Macbeth Themes

Macbeth Themes

1. Kingship

   • How nature reflects kingship
     • Plant imagery
       • "I have begun to plant thee and will labour to make thee full of growing"
         • Presents Duncan as a farmer
           • Effects: caring, thinks about other people, help the country grow
         • Repetition of 'thee' - importance on others
         • 'labour' - hard work
         • 'begun' - only just starting, lots more planned
         • full of growing' - utmost success and reach full potential
       • "Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe"
         • 'fruitless' - not capable of growing success
           • pointless, no future
         • 'they placed' - putting blame on others, very selfish, doesn't take blame
         • 'barren' - pointless, useless power - nothing important will come from it

2. Supernatural

   • How has Shakespeare portrayed the supernatural?
   • Characters
     • Lady Macbeth
     • Macbeth
       • Supernatural feeds his ambition which is his hamartia
         • 'Stay you imperfect speakers, tell me more'
           • 'Stay' - imperative verb, commanding witches, his desire to know more - greed, ambition
           • 'more' - Macbeth, even from the beginning, is unsatisfied, always wants more
             • his hamartia, too much ambition, always wants more
       • Macbeth's fate - intertwined with the witches
         • 'So foul and fair a day I have not seen' - first line in play
           • Mirrors the witches' line 'Fair is foul and foul is fair'
             • Hasn't even met them yet but is already connected to the witches
               • Maybe shows that he might be evil too
       • Macbeth's language also starts to sound like the witches
         • 'Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day'
           • Sounds a lot like Lady Macbeth
             • 'Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell'
             • Role reversal - changed places
     • The Witches
       • Meet at very beginning, start off play and set the scene, tone
         • Important driver of the play
         • 'Thunder and lightning'
           • Something bad is going to happen, ominous
           • Order and chaos - very chaotic image
             • Evil, disrupt God's natural order
       • Are the witches the villains of the play?
         • Perhaps not - they manipulate Macbeth and tempt him but it is Macbeth who commits the evil actions
           • Equivocation - ambiguity, giving half truths or having hidden meaning - not exactly lying but not telling the complete truth
             • Example - 'Till Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane'
               • Don't explain exactly what they mean so to Macbeth this seems impossible
     • Banquo
     • Hecate

3. Gender

   • Macbeth
     • Presented as quite masculine
       • At the beginning, he's a brave warrior
         • 'For Brave Macbeth, well he deserves that name'
       • Doesn't emote much towards the end of the play
       • His courage - at the end of the play, even though he knows Macduff will kill him, he still fights bravely
       • Very violent
       • Is violence moral? When and when is it not?
         • 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?'
         • 'For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name'
         • 'Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valour's minion'
   • Lady Macbeth
     • Often presented as very masculine
       • Seems to be the more dominant one in her relationship with Macbeth
       • Manipulation and power - acquires power by manipulating
       • Often leads the plans - comes up with the idea and gives orders
         • Tells Macbeth what to do
       • Very violent personality
     • Uses her femininity to deceive others
     • Views her femininity as a weakness
       • 'unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the tow top-full of direst cruelty'
         • Wishes to get rid of her feminine gender so that she can be cruel because femininity is inherently caring and nurturing
           • Jacobean audience - shocked, appalled, think of her as a witch
             • witches are usually depicted as genderless
           • Modern audience - seen as a powerful woman rejecting gender norms, view this as a commentary on the limits of femininity
       • 'Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall'
         • Take away her milk (a sign of being a mother, nurturing) wants take that away
         • Removing everything feminine about her
         • Milk is for a baby, she doesn't care that she would kill the baby, she would do it to become more masculine and powerful
         • 'Gall' - physically hurts her but it's worth getting rid of her femininity