Themes

Themes

1. Supernatural

2. Unnatural

   • "so foul and fair a day I have not seen"
     • This is Macbeth's first line in the play and the audience could have already drawn a parallel between the witches and Macbeth: "fair is foul and foul is fair".
   • "I have almost forgot the taste of fears"
   • LM's suicide
     • Lady Macbeth's suicide is interpreted as unnatural because she commits suicide soon after beginning to show natural reactions to the murder (remorse/hindsight). This develops the idea that she could not bare her body to be in a natural state of remorse and therefore commits suicide.  Suicide in itself would have been seen as unnatural to a Jacobean audience as it was believed that God should decide your lifeline, not you. You could link this to "stars hide your fires" said by Macbeth.

3. Kingship

   • "fruitless crown"
   • "dark night strangles the travelling lamp"
     • This metaphorical juxtaposition of Macbeth's usurping of Duncan's thrown is used to contrast the ultimate dark nature of Macbeth and light within Duncan. The presentation of Duncan as the "travelling lamp", or Sun, is to show that Duncan is the heavenly light on Earth as he is God's anointed temple and the divine king. Shakespeare uses the idea of a 'divine' king' in order to gain patronage from James I as he created this idea in his book titled 'The True Law of Free Monarchies'. Also, the brutality of the verb 'strangles' could be a comparison to the brutality of 'unseam'd him from the naive to the chaps', however the reasoning for the violent killing has changed from: fighting for his country as a 'noble' warrior; to regicide from a cousin who is in 'double trust'.
   • "patience, justice, mercy, stableness"

4. Fate

5. Gender

   • "unsex me here"
   • "look so green and pale"
     • In this Scene, Lady Macbeth attempts to persuade Macbeth to carry out regicide by questioning his manhood. 'green and pale' were the symptoms of an illness experienced by young, virgin girls which makes Macbeth question his own manhood. Unfortunately, Macbeth falls for her persuasion and the says, "I dare do all that may become a man, who dares do more is none". 
   • "the repetition in a woman's ear would murder as it fell"

6. Ambition

7. Deception