Macbeth´s Characters

Macbeth´s Characters

1. Macbeth

   • Brave soldier
   • Very ambitious for the throne
   • Powerful man
   • Whence is that knocking? – How is’t with me, when every noise appalls me? What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.
   • He is killed in Act 5 Scene 8 by Macduff, obeying the prophecies made by the witches to Macbeth
   • Act 1 Scene 3 it began its ambition for the throne when first received the first three porphecies of the witches
   • It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak. Augurs and understood relations have By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth The secret’st man of blood.
   • Macbeth proves himself better suited to the battlefield than to political intrigue, because he lacks the skills necessary to rule without being a tyrant. His response to every problem is violence and murder.

2. Lady Macbeth

   • "Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two, -- why, then ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him."
   • Macbeth’s wife, a deeply ambitious woman who lusts for power and position.
   • "I laid their daggers ready; He could not miss ‘em. Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done’t."
   • Early in the play she seems to be the stronger and more ruthless of the two, as she urges her husband to kill Duncan and seize the crown.
   • Its joint alienation with Macbeth from the world, occasioned by their partnership in crime, seems to strengthen the attachment that they feel to each another.
   • "O, never Shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue. Look like th’ innocent flower, But be the serpent under ‘t. He that’s coming Must be provide for: and you shall put This night’s great business into my dispatch, Which shall to all our nights and days to come Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom."
   • Her conscience affects her to such an extent that she eventually commits suicide.

3. Banquo

   • In a sense, Banquo’s character stands as a rebuke to Macbeth, since he represents the path Macbeth chose not to take: a path in which ambition need not lead to betrayal and murder.
   • Banquo’s ghost—and not Duncan’s—that haunts Macbeth
   • `That, trusted home, Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, Besides the thane of Cawdor. But ‘tis strange. And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence.´
   • brave, noble general whose children, according to the witches’ prophecy, will inherit the Scottish throne. Like Macbeth, Banquo thinks ambitious thoughts, but he does not translate those thoughts into action.
   • `O treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly! Thou may’st revenge – O slave!´
   • `Thou has it no king, Cawdor, Glamis, all. As the weird women promised, and I fear Thou played’st most foully for ‘t. Yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity, But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings. If there come truth from them – As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine – Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well, And set me up in hope? But hush, no more.´

4. The witches

   • `First Witch Lesser than Macbeth and greater. Second Witch Not so happy, yet much happier. Third Witch Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!´
   • Three “black and midnight hags” who plot mischief against Macbeth using charms, spells, and prophecies.
   • Their predictions prompt him to murder Duncan, to order the deaths of Banquo and his son, and to blindly believe in his own immortality.
   • `First Witch All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis! Second Witch All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor! Third Witch All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!´
   • In some ways they resemble the mythological Fates, who impersonally weave the threads of human destiny.
   • `Second Witch By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.´
   • They clearly take a perverse delight in using their knowledge of the future to toy with and destroy human beings.

5. Macduff

   • Kills Macbeth in Act 5 Scene 8
   • `Despair thy charm, And let the angel whom thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped.´
   • `O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!... Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ th’ building!´
   • The crusade’s mission is to place the rightful king, Malcolm, on the throne, but Macduff also desires vengeance for Macbeth’s murder of Macduff’s wife and young son.
   • A Scottish nobleman hostile to Macbeth’s kingship from the start. He eventually becomes a leader of the crusade to unseat Macbeth.
   • `Bleed, bleed, poor country! Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For goodness dare not check thee.´

6. Malcolm

   • `Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.´
   • `What I believe, I'll wail; What I know, believe; and what I can redress, as I shall fiend the time to friend, I will.´
   • When Macbeth dies, Malcolm is crowned as king ACT 5 SCENE 8
   • The son of Duncan
   • `Nothing in life become him like the leaving it´
   • The army that attacked Macbeth in his final battle was commanded by Malcolm as well as Macduff