'Macbeth' - key characters

'Macbeth' - key characters

1. Macbeth

   • Character development.
     • Initially brave, noble
       • Comes from captain/Duncan...
       • First sight - honourable, since he resists evil? But still attracted by it
       • 'without the evil', 'full o' the milk of human kindness'
     • Driven to insanity because of 'vaulting ambition' that 'o'erleaps itself'
       • 'mind is full of scorpions'
     • Despair at end - rejection of God? Gothic
       • Contemplates suicide...
       • Edward the Confessor on the side of God
   • Gothic elements
     • Despair at end, rejection of God - context...
     • Butchersome qualities
       • sword 'smoked with bloody execution'
     • Hyperbole
       • Mind full of scorpions
       • Could not say Amen
       • Turn the seas 'incarnadine'
     • Supernatural
       • Speaks to apparitions
       • Dagger, ghost
   • Key quotations.

2. Lady Macbeth

   • Character development
     • Stark contrasts
       • Murder of Duncan - cannot do it since he looks like her 'father', yet says the sleeping/dead are just like 'pictures'
       • Scared by owls/crickets, yet asks to be filled with direst cruely, dash a baby's brains...
       • Powerful at start, yet suicidal/insane by end.
         • Turn the oceans red/damn'd spot
   • Gothic elements
     • lack of femininity
       • 'unsex me'
       • context
       • violence vs. babies
       • YET motherly to Macbeth (milk...)
       • turn milk to gall
     • Suicidal at end, sleepwalking, insanity - striking as we actually see it
     • violence

3. Duncan

   • Gothic elements
     • irony - 'pleasant seat'
     • although he admires Macbeth... announces Malcolm is prince of Cumberland

4. Macduff

   • Character development
     • Rightly suspicious of Macbeth
     • Noble, patriotic (scene in England)
       • Context
     • Abandons family - but for a good cause?

5. Banquo

   • Character development.
     • Stands in contrast to Macbeth, since he recognises 'the instruments of darkness tell us truths'
       • Resists temptation.
       • Comments on evilness of what Macbeth will do, before he does it.
     • Ghost.
       • Reproachful...

6. The witches

   • Character development
     • context
     • not of this world
       • Banquo
     • 'something wicked this way comes'
   • Supernatural elements
     • Familiars
     • Weather
     • Sterotypes - 'sieve' etc.
     • Vanish in thin air
     • Apparitions