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Unit 8: Macbeth: Plot Construction and Themes




          anger, Macbeth murders the guards before they can protest their innocence. Macduff is immediately  Notes
          suspicious of Macbeth, but does not reveal his suspicions publicly. Fearing for their lives, Duncan’s
          sons flee Malcolm to England and Donalbain to Ireland. The rightful heirs’ flight makes them suspects
          and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a kinsman of the dead king. Banquo
          reveals this to the audience with his sceptical words of the new King Macbeth.
          Despite his success, Macbeth remains uneasy about the prophecy about Banquo, so Macbeth invites
          him to a royal banquet where he discovers that Banquo and his young son, Fleance, will be riding
          out that night. He hires two men to kill them; a third murderer appears in the park before the
          murder. The assassins kill Banquo, but Fleance escapes. At the banquet, Macbeth invites his lords
          and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking and merriment. Banquo’s ghost enters and sits in Macbeth’s
          place. Macbeth sees the spectre - he is the only person who can—and refuses to sit. As he grows
          furious, the rest panic at the sight of Macbeth raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady
          Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady. The
          ghost departs and returns once more, causing the same rioutous anger in Macbeth. This time, the
          lords flee.





                   “Despite his success, Macbeth remains uneasy about the prophecy about Banquo.”
             Illustrate this statement keeping in view the fear Macbeth has for the prospects of his kingship.

          Macbeth, disturbed, visits the Three Witches once more. They conjure up three spirits with three
          further warnings and prophecies: an armed head tells him to, “beware Macduff,” a bloody child,
          that warns, “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth,” and a crowned child holding a tree, stating
          Macbeth will “never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come
          against him”. Since Macduff is in exile in England, Macbeth assumes that he is safe; so he puts to
          death everyone in Macduff’s castle, including Macduff’s wife and their young son.




                   Lady Macbeth becomes wracked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband
            have committed. She sleepwalks and tries to wash imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all
            the while speaking of the terrible things she knows she pressed her husband to do.

          In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his “castle is surprised; [his] wife and babes/savagely
          slaughter’d.” Macbeth, now viewed as a tyrant, sees many of his thanes defecting. Malcolm leads
          an army, along with Macduff and Englishmen Siward, the Earl of Northumberland, against
          Dunsinane Castle. While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and
          carry tree limbs to camouflage their numbers, thus fulfilling the witches’ third prophecy. Meanwhile,
          Macbeth delivers a soliloquy upon his learning of Lady Macbeth’s death.
          A battle culminates in the slaying of the young Siward and Macduff’s confrontation with Macbeth.
          Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of
          woman. Macduff declares that he was “from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d” (i.e., born by
          Caesarean section) and was not “of woman born” (an example of a literary quibble). Macbeth realises
          too late that he has misinterpreted the witches’ words. Macduff beheads Macbeth offstage and
          thereby fulfills the last of the prophecies.
          Although Malcolm, and not Fleance, is placed on the throne, the witches’ prophecy concerning
          Banquo (“Thou shalt get kings”) was known to the audience of Shakespeare’s time to be true: James
          VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) was supposedly a descendant of Banquo.




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