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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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