's imagination?

3. What is the function of (dramatic, situational, and/or verbal) irony in the play?

4. What kind of marriage do Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have? Do you think it is a good one? Why or why not?

5. How would you characterize Lady Macbeth? Does her appearance in the sleepwalking scene alter your perception of her from previous scenes? Why or why not?

6. One of the major themes in Macbeth is appearance vs. reality. What effect do the episodes or instances dealing with appearance vs. reality have on our understanding of the play?

7. What is the purpose of comedy and the comedic characters in Macbeth?

8. What is the importance of imbalances of nature in Macbeth?

9. Macbeth is the central character in the play who is described as both brave Macbeth and butcher Macbeth. Which of these descriptions fits Macbeth best?

10. Who is responsible for Macbeth’s downfall? (The witches, Lady Macbeth and/or Macbeth himself?)

11. How is the mood of evil developed in Macbeth? (Consider the setting, themes, actions of the characters, etc.)

12. What is the importance of the supernatural elements in Macbeth? How do they affect the action of the play?

13. The theme of sleeplessness is introduced early in the play and carried throughout. What causes these sleep disturbances? What ends them for each of the characters involved? Is sleep regarded as a soothing balm for a life well-lived? (Remember that sleep is often another metaphor for death.)

14. Some playgoers and readers say that Lady Macbeth is the reason that her husband murders King Duncan. Others claim that the killing was his responsibility alone. What do you think?

15. How is Macbeth an example of a Shakespearean tragic hero? What is his tragic flaw and how does it affect the events of the play?

16. Do gender roles actually have an impact upon the course of events in this play? (Consider, for example, the roles of Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff—and even the witches)

17. The characters and actions of the play Macbeth suggest very strongly what qualities a good king needs to have. What are those qualities, and who, if anyone possesses them? (Consider comparing Duncan, Macbeth and/or Malcolm)

18. What is the purpose of soliloquies in Macbeth? How do they reveal the stages in the process of Macbeth’s and/or Lady Macbeth’s downfall or moral decline?

19. In what ways is Shakespeare significantly changing the original historic record of the real Macbeth in his play?

20. What would have been the attitude of Shakespeare’s audience toward the supernatural events in Macbeth? After all, three witches, a ghost, and extremely odd events in nature are included for a reason. Explore what those reasons are.

Research Assignment Requirements

* The paper you produce must have 3 secondary sources plus the primary one—Macbeth for a total of 4 sources minimum.

* All sources must be authoritative; that is, they MUST be scholarly. You may not use sources outside of the library databases or library books unless approved by the teacher in writing. Avoid using .com, .net, .org type websites outside the school databases. Sources that are a full-length chapter or article in a book or periodical pertaining to your topic will be more helpful.

* You may not use anything from Wikipedia or any encyclopedia. You may not use any material from Spark Notes, Cliff’s Notes, Pink Monkey, or any other commercially prepared study guide of that nature. Other unacceptable sources include plot summaries such as Bloom’s “Plot Summary,” Foster Masterplots, and Schmoop.com.

* Your final essay must be 3 full pages typed (5 pages max.), not including the Works Cited page which should be the last page of your paper.

* No paper will be considered for grading without submission to Turnitin.com.

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by William Shakespeare

Macbeth study guide.

Legend says that Macbeth was written in 1605 or 1606 and performed at Hampton Court in 1606 for King James I and his brother-in-law, King Christian of Denmark. Whether it was first performed at the royal court or was premiered at the Globe theatre, there can be little doubt that the play were intended to please the King, who had recently become the patron of Shakespeare's theatrical company. We note, for example, that the character of Banquo—the legendary root of the Stuart family tree—is depicted very favorably. Like Banquo, King James was a Stuart. The play is also quite short, perhaps because Shakespeare knew that James preferred short plays. And the play contains many supernatural elements that James, who himself published a book on the detection and practices of witchcraft, would have appreciated. Even something as minor as the Scottish defeat of the Danes may have been omitted to avoid offending King Christian.

The material for Macbeth was drawn from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587). Despite the play’s historical source, however, the play is generally classified as tragedy rather than a history. This derives perhaps from the fact that the story contains many historical fabrications—including the entire character of Banquo, who was invented by a 16th-century Scottish historian in order to validate the Stuart family line. 　In addition to such fictionalization, Shakespeare took many liberties with the original story, manipulating the characters of Macbeth and Duncan to suit his purposes. In Holinshed's account, Macbeth is a ruthless and valiant leader who rules competently after killing Duncan, whereas Duncan is portrayed as a young and soft-willed man. Shakespeare draws out certain aspects of the two characters in order to create a stronger sense of polarity. Whereas Duncan is made out to be a venerable and kindly older king, Macbeth is transformed into an indecisive and troubled young man who cannot possibly rule well.

Macbeth is certainly not the only play with historical themes that is full of fabrications. Indeed, there are other reasons why the play is considered a tragedy rather than a history. One reason lies in the play's universality. Rather than illustrating a specific historical moment, Macbeth presents a human drama of ambition, desire, and guilt. Like Hamlet, Macbeth speaks soliloquies that articulate the emotional and intellectual anxieties with which many audiences identify easily. For all his lack of values and "vaulting ambition," Macbeth is a character who often seems infinitely real to audiences. This powerful grip on the audience is perhaps what has made Macbeth such a popular play for centuries of viewers.

Given that Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays, some scholars have suggested that scenes were excised from the Folio version and subsequently lost. There are some loose ends and non-sequiturs in the text of the play that would seem to support such a claim. If scenes were indeed cut out, however, these cuts were most masterfully done. After all, none of the story line is lost and the play remains incredibly powerful without them. In fact, the play's length gives it a compelling, almost brutal, force. The action flows from scene to scene, speech to speech, with a swiftness that draws the viewer into Macbeth's struggles. As Macbeth's world spins out of control, the play itself also begins to spiral towards to its violent end.

Macbeth Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Macbeth is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Of what importance are the bleeding Sergeant and Ross? Why does Shakespeare introduce two messengers?

There are two pieces of information here, hence the two messengers. The bleeding sergeant is meant to inform Duncan, and the audience, of Macbeth's valor in battle. Ross is meant to inform about the Thane of Cawdor being a traitor. Both pieces of...

The third which says that Banquo's sons shall be kings, Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

Macbeth Act 1 Scene 3 questions

What is significant about the first words that Macbeth speaks in the play?

A motif or recurring idea in the play is equivocation. There is the balance of the dark and the light, the good and the bad. Macbeth's first line reflects this. It...

Study Guide for Macbeth

Macbeth study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Macbeth
• Macbeth Summary
• Macbeth Video
• Character List

Essays for Macbeth

Macbeth essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

• Serpentine Imagery in Shakespeare's Macbeth
• Macbeth's Evolution
• Jumping the Life to Come
• Deceptive Appearances in Macbeth
• Unity in Shakespeare's Tragedies

Lesson Plan for Macbeth

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Macbeth
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Macbeth Bibliography

E-Text of Macbeth

Macbeth e-text contains the full text of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

• Persons Represented
• Act I, Scene I
• Act I, Scene II
• Act I, Scene III
• Act I, Scene IV

Wikipedia Entries for Macbeth

• Introduction