Macbeth
Study Guide
Compiled by Laura Cole,
Director of Education and Training
Laura@ShakespeareTavern.com
For
The Atlanta Shakespeare Company
at The New American Shakespeare
Tavern
499 Peachtree St. NE,
Atlanta, GA 30308
Phone: 404-874-5299
www.shakespearetavern.com
Duncan:
King
of
Scotland. He “hath been so clear in his great
office”. Murdered.
Malcolm & Donalbain: Sons to Duncan
Lenox, Angus, Menteth, Ross, Cathness: Thanes
of Scotland, warriors all.
Original Practice and Playing
Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Tavern on Peachtree Street
is an Original Practice Playhouse. Original
Practice is the active exploration and
implementation of Elizabethan stagecraft
and acting techniques.
For the Atlanta Shakespeare Company
(ASC) at The New American Shakespeare
Tavern this means every ASC production
features hand-made period costumes, live,
actor-generated sound effects, and live
period music performed on period
instruments in our Elizabethan playhouse.
Our casts are trained to speak directly to the
audience instead of ignoring the audience
through the modern convention of acting
with a “4th wall.”
You will experience all of this and more
when you see ASC’s Macbeth.
Who’s Who in Macbeth
The 3 Weird Sisters: Witches, “secret, black and
midnight hags,” they appear to Macbeth several
times.
Macbeth: Thane of Glamis, Cawdor and later King
of Scotland. A brave warrior and later, Regicide*.
“Hell Hound”
Banquo: Thane (lord) also, battle companion of
Macbeth, in vanquishing the traitor
Macdonwald. Murdered.
Macbeth’s Lady: Macbeth’s wife and “partner in
greatness”. Described as “fiend-like Queen”.
Macduff: Thane of Fife, “child of integrity” and
“from his mother’s womb untimely ript”
Macduff’s Lady: Macduff’s wife, the “poor wren”
who “will fight, her young ones in her nest,
against the owl”. Murdered.
Young Macduff: Macduff’s son, “Fathered, and yet
he’s fatherless” Murdered.
Fleance: Banquo’s son. He “flees”.
The Porter at Macbeth’s Castle: Servant in
Macbeth’s Castle. He has some choice words
for sinners in Hell.
The Bloody Captain: He witnesses Macbeth’s
prowess on the battlefield at the start of the
play.
Hecat: “Mistris of Charmes” and a Goddess of the
Underworld.
3 Murderers: “Hounds, Mungrels, Curres, Demywolves”.
Siward: Earl of Northumberland, who brings 10,000
men to Malcolm’s fight against Macbeth for the
Throne of Scotland.
Young Siward: Siward’s son, “born of Woman”.
Seyton: Macbeth’s servant. He brings sad news of
Macbeth’s Lady.
A Scottish Doctor and a Gentlewoman: They
“have seen what they should not”.
Servants, Messengers, Lords, Soldiers
*Regicide: one who kills a king/the killing of a king.
Macbeth Study Guide page 2
The Story
Three Weird Sisters appear on a heath in
Scotland while a battle rages. King Duncan
of Scotland hears from a bloody Captain
how his Generals, Macbeth and Banquo,
have defeated the traitorous Thane of
Cawdor, Macdonwald, and the Norwegian
King Sweno. He resolves to bestow
Cawdor’s Thaneship on “brave” Macbeth
who fought “with Brandisht Steel, Which
smoked with bloody execution”.
Macbeth and Banquo, traveling to Soris,
encounter the 3 Sisters. They all hail
Macbeth as Thane of Glamis (which he is
already), Cawdor (which he is not) and as
“King that shalt be”. Banquo they hail as
“lesser than Macbeth and greater”. They
vanish into thin air, and Ross appears, to
greet Macbeth with the new title Thane of
Cawdor. All three travel on to meet with
King Duncan at Soris.
King Duncan, overjoyed at the great victory,
rewards Macbeth and Banquo and names his
oldest son, Malcolm, as his heir. He invites
himself to Macbeth’s Castle to feast and
visit after the victory. Macbeth promises to
travel ahead of the King to tell his wife of
their arrival.
Our scene shifts to Macbeth’s Castle, where
his wife awaits her husband’s arrival. From
her we learn some of Macbeth’s true nature.
He “would’st not play false and yet, would
wrongly win”. She calls on Spirits to “unsex
me here” and fill her “top-full of direst
cruelty”. She is determined to help Macbeth
achieve what the Witches promised him.
King Duncan arrives at the Castle and is
warmly welcomed by the Macbeths. During
the feast that night, Macbeth has second
thoughts, and his Lady must use all her
whiles to convince him that Regicide is the
only way to get what they both want. The
bloody deed is done finally, and again,
Macbeth is conscience stricken over the
terrible crime- not just of Regicide but the
betrayal of Guest Privilege. The next
morning Macduff, Thane of Fife, arrives to
travel on with Duncan, and discovers the
grisly murder. The whole Castle is roused
and Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and
Donalbain, immediately resolve to travel to
England and Ireland, respectively, to escape
certain murder themselves.
Banquo suspects treason. The Witches had
proclaimed his future heirs as Kings, and not
Macbeth’s line. He is the next to be waylaid
and murdered on Macbeth’s orders. His son
Fleance escapes the attack.
Macbeth, now King, dines with his Lords in
celebration. He makes a show of waiting for
the murdered Banquo and is horrified when
his dead friend’s ghost appears to him at the
feast. His Lady covers for his bizarre
behavior, and everyone retires for the night.
The Witches are chastised by Hecat, their
Mistress, for trafficking with Macbeth. She
promises to use her stronger magic to show
Macbeth his destiny the next day.
Macbeth meets the Witches once more, and
they show him apparitions who prophesy
many unusual things. They tell him that he
need not fear any man born of woman and
that he will not be defeated till Birnam
Forest comes to Dunsinane, his Castle. The
witches disappear, and Lenox enters with
news of Macduff’s escape to England.
Macbeth orders the slaughter of Macduff’s
wife, children and servants.
Malcolm and Macduff are in England
bemoaning the sad state of tyranny in
Scotland. Malcolm tests Macduff’s honesty
and loyalty very cruelly. Macduff passes the
test, and Ross enters, bearing news of
Scotland. He also reluctantly tells Macduff
of his family’s slaughter. Macduff, full of
pain and grief, vows to confront the
murdering King upon his return to Scotland.
Macbeth’s Lady has begun sleepwalking
and her gentlewoman has called a Doctor in
to observe her strange behavior. He suspects
the worst when the Lady cannot stop
washing her hands and cries out “will these
hands ne’re be clean?”
Macbeth Study Guide page 3
Macbeth has lost all fear and perhaps all
reason, judging that the Witches prophecies
will hold true, and no one can harm him. He
begins to rant and violently oppose all who
try to reason with him.
Malcolm, meanwhile, has returned to
Scotland with Macduff, Siward and 10,000
men, to oust Macbeth from his throne.
Malcolm has his men cut down branches in
Birnam Wood, to disguise the true numbers
of his force, and they begin a march to
Macbeth’s Castle, Dunsinane.
Macbeth’s Lady kills herself, and Macbeth
prepares for battle when a messenger enters
and reports that Birnam Wood is indeed
coming to Dunsinane Hill. Malcolm’s army
gradually overwhelms Macbeth’s forces.
Macduff comes upon Macbeth, and the final
fight begins. Macduff kills Macbeth and
brings his head, aloft on a pike, to Malcolm.
Malcolm proclaims his right to the throne
and invites his new-created Earls, the first
that Scotland has ever seen, to Scone to see
him crowned King of Scotland.
Before a Performance, Think
About This:
Find out what the typical Elizabethan
audience was like and imagine what a
performance might have been like back
then. What is different about theatre going
nowadays? The answers may surprise you!
Clue: What would this play be like to watch
outside, in the light of day?
During a Performance, Watch And
Listen For This:
Duncan in the beginning of the play honors
Macbeth, and yet Macbeth immediately
feels threatened by Malcolm being named
his father’s heir. Listen and watch for
Macbeth’s line “that is a step, on which I
must fall down, or else o’re-leap, for in my
way it lies”. What does he mean?
Lady Macbeth drugs the drinks of the
grooms and lays daggers ready for Macbeth
to use against Duncan. She also finishes the
deed. Listen and watch for her lines about
what Duncan looked like as he slept.
Macduff is disappointed when Malcolm
reveals his inner thoughts in England
because those thoughts seem truly awful.
Listen and watch for Malcolm’s list of
apparent sins.
The Happy Couple:
Are the Macbeth’s happily married? Do they
love each other? Can you find lines of text
that indicate what their relationship may be
like? How could you play the text to make
them either happily or unhappily married?
Does their relationship change during the
course of the play?
Physical Actions Revealed:
Suit the deed to the word, the word to the
deed. Where are there examples of the text
itself telling the reader what the physical
action on stage should be? Example:
“Turn Hellhound, Turn” Act V, Scene vii or
“My hands are of your color”Act II, Scene ii
Theatergoing Then and Now:
Macduff was “not of woman born” which
means he was born by Caesarean Section.
Listen and watch for Macbeth’s reaction to
this revelation.
After a Performance, Talk About
This:
Violence:
How does violence play a role in Macbeth?
How do the fights and bloodshed add to the
telling of the story? Do you understand more
of what happens on stage? How does stage
violence compare to TV or movie violence?
How does it compare to real life violence?
Macbeth Study Guide page 4
Original Practice Theatre:
Does directly addressing the audience affect
what you think and feel about the
characters? Does it affect your
understanding of what is going on onstage?
Does it interfere? Why do you think
Shakespeare wrote his plays this way?
What are the benefits to the actor and/or
audience? What are the risks?
Words Invented by Shakespeare
and Used for the First Time in this
Play:
Assassination
Champion
Cow
Drug
Impeded
Stealthy
Unreal
Vaulting
Find for yourself where they appear in the
play! Can you spot them in
performance? Do they mean what
you thought they meant?
Staging In Shakespeare’s Theatres by
Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa
Shakespeare A to Z by Charles Boyce
Our performance text is:
The Applause First Folio of Shakespeare in
Modern Type, Neil Freeman
For more information on the First Folio of
Shakespeare go to:
http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/Annex/Draft
Txt/index.html
Movie Versions:
Scotland, PA. 2001. Directed by Billy
Morissette. Rated R. Set in 1975, in a diner
called “Duncan’s”. The bloody couple
murder their employer and take over his
diner. A detective named McDuff comes in
to investigate.
Macbeth, 1981. TV version with Jeremy
Brett and Piper Laurie- Follows text closely.
Macbeth, 1979. TV- Ian McKellen and Judy
Dench. Truly great actors and directed by
Trevor Nunn, a legendary stage director.
Throne Of Blood, 1957. Akira Kurosawa’s
masterful retelling of Macbeth set in Feudal
Japan. Starring Toshiro Mifune.
Definitions of Words Invented for Macbeth:
For Further Information/Exploration:
Websites:
Assassination: the murder of an unusually
prominent person
Mr. William Shakespeare and The Internet:
http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/- This site
contains excellent resources and is a great
metasite.
Champion: to challenge or defy, to uphold or
support
The Shakespeare Globe Centre USA:
http://www.shakespeareglobeusa.org/
Drug: to administer a drug, to affect with a
narcotic
Books:
Impeded: to block or hinder, to slow
Macbeth, New Penguin Edition
The Elizabethan World Picture by E.M.W.
Tilyard
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
by Harold Bloom
Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac
Asimov
Cow: to intimidate
Stealthy: moving or acting furtively; secret
Unreal: fantastic or illusory
Vaulting: reaching for the height