Notes on The Tragedy of Macbeth
1. DATE OF PERFORMANCE VS. SETTING
The play was first performed in 1606 for the Anglican King James Stuart I of England and
Scotland, (1603- 1625) but is set during the reign of the Roman Catholic King Edward the
Confessor of England (1042- 1066) who was followed by Harold II in 1066 just before the
Norman Conquest.
2. SOURCES
The most obvious source for the play is Raphael Holinshed’s The History of Scotland, but the
play also reflects Biblical sources and pagan sources from the Romans, Celts and Anglo-
Saxons. Macbeth seems to have something in common with King Saul from The Old Testament
book of I Samuel, but it is not clear whether Shakespeare was directly influenced by this source.
Macbeth reflects an archaic, pre-modern view of the world for a Renaissance and Reformation
audience. The play Macbeth coincides in some aspects of Dante’s Inferno of the early 1300s.
3. TO BE TRAGIC in the Elizabethan sense a character must:
a. Be a person of high rank in society.
b. Possess a high degree of moral virtue.
In most tragic characters these virtues are undermined by a flaw of character. Some Shakespeare
characters, such as Lady Macduff in Macbeth seem to be perfect. Their perfect virtue causes
them to become a target for evil characters, so some critics say that these two virtuous
characters have “tragic virtue.”
c. Make a wrong choice, influenced by the sins of pride, ingratitude and blind
ambition.
d. Be influenced by Fortune, or by a test from God.
e. Experience a sudden reversal of Fortune of the worse.
f. Waste talents, opportunities and lives.
g. Die as a result of the wrong choice.
4. NOTICE THAT BEOWULF AND MACBETH ARE OPPOSITES, IN THEIR
LOYALTY TO THEIR KING
There is no evidence that Shakespare had read Beowulf, but the constrast between the two
poems are fascinating, since Macbeth is set during the period of the Saxon and Danish Kings,
which was the culture that produced Beowulf. Note that Duncan like Chaucer’s knight, has the
moral virtue of meekness, (a combination of gentleness and humility) which is a New
Testament virtue almost unknown to the characters of Beowulf.
5. “FAIR IS FOUL, FOUL IS FAIR”
FOUL means:
a. Bad weather.
b. Negative events.
c. Rottenness, decay.
d. In a game, violation of the rules
e. When death appears to be an accident, foul play means murder. In Macbeth it means
conspiracy and treason.
6. THE MIX OF TRUTH AND LIES (I, iii, 3-7)
“And oftentimes, to win us to our harm. The instruments of darkness tell us truths. Win us with
honest trifles, to betrays. In deepest consequence.”
The speaker is Banquo, speaking to Macbeth, immediately after a messenger from King Duncan
announced that Macbeth would become Thane of Cawdor.
A “trifle” is a thing of small value. By “an honest trifle” the speaker means to become Thane of
Cawdor.
“To betray’s /In deepest consequence” terms:
a. Committing murder and treason.
b. Loss of one’s “eternal jewel” (immortal soul)
7. MACBETH’S INNER LIFE AS HE IS YIELDING
In Macbeth Shakespeare contrasts his main character’s external actions, which appear to be
virtuous, with his inner life- thoughts and attitudes which are diabolical. Macbeth has the vices
of pride, ingratitude and excessive ambition, but he is unable to see the consequences of
yielding to those vices. Shakespeare takes us inside his mind at the moment of yielding to the
temptation to murder his virtuous king:
(I, iii, 134-142)
“… 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 worse than horrible imaginings;
My thought, whose murder is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother’d in surmise and nothing is
But what is not.
8. ODONTOLOGY: nonbeing invading being as the created order. (I, iii, 141-142)
“… nothing is
But what is not”
The violation of the created order is emphasized by the Roman-style prodigies that occur after
the murder of the king. (II, iv)
9. Prayer to the “starry host” I, iv, 50-51
10. CONTROLLING METHAPHORS
a. Clothing represents one’s social status. (I, iii, 144-147)
A thane wears a thane’s clothes.
b. Mother’s milk represents human kindness.
c. One’s role in life is like role on stage.
d. Nests, seeds, milk and leafy tree branches represent fertility.
Fertility is not merely biological, it is connected with the consistently virtous life.
Macbeth and his wife have at least one child, but they are infertile because the child will
not inherit a stolen throne.
e. A babe represents, pity, fertility, virility, hope, the future, the family line.
11. SELECTIVE MEMORY OF THE COMPULSIVE KILLER
Just before the murder, Macbeth tells his wife “bear men children only,” because he wants a
male heir to sit on the throne after him. What is Macbeth forgetting?
13. Shakespeare’s language reflects the microcosm in the theatre:
This is my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red. (II, ii, 61-63)
14. CONTRASTING VIEW OF THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT.
Lady Macbeth views the blood as a physical inconvenience to be removed by water. Macbeth
views the blood as evidence of profound metaphysical guilt.
15. THE PORTER’S THEMES OF JUDGEMENT AND EQUIVOCATION. (II,iii)
Equivocation is a lie that is indirect. It appears to be the truth but the lie is concealed in the
larger context, which is dishonest. The diabolical forces that tempt Macbeth equivocate; they lie
to him about the consequences of committing murder.
16. THE THREE ROYAL BUILDINGS
In the most important Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, he violated the Classical unities
of time and place, while depending on unity of action and theme to make his drama into
coherent whole. In Macbeth, the use of three royal buildings expresses the unity of the action
and its paradoxical unfolding. Shakespeare seems to have anticipated cinema, which is a
medium well suited to handling rapid transitions between widely separated times and places.
Shakespeare seems to have anticipated cinema in his ability to take the audience inside a
character’s mind and see everything from that character’s point of view. This created dramatic
irony in creating incongruity between the world as Macbeth see it as he becomes delusional in
his vices and the larger moral truth reveled to the theatre audience.
17. EVIL LEADS TO THE REVERSAL OF ALL VALUES AND THE CORRUPTION
OF LANGUAGE
18. AFTER THE GHOST EXPOSES MACBETH DRAMATIC IRONY TURNS INTO
VERBAL IRONY. III, vi, 3-2
19. The macfuffs are mirror images of the Macbeths, but the mucduffs dominant tendency
is toward tragic virtue, while the Macbeths dominant tendency is toward tragic vice.
20. The heavenly powers are stronger than the diabolical powers, divine goodness will
triumph over diabolical evil.
21. England’s king Eward the confessor. (IV, iii, 140-159)
22. Macbeth and lady Macbeth essentially exchange their characters:
a. At the beginning of the play Macbeth is consciously seeking the virtous life, but
this is undermined by an inner character that is divided between loyalty and vices of
pride, ingratitude and ambition. His gradual descent into becoming a compulsive
murderer unites his soul in vice.
b. When Lady Macbeth invokes the demons, she seems to have become entirely evil.
In reality, she becomes spiritually repressed and retains traces of conscience and
“the milk of human kindness” that torment her when she sleepwalks. Her heart is
divided between the conscious choice for evil and the unconscious accusations of
objective, metaphysical guilt.
23. MORAL COMPARTMENTALIZATION
Macbeth and his wife keep one of the 10 commandments, but break to other nine. Fidelity in
marriage is necessary condition of the virtous life, but it is not a sufficient condition.
