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Unit 5: Macbeth: Detailed Analysis of the Text

be the serpent under’t”. Macbeth appears to be a loyal Thane, but secretly plans revenge. Lady Notes
Macbeth appears to be a gentle woman but vows to be “unsexed” and swears on committing bloody
deeds. Macbeth is also a play about the inner world of human psychology, as will be illustrated in
later acts through nightmares and guilt-ridden hallucinations. Such contrast between “being” and
“seeming” serves as another illustration of equivocation.

The Macbeths and the Corruption of Nature
One of the most ambiguous aspects of the play is the character of Macbeth himself. Unlike other
Shakespearean villains like Iago or Richard III, Macbeth is not entirely committed to his evil actions.
When he swears to commit suicide, he must overcome an enormous resistance from his conscience.
At the same time, he sees as his own biggest flaw not a lack of moral values but rather a lack of
motivation to carry out his diabolical schemes. In this he resembles Hamlet, who soliloquizes
numerous times about his inaction. But unlike Hamlet, Macbeth does not have a good reason to kill,
nor is the man he kills evil - far from it. And finally, while Macbeth becomes increasingly devoted
to murderous actions, his soliloquies are so full of eloquent speech and pathos that it is not difficult
to sympathize with him. Thus at the heart of the play lies a tangle of uncertainty.
If Macbeth is indecisive, Lady Macbeth is just the opposite—a character with such a single vision
and drive for advancement that she brings about her own demise. And yet her very ruthlessness
brings about another form of ambiguity, for in swearing to help Macbeth realize the Weird Sisters’
prophecy, she must cast off her femininity. In a speech at the beginning of Scene 5, she calls on the
spirits of the air to take away her womanhood.
Lady Macbeth sees “remorse” as one of the names for feminine compassion—of which she must rid
herself. Thus she must be “unsexed.” This does not mean, however, that in rejecting her femininity
she becomes manly. Instead, she becomes a woman devoid of the sexual characteristics and
sentimentality that make her a woman. She becomes entirely unnatural and inhuman. Like the
supernatural Weird Sisters with their beards, Lady Macbeth becomes something that does not fit
into the natural world.
The corruption of nature is a theme that surfaces and resurfaces in the same act. When Duncan
greets Macbeth, for example, he states that he has “begun to plant thee and will labor / to make thee
full of growing”. Following the metaphor of the future as lying in the “seeds of time,” Macbeth is
compared to a plant that Duncan will look after. By murdering Duncan, then, Macbeth perverts
nature by severing himself effectively from the very “root” that feeds him. For this reason, perhaps,
the thought of murdering Duncan causes Macbeth’s heart to “knock at [his] ribs / against the use of
nature”. Just as the Weird Sisters pervert the normal course of nature by telling their prophecy,
Macbeth upsets the course of nature by his regicide.
Reflecting the disruption of nature, the dialogue between Macbeth and Lady in the scene following
the murder becomes heavy, graceless, and almost syncopated.
The repetition of the phrase “thou wouldst,” in all its permutations, confounds the flow of speech.
The speech is clotted with accents, tangling meter and scansion, and the alliteration is almost tongue—
twisting, slowing the rhythm of the words. Just as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have corrupted
nature, the language Shakespeare uses in these scenes disrupts the flow of his usually smoothly
iambic meter.
Yet another part of the theme of corruption of nature lies in the compression of time that occurs
throughout the act. When Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth’s letter, she states: These letters have
transported me beyond / this ignorant present, and I feel now / the future in the instant”. By telling
the future to Macbeth and Banquo, the Weird Sisters upset the natural course of time and bring the
future to the present. Thus when Macbeth vacillates over whether or not to kill Duncan, he wants to
leap into the future: “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly”. He
wants the murder to be over quickly—indeed so quickly that it is over before the audience even

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