1. Chapters and Major Moments
Key Characters
Act One
Three witches plan to meet Macbeth after the battle
King Duncan hears of Macbeth’s bravery in battle and decides to honour him with a new title.
On their way back from battle, Macbeth and Banquo meet with witches who share 3 prophecies: Macbeth will be Thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor and king.
Macbeth writers to his wife who reads the letter and realises she must help Macbeth kill King Duncan in order for them to become King and Queen.
When Macbeth returns from battle, she persuades him to go through with the murder when Duncan comes to visit their castle.
Act Two
And Three
Macbeth murders Duncan and Lady Macbeth plants the bloody daggers on Duncan’s servants to make them look guilty.
Macduff arrives and finds the king’s body. The kings sons Malcolm and Donalbain leave Scotland because they fear for their lives, making them look guilty of the murder.
Strange and unnatural things begin to happen since Duncan’s murder.
Macbeth is crowned king but he worries that the witches have told him that Banquo’s sons will be Kings so decided to have Banquo and his son, Fleance, murdered.
The murderers kill Banquo but Fleance escapes.
Macbeth hosts a banquet but imagines he sees Banquo’s ghost at the table. He visits the witches again.
Other lords are getting suspicious of Macbeth and start to raise and army against him.
Act Four
Macbeth visits the witches again and they summon 3 apparitions. Each apparition makes a prophecy. The first warns him of Macduff, the second tells him that no man born from woman can kill him and the third tells him that until Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane Castle, he can not be killed.
Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth sends his murderers to kill Macduff’s children and wife.
In England, Macduff hears that Macbeth has killed his family and vows to get revenge.
Act Five
Lady Macbeth has gone mad and starts sleepwalking and washing invisible blood from her hands.
The Scottish Lords plan to meet the English army and attack Macbeth
Macbeth hears the army are approaching but feels invincible thanks to the withes prophecies.
Malcom tells the soldiers to cut down branches from the trees in Birnam wood to hide behind as they approach Macbeth’s castle.
Macbeth prepares for battle and finds Lady Macbeth has killed herself.
Macbeth and Macduff meet on the battlefield and Macbeth is sure he will win. However, Macduff reveals he was born via a caesarean so isn’t born from woman. They fight and Macbeth is killed.
Malcom is made King of Scotland.
Macbeth
Title character; nobleman of Scotland, Thane of Glamis; becomes Thane of Cawdor after original namesake is killed for treason. The weird sisters prophesize that he will become king but that his friend Banquo's posterity shall later have the crown. He kills Duncan to become king, murders Banquo and all of Macduff's family. The play follows his degeneration as he unsuccessfully tries to keep the throne. He is brutally killed in the end by a vengeful Macduff.
Lady Macbeth
Macbeth's wife; she urges him to kill King Duncan so that he will have the crown. She is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband at the beginning of the play. She later becomes guilt ridden, begins to sleepwalk because of the stress of the crime and finally, commits suicide.
Banquo
Friend of Macbeth and nobleman of Scotland. The witches predict that his sons will be the future kings of Scotland; Macbeth murders him because of this divination. His ghost haunts Macbeth at his coronation banquet; the ghost's entrance marks the beginning of Macbeth's end.
King Duncan
A venerable and well-liked king that is brutally murdered by Macbeth so that he can realize the witches' prophecy and become king. He is killed while staying at Macbeth's own castle.
The Witches
The weird sisters; prophesize that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland; also predict that Banquo's sons will be heirs to the throne although Banquo himself will never be king. Because of their predictions, Macbeth murders many people. They also help Hecate concoct a potion that will lead Macbeth to his ruin.
Macduff
Scottish nobleman; enemy of Macbeth. He suspects Macbeth of Duncan's murder and enlists Malcolm, Siward and the King of England's help in overthrowing Macbeth from the throne. He wants revenge because Macbeth killed his whole family. Macduff finally kills Macbeth.
Key Themes
Appearance and reality
Guilt
Ambition
Order and disorder
Good vs Evil
Gender
Power
Context
James I was a protestant King
Witch trials
Gunpowder Plot
The role of men and women
Writer’s Methods
Soliloquies to tell the audience what a character might be feeling.
Ambiguities – e.g the witches and their prophecies
Imagery - the play has lots of references to darkness, to sleep, to disease and even to blood
Opposite words and ideas - they highlight conflicts in the story such as appearance and reality, choice and fate or good and evil.
Characterisation – methods of drama to present the characters
Prose and Verse
Chanting language from the Witches
Quotations
“We will proceed no further in this business” Macbeth
“Macbeth does murder sleep” Macbeth
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.. . Life is a tale /Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” Macbeth
“Come, you spirits / ...unsex me here, / ... make thick my blood; / Stop up the access and passage to remorse.” Lady Macbeth
“She would have ‘plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this” Lady Macbeth
“Out, damned spot; out, I say.” Lady Macbeth
“Thou hast it now—king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promised, and I fear thou played'st most foully for't” Banquo
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Witches
“We will proceed no further in this business.” Macbeth
"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.“ Lady Macbeth
"I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself.“ Macbeth