Macbeth SparkNotes Literature Guide: Volume 43 (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series)

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Elsewhere on the battlefield, Macbeth at last encounters Macduff. They fight, and when Macbeth insists that he is invincible because of the witches’ prophecy, Macduff tells Macbeth that he was not of woman born, but rather “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (5.8.15–16). Macbeth suddenly fears for his life, but he declares that he will not surrender “[t]o kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, / And to be baited with the rabble’s curse” (5.8.28–29). They exit fighting. King Duncan comes to stay the night at Macbeth’s castle. Lady Macbeth shares her plan to kill King Duncan that night. She will drug the guards outside the king’s room and when they are asleep Macbeth can kill the king. Macbeth fights Macduff and learns that Macduff was delivered by cesarean section, meaning that he was not born of a woman. Macduff kills Macbeth and proclaims Malcolm the King of Scotland. In the royal palace at Forres, Banquo paces and thinks about the coronation of Macbeth and the prophecies of the weird sisters. The witches foretold that Macbeth would be king and that Banquo’s line would eventually sit on the throne. If the first prophecy came true, Banquo thinks, feeling the stirring of ambition, why not the second? Macbeth enters, attired as king. He is followed by Lady Macbeth, now his queen, and the court. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ask Banquo to attend the feast they will host that night. Banquo accepts their invitation and says that he plans to go for a ride on his horse for the afternoon. Macbeth mentions that they should discuss the problem of Malcolm and Donalbain. The brothers have fled from Scotland and may be plotting against his crown.

As she sleepwalks, Lady Macbeth bemoans the murders of Lady Macduff and Banquo. She speaks of blood on her hands that can never be washed away. Scene 2In his castle, Macbeth boasts that he does not fear the approaching English army because he believes that the witches’ prophecies ensure that he will not be overthrown or killed. Scene 4 The three witches prophesize that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland, and that Banquo will have sons who are kings. Shortly after, Macbeth is indeed given the title Thane of Cawdor. Scene 4 Ohhhhhhhhhhh, Whattayaknow! There’s a wood walking up a hill! It’s Malcolm, King Duncan’s son, Macduff, and an English Army. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a bush! And Lady Macbeth? Well, she’s having laundry issues. Like hallo! Oh dear.

After the murder, the conflict resides primarily in the opposition between Macbeth and the individuals who mistrust his power and how he got it. Having damned himself by killing Duncan, Macbeth will stop at nothing to hold on to his power. At the start of Act 3, the audience learns that Banquo is suspicious of whether Macbeth may have achieved power through nefarious means. Perhaps because he knows that Banquo has reason to mistrust him, and certainly because he fears that Banquo’s heirs are a challenge to his lineage, Macbeth arranges to have Banquo and his son murdered. The witches are vaguely absurd figures, with their rhymes and beards and capering, but they are also clearly sinister, possessing a great deal of power over events. Are they simply independent agents playing mischievously and cruelly with human events? Or are the “weird sisters” agents of fate, betokening the inevitable? The word weirddescends etymologically from the Anglo-Saxon word wyrd,which means “fate” or “doom,” and the three witches bear a striking resemblance to the Fates, female characters in both Norse and Greek mythology. Perhaps their prophecies are constructed to wreak havoc in the minds of the hearers, so that they become self-fulfilling. It is doubtful, for instance, that Macbeth would have killed Duncan if not for his meeting with the witches. On the other hand, the sisters’ prophecies may be accurate readings of the future. After all, when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane at the play’s end, the soldiers bearing the branches have not heard of the prophecy. Lady Macbeth enters and tells her husband that the king has dined and that he has been asking for Macbeth. Macbeth declares that he no longer intends to kill Duncan. Lady Macbeth, outraged, calls him a coward and questions his manhood: “When you durst do it,” she says, “then you were a man” (1.7.49). He asks her what will happen if they fail; she promises that as long as they are bold, they will be successful. Then she tells him her plan: while Duncan sleeps, she will give his chamberlains wine to make them drunk, and then she and Macbeth can slip in and murder Duncan. They will smear the blood of Duncan on the sleeping chamberlains to cast the guilt upon them. Astonished at the brilliance and daring of her plan, Macbeth tells his wife that her “undaunted mettle” makes him hope that she will only give birth to male children (1.7.73). He then agrees to proceed with the murder. On the battlefield, Macbeth strikes those around him vigorously, insolent because no man born of woman can harm him. He slays Lord Siward’s son and disappears in the fray.Ross enters. He has just arrived from Scotland, and tells Macduff that his wife and children are well. He urges Malcolm to return to his country, listing the woes that have befallen Scotland since Macbeth took the crown. Malcolm says that he will return with ten thousand soldiers lent him by the English king. Then, breaking down, Ross confesses to Macduff that Macbeth has murdered his wife and children. Macduff is crushed with grief. Malcolm urges him to turn his grief to anger, and Macduff assures him that he will inflict revenge upon Macbeth. Act 2 is singularly concerned with the murder of Duncan. But Shakespeare here relies on a technique that he uses throughout Macbeth to help sustain the play’s incredibly rapid tempo of development: elision. We see the scenes leading up to the murder and the scenes immediately following it, but the deed itself does not appear onstage. Duncan’s bedchamber becomes a sort of hidden sanctum into which the characters disappear and from which they emerge powerfully changed. This technique of not allowing us to see the actual murder, which persists throughout Macbeth, may have been borrowed from the classical Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In these plays, violent acts abound but are kept offstage, made to seem more terrible by the power of suggestion. The effect on Lady Macbeth of her trip into Duncan’s bedroom is particularly striking. She claims that she would have killed Duncan herself except that he resembled her father sleeping. This is the first time Lady Macbeth shows herself to be at all vulnerable. Her comparison of Duncan to her father suggests that despite her desire for power and her harsh chastisement of Macbeth, she sees her king as an authority figure to whom she must be loyal.

The motif of blood, established in the accounts of Macbeth’s and Banquo’s battlefield exploits, recurs here in Macbeth’s anguished sense that there is blood on his hands that cannot be washed clean. For now, Lady Macbeth remains the voice of calculating reason, as she tells him that the blood can be washed away with a little water. But, as Lady Macbeth eventually realizes, the guilt that the blood symbolizes needs more than water to be cleansed away. Her hallucinations later in the play, in which she washes her hands obsessively, lend irony to her insistence here that “[a] little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65).

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Presenter: Hello, and welcome to The Big Scene. We’re at rehearsals for Macbeth , and scenes don’t get much bigger than this. It’s the clash with Banquo’s ghost and the director really needs the audience to appreciate Macbeth’s horror at seeing the ghost of his old best friend who he’s had murdered. This is a big challenge! Can she pull it off on this team’s budget?

Narrator: This is a spooky horror! It’s got witches telling this dude that he’s gonna be king, so he chops his way to the top. The Witches make him think he’s invincible! He like so isn’t.

Adam Bede

Presenter: Hey, hey, hey. The guy’s right, and he’s got the boss really thinking. Has she got a more stylised approach in mind, Lennox learns that Macduff has gone to England to meet with Duncan’s son Malcolm and to ask the King of England for help. Macduff discovers Duncan's murder, along with the murder of the two chamberlains, who Macbeth claims he killed upon realizing they murdered Duncan. Duncan’s sons flee the country. Scene 4 Macbeth and Banquo fought with great courage in recent battles. King Duncan of Scotland receives a report that the traitorous Thane of Cawdor has been defeated, and decides to give Cawdor's title to Macbeth. Scene 3 Once Macbeth understands that Macduff will not be loyal to him, Macduff becomes a particular focus of Macbeth’s anger, guilt, and rabid desire to protect his power. Macbeth arranges for murderers to kill Macduff’s wife and children, after Macduff has already fled to England to seek help from the king for his cause against Macbeth.