Page 89 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

Unit 5: Macbeth: Detailed Analysis of the Text

• The ambiguity of the Weird Sisters reflects a greater theme of doubling, mirrors, and schism Notes
between inner and outer worlds that permeates the work as a whole.
• Throughout the play, characters, scenes, and ideas are doubled.
• The corruption of nature is a theme that surfaces and resurfaces in the same act.
• The witches circle a cauldron, mixing in a variety of grotesque ingredients while chanting
“double, double toil and trouble;/Fire burn, and cauldron bubble”.
• As the act 4 opens, the witches carry on the theme of doubling and equivocation that threads
throughout the play.
• On a historical note, it is generally thought the eighth king holds up a mirror in order to
pander to James I.
• Another form of doubling or equivocation is found in the theme of costumes, masks, and
disguises.
• At the Scottish royal home of Dunsinane, a gentlewoman has summoned a doctor to observe
Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking.
• The two are interrupted by a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, who enters carrying a candle.
• Until Act 5, Macbeth has been tormented with visions and nightmares while Lady Macbeth
has derided him for his weakness. Now the audience witnesses the way in which the murders
have also preyed on Lady Macbeth.
• As the play nears its bloody conclusion, Macbeth’s tragic flaw comes to the forefront: like
Duncan before him, his character is too trusting.
• One moral of the story is that the course of fate cannot be changed. The events that the Weird
Sisters predicted and set in motion at the beginning of the play happen exactly as predicted,
no matter what the characters do to change them.

5.7 Keywords

Witch : A person, now especially a woman, who professes or is supposed to practice
magic, especially black magic or the black art; sorceress.
Fate : The universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is
presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time.
Prophecy : Something that is declared by a prophet, especially a divinely inspired prediction,
instruction, or exhortation.
Equivocation : The use of equivocal or ambiguous expressions, especially in order to mislead
or hedge; prevarication.
Remorse : Deep and painful regret for wrongdoing; compunction.
Regicide : A person who kills a king or is responsible for his death, especially one of the
judges who condemned Charles I of England to death.
Equivocator : To use ambiguous or unclear expressions, usually to avoid commitment or in
order to mislead; prevaricate or hedge.
Fife : A high-pitched transverse flute used commonly in military and marching musical
groups.
Amen : A prayer word in the play Macbeth.
Pathetic Fallacy : The endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc., with human traits and feelings.
Weird : Involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly or uncanny.
Cauldron : A large pot used for boiling, esp one with handles.

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