Shakespeare Key themes in Macbeth

Themes There are 6 key themes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As you watch or study the play, consider these themes (or main ideas)

Theme #1 Good and Evil This theme is not confined to Macbeth, it appears in nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is sometimes difficult to determine “good” and “evil”in Macbeth. There are times where it is obvious to us that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are evil, yet they must be good at some points else we would not feel anything when they meet their respective fates. Macduff is a noble man yet he leaves his family and flees to England?

Theme #2 Appearances often hide the reality Equivocation - the use of words in one sense while meaning the opposite in order to deliberately mislead or confuse. The Witches deliberately try to mislead Macbeth when they tell him “that none of woman born” shall harm him. Lady Macbeth urges her husband to “look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it”

Theme #3 Reversal of Values At the beginning of the play, the forces of good (Duncan) are overthrown by those of evil. (Macbeth and the Witches) “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” Throughout the play, Good tries to re-assert itself (which it eventually does when Macbeth falls) Lady Macbeth prays to the forces of evil to help her destroy all that is soft and feminine about herself so she can “be filled from the crown to the toe, top full of direst cruelty”

Theme #4 Overthrow of the natural order This is linked to theme #3 since the unnatural acts are accompanied by unnatural events in nature When Duncan is murdered, darkness seemed to cover the earth and his horses ate each other. Each of the meetings with the Witches is accompanied by a storm, lightning and thunder.

Theme #5 Ambition Ambition (in particular to be King) Both Banquo and Macbeth are shown to be ambitious at the beginning of the play. Yet when they are both given prophecies from the Witches, only one commits murder to fulfill their own “vaulting ambition”

Theme #6 The importance of loyalty and honour in society Introduced early in the play The traitor, the Thane of Cawdor is put to death for his disloyalty. Ironically, just as Macbeth is at the ‘height’ of his loyalty to Duncan, he commits the murder.