Macbeth Themes

Macbeth Themes

1. Ambition

   • False appearance
   • Conflict between his morality and desire for power
   • Going against his better nature
   • unstoppable violence

2. The supernatural and evil

   • Witches
   • Night
   • Birds
   • Snakes
   • Prophcies
     • Self-fulfilling?
   • Hallucinations
     • Dagger
     • Banquo's ghost
   • Women
     • Traces the root of evil to women
       • Adam and Eve
       • Misogyny
   • Hecate
   • Weather
     • Thunder, lightning
     • Witches
     • Storms on the night of Duncan's murder
     • Corruption of the natural order

3. Guilt

   • Blood
   • Hands
     • Washing
   • descent into madness
   • • Dagger
     • Banquo's ghost
   • First reaction - thought about it previously
   • Can't say amen
   • lack of sleep
     • "Sleep no more"
   • Facing his guilt - MacDuff

4. Lady Macbeth

   • Influence on Macbeth
     • manipulates him by questioning his manhood
   • How she changes throughout the play
   • Femininity and masculinity
     • The relationship between cruelty and masculinity
     • Failed as a women - no children
     • "unsex" - sees femininity as a weakness
   • Persues goals with greater determination
   • Death of Macduff's wife and children leads to her descent into guilt and madness
   • One of Shakespeare's strongest characters
   • Deception

5. Kingship and Tyranny

   • Duncan
     • Divinity
     • Goodness
     • Purity
     • Innocence
     • Rightful
     • GCOB
     • Rewards Macbeth - thane of Cawdor
     • Stability
     • Victim
     • Over trusting
     • Gullable
   • Macbeth
     • Tyrant
     • Recicide
     • Usurper
     • Chaos
       • Bad weather
         • Supernatural
     • Doesn't reward Banquo
     • Coward
     • "Each new mourn, new widows howl, new orphans cry"
     • Fiend of Scotland
   • Regicide
   • Banquo - connection with James I