Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Background and
Important Terms
Macbeth and Shakespeare Facts
▪ Shakespeare wrote 36 plays and 154
sonnets.
▪ Shakespeare wrote to satisfy his
patrons, not as a means of personal
expression.
▪ Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s
shortest plays.
▪ Macbeth is considered a play that
brings “bad luck.”
▪ Macbeth is based on a real Scottish king and
Shakespeare got the historical information from
Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland (1577).
Macbeth’s Context
▪ Renaissance: 1485-1660;
began in Italy
▪ Renaissance means rebirth, as
Europe was recovering from
the Black Death and the Middle
Ages.
▪ During the Renaissance, people became curious about
themselves and human nature and lost faith in the
church.
▪ People turned to Latin and Greek classics to discover
new answers to life’s big questions, leading to an
intellectual movement called humanism.
Macbeth’s Context
▪ In 1455, Johannes Gutenberg
invented the first printing press.
▪ Queen Elizabeth I greatly
encouraged the creative arts, so
a great deal of literature emerged
and she inspired many writers.
▪ Shakespeare wrote Macbeth
during King James I’s reign, who
was originally from Scotland.
▪ During the Renaissance, women were not permitted to
perform on stage, so boys or effeminate men played
the female roles.
Macbeth = Tragedy
▪ Tragedy: a literary work depicting
serious events in which the main
character, who is often high-ranking and
dignified, comes to an unhappy end
▪ Tragic hero: protagonist of a tragedy
who usually wins some self-knowledge
and wisdom, even though he or she
suffers defeat, possibly even death.
▪ Tragic flaw: an error in judgment or character
weakness which usually causes the tragic hero’s
downfall
Macbeth Literary Terms
▪ Paradox: an apparent
contradiction that is actually true
▪ Aside: private words that a
character in a play speaks to the
audience or to another
character, which are not
supposed to be overheard by
others
▪ Soliloquy: a long speech in
which a character who is usually
alone onstage expresses his or
her private thoughts or feelings
Macbeth Literary Terms
▪ Motif: a word, character,
object, image, metaphor, or
idea that recurs in a work or
in several works
▪ Iambic pentameter: a line of poetry made up of five
iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
▪ Blank verse: poetry written in unrhyming iambic
pentameter
Macbeth Characters
▪ Macbeth
▪ Lady Macbeth
▪ King Duncan
▪ Macduff
▪ Banquo
▪ Malcolm
▪ Donalbain
▪ Numerous minor
characters (All are
listed on page 301 in
your textbooks)