Macbeth Analysis
Themes:
Greed
- After receiving the prophecies, Macbeth becomes envisioned by his own
desire for power as well as the manipulation from Lady Macbeth
- Lady Macbeth is power hungry and takes control over her husband by
questioning his masculinity as a man and showing that she is more of a
man than he is
- Lady Macbeth and Macbeth both believe the crown will allow them to
have power and fulfil their ambition but rather the crown drives their
ambition to turn into guilt and greed.
Ambition
- Everyone has ambition in them, but Macbeth’s ambition needed a spark
which was the prophecies of the witches and Lady Macbeths
manipulation
- Everyone in the play is ambitious for something, whether it may be out of
their reach or not.
Time
- Macbeth says that time heals all wounds implying that he will overcome
the murder of the King.
- ‘Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest
day’ Macbeth – This shows that time will pass even through the murder
of the King and he believes that people will move on
Guilt
- After killing the King, Macbeth is covered in guilt that not even the
throne could overrule. This guilt causes him and Lady Macbeth to wash
his hands due to the hallucinations of blood and their OCD aswell as
seeing the ghost of his best friend
- ‘I could not say ‘Amen’… Stuck in my throat’ – This shows that the
murder has changed Macbeth as now he is culpable of the murder, but he
doesn’t know why he cannot say the words (DRAMATIC IRONY)
- ‘They have tied me to a stake, I cannot fly’ - Macbeth
Masculinity
- After having second thoughts on killing the King, Lady Macbeth
questions Macbeth as man and his masculinity saying that she is more
mentally a man than he is as she can keep promises
- ‘I dare do all that may become a man, Who dares do more is none’ Macbeth believes that he has done everything to become a more, and if he
commits the murder, he will not longer be a man but rather a monster
Fair is foul, foul is fair
- ‘It makes him, it mars him, it sets him on, its sets him off; It persuades
him, and disheartens him; Makes him stand to, and not to stand….
equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie’ – Porter
 Shows the drunk porter unintentionally foreshadows the
whole story of the play as well as pretending to be the porter
of hell
Great Chain of Being
- ‘I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry’ – Lady Macbeth
- ‘Our chimneys were blown down…lamenting’s heard I’the air, strange
screams of death…the earth was feverous and did shake’ – Lennox
- ‘The man would die, and there an end, but now they rise again’- Macbeth
 Macbeth realises that the murder has changed the world
- ‘You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting’ – Lady Macbeth