THEMES

AMBITION
Macbeth is a play about ambition run amok. The weird sisters' prophecies spur
both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to try to fulfill their ambitions, but the
witches never make Macbeth or his wife do anything. Macbeth and his wife act
on their own to fulfill their deepest desires. Macbeth, a good general and, by all
accounts before the action of the play, a good man, allows his ambition to
overwhelm him and becomes a murdering, paranoid maniac. Lady Macbeth,
once she begins to put into actions the once-hidden thoughts of her mind, is
crushed by guilt.
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth want to be great and powerful, and sacrifice
their morals to achieve that goal. By contrasting these two characters with
others in the play, such as Banquo, Duncan, and Macduff, who also want to be
great leaders but refuse to allow ambition to come before honor, Macbeth shows
how naked ambition, freed from any sort of moral or social conscience,
ultimately takes over every other characteristic of a person. Unchecked
ambition, Macbeth suggests, can never be fulfilled, and therefore quickly grows
into a monster that will destroy anyone who gives into it.

FATE
From the moment the weird sisters tell Macbeth and Banquo their prophecies,
both the characters and the audience are forced to wonder about fate. Is it real?
Is action necessary to make it come to pass, or will the prophecy come true no
matter what one does? Different characters answer these questions in different
ways at different times, and the final answers are ambiguous—as fate always is.
Unlike Banquo, Macbeth acts: he kills Duncan. Macbeth tries to master fate, to
make fate conform to exactly what he wants. But, of course, fate doesn't work
that way. By trying to master fate once, Macbeth puts himself in the position of
having to master fate always. At every instant, he has to struggle against those
parts of the witches' prophecies that don't favor him. Ultimately, Macbeth
becomes so obsessed with his fate that he becomes delusional: he becomes
unable to see the half-truths behind the witches' prophecies. By trying to master
fate, he brings himself to ruin.
VIOLENCE
To call Macbeth a violent play is an understatement. It begins in battle, contains
the murder of men, women, and children, and ends not just with a climactic
siege but the suicide of Lady Macbeth and the beheading of its main
character, Macbeth. In the process of all this bloodshed, Macbeth makes an
important point about the nature of violence: every violent act, even those done
for selfless reasons, seems to lead inevitably to the next. The violence through
which Macbeth takes the throne, as Macbeth himself realizes, opens the way for
others to try to take the throne for themselves through violence. So Macbeth
must commit more violence, and more violence, until violence is all he has left.
As Macbeth himself says after seeing Banquo's ghost, "blood will to blood."
Violence leads to violence, a vicious cycle.

NATURE AND SUPERNATURAL THINGS

In medieval times, it was believed that the health of a country was directly
related to the goodness and moral legitimacy of its king. If the King was good
and just, then the nation would have good harvests and good weather. If there
was political order, then there would be natural order. Macbeth shows this
connection between the political and natural world: when Macbeth disrupts the
social and political order by murdering Duncan and usurping the throne, nature
goes haywire. Incredible storms rage, the earth tremors, animals go insane and
eat each other. The unnatural events of the physical world emphasize the horror
of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's acts, and mirrors the warping of their souls by
ambition.
Also note the way that different characters talk about nature in the play. Duncan
and Malcolm use nature metaphors when they speak of kingship—they see
themselves as gardeners and want to make their realm grow and flower. In
contrast, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth either try to hide from nature (wishing
the stars would disappear) or to use nature to hide their cruel designs (being the
serpent hiding beneath the innocent flower). The implication is that Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth, once they've given themselves to the extreme selfishness of
ambition, have themselves become unnatural.
MANHOOD
Over and over again in Macbeth, characters discuss or debate about manhood:
Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth when he decides not to kill Duncan, Banquo
refuses to join Macbeth in his plot, Lady Macduff questions Macduff's decision
to go to England, and on and on.
Through these challenges, Macbeth questions and examines manhood itself.
Does a true man take what he wants no matter what it is, as Lady
Macbeth believes? Or does a real man have the strength to restrain his desires,
as Banquo believes? All of Macbeth can be seen as a struggle to answer this
question about the nature and responsibilities of manhood.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS

MACBETH
Lady Macbeth's husband and a Scottish nobleman, the Thane of Glamis. He is
made Thane of Cawdor for his bravery in battle, and becomes King of Scotland
by murdering the previous King, Duncan. As Macbeth opens, Macbeth is one
of the great noblemen in Scotland: valiant, loyal, and honorable. He's also
ambitious, and while this ambition helps to make him the great lord he is, once
he hears the weird sisters' prophecy Macbeth becomes so consumed by his
desire for power that he becomes a tyrannical and violent monster who
ultimately destroys himself. What's perhaps most interesting about Macbeth is
that he senses the murder will lead to his own destruction even before he
murders Duncan, yet his ambition is so great that he still goes through with it.

LADY MACBETH
Macbeth's wife. Unlike her husband, she has no reservations about
murdering Duncan in order to make Macbeth King of Scotland. She believes
that a true man takes what he wants, and whenever Macbeth objects to
murdering Duncan on moral grounds, she questions his courage. Lady Macbeth
assumes that she'll be able to murder Duncan and then quickly forget it once
she's Queen of Scotland. But she discovers that guilt is not so easily avoided,
and falls into madness and despair.
BANQUO
A Scottish nobleman, general, and friend of Macbeth. He is also the father
of Fleance. The weird sisters prophesy that while Banquo will never be King of
Scotland, his descendants will one day sit on the throne. Banquo is as ambitious
as Macbeth, but unlike Macbeth he resists putting his selfish ambition above his
honour or the good of Scotland. Because he both knows the prophecy and is
honourable, Banquo is both a threat to Macbeth and a living example of the
noble path that Macbeth chose not to take. After Macbeth has Banquo murdered
he is haunted by Banquo's ghost, which symbolizes Macbeth's terrible guilt at
what he has become.

MACDUFF
A Scottish nobleman, and the Thane of Fife. His wife is Lady Macduff, and the
two have babies and a young son. Macduff offers a contrast to Macbeth: a
Scottish lord who, far from being ambitious, puts the welfare of Scotland even
ahead of the welfare of his own family. Macduff suspects Macbeth from the
beginning, and becomes one of the leaders of the rebellion. After Macbeth has
Macduff's family murdered, Macduff's desire for vengeance becomes more
personal and powerful.

DUNCAN
The King of Scotland, and the father
of Malcolm and Donalbain. Macbeth murders him to get the crown. Duncan is
the model of a good, virtuous king who puts the welfare of the country above
his own and seeks, like a gardener, to nurture and grow the kingdom that is his
responsibility. Duncan is the living embodiment of the political and social order
that Macbeth destroys.

MALCOM
The older of King Duncan's two sons, and Duncan's designated heir to the
throne of Scotland. Early in the play, Malcolm is a weak and inexperienced
leader, and he actually flees Scotland in fear after his father is murdered. But
Malcolm matures, and with the help of Macduff and an English army, Malcolm
eventually overthrows Macbeth and retakes the throne, restoring the order that
was destroyed when Duncan was murdered.
WEIRD SISTERS
Three witches, whose prophecy helps push Macbeth's ambition over the edge,
and convinces him to murder Duncan in order to become King. The witches'
knowledge of future events clearly indicates that they have supernatural powers,
and they also clearly enjoy using those powers to cause havoc and mayhem
among mankind. But it is important to realize that the witches never compel
anyone to do anything. Instead, they tell half-truths to lure men into giving into
their own dark desires. It's left vague in Macbeth whether Macbeth would have
become King of Scotland if he just sat back and did nothing. This vagueness
seems to suggest that while the broad outlines of a person's fate might be
predetermined, how the fate plays out is up to him.