Macbeth

Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy: a Scottish general, spurred by three witches' prophecy and his wife's ambition, murders King Duncan to take the crown and is destroyed by guilt, paranoia and further killing.

Main characters

• Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, a Scottish general
• Lady Macbeth
• Banquo, his fellow general, and Fleance, Banquo's son
• Duncan, King of Scotland
• Malcolm and Donalbain, Duncan's sons
• Macduff, Thane of Fife, and Lady Macduff
• The three Witches (the Weird Sisters)
• The Porter

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Returning from battle, Macbeth and Banquo meet three witches who hail Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor and future king, and tell Banquo his descendants will be kings. Moments later Macbeth learns King Duncan has made him Thane of Cawdor. When he writes to his wife, Lady Macbeth resolves to push him to murder and calls on spirits to 'unsex' her.

Duncan stays the night at the Macbeths' castle. Macbeth hesitates, then, taunted by his wife, stabs the sleeping king. Lady Macbeth smears the grooms with blood to frame them. Duncan's sons flee and Macbeth is crowned. Fearing Banquo's prophecy, he has Banquo murdered, but Fleance escapes, and Banquo's ghost appears at Macbeth's feast.

Macbeth returns to the witches, who show him apparitions: beware Macduff; no man 'of woman born' can harm him; he is safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Reassured yet frightened, he has Macduff's wife and children slaughtered. Macduff joins Malcolm in England to raise an army.

Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, tries to wash invisible blood from her hands, and later dies. Malcolm's soldiers cut branches from Birnam Wood to disguise their numbers, so the forest seems to move. In the final fight Macduff reveals he was 'from his mother's womb untimely ripped', and kills Macbeth. Malcolm is proclaimed king.

Themes

• Ambition
• Guilt and conscience
• Fate and free will
• Appearance and reality
• Kingship and tyranny

Famous lines

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

The Witches, Act 1 Scene 1

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?

Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 1

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

The Witches, Act 4 Scene 1

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

Lady Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 1

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day... Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.

Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

Holinshed's Chronicles, which combines the history of the real 11th-century king Macbeth with legend. Shakespeare flattered James I, who had written a book on witchcraft (Daemonologie, 1597) and claimed descent from Banquo.

On stage and screen

The Porter's jokes about an 'equivocator' echo the trial of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators in 1606. The only text is the First Folio's, which seems to include songs added later, probably by Thomas Middleton. Theatre superstition says the play's name should not be spoken inside a theatre, so actors call it 'the Scottish play'.

See where Macbeth sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.