Macbeth

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Act 1: Witches, Cawdor, and a letter that lights a fire
2. Act 2: The night Duncan is murdered at Inverness
3. Act 3: Banquo and Fleance on the road, then a ghost at the feast
4. Act 4: Macduff leaves, the witches show more, and Fife pays
5. Act 5: Sleepwalking, Birnam Wood, Dunsinane, and not of woman born
6. What lands hard and what feels thin on a reread
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up Macbeth again because Hamlet left me tired in a good way. Hamlet talks and waits and circles for four hours. Macbeth does the opposite. A man hears he will be king on a heath in the afternoon and by night he is already thinking about knives. I remembered the big lines from school, the witches chanting, Lady Macbeth calling on thick night, Macbeth seeing a dagger in the air. What I had forgotten was how short the play feels. It runs like bad news. For this reread I used the Folger edition text as printed in the Simon and Schuster paperback, the one listed at 326 pages under ISBN 9780743477109. Macbeth was first printed in the 1623 First Folio published by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, and the Folger text is based directly on that First Folio printing. That matters because we have no earlier quarto to compare it to, the way we do for Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.

Scotland at the start is already bleeding. King Duncan hears reports of a revolt. The Thane of Cawdor has turned traitor with the help of Norway. Macbeth and Banquo, two generals, have fought through it. A bleeding captain tells Duncan that Macbeth carved his way through the rebel Macdonwald and then handled the Norwegian lord with stern work. Duncan decides to execute Cawdor and give his title to Macbeth. So before we meet Macbeth, he is the hero. Loyal. Brave. Trusted.

Then the air changes.

Macbeth and Banquo ride home across a heath and meet the three witches. They are withered and wild in their dress, bearded though they speak like women, and they greet Macbeth in ranks. Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis. Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor. Hail to thee that shalt be king hereafter. Macbeth starts. He is Thane of Glamis already. He has not yet been told about Cawdor. Banquo, sensible as always, asks what they see in him. They tell him he shall be lesser and greater, not so happy yet happier, and that he shall get kings though he be none. Then they vanish.

Ross and Angus arrive almost at once with the news about Cawdor. Macbeth stares at Banquo. Two of the greetings came true within minutes. His mind jumps straight to the third.

That jump scared me on this read. Banquo hears the same prophecies and treats them like a puzzle. Macbeth treats them like an appointment.

Duncan is generous to a fault. He names his son Malcolm as Prince of Cumberland, which is his way of naming an heir. He announces he will visit Macbeth's castle at Inverness that night. Macbeth writes ahead to his wife. Lady Macbeth reads the letter and decides in one speech that her husband is too full of the milk of human kindness to take the shortest way. She asks spirits to unsex her, to fill her with cruelty from head to toe, to make thick her blood so no pity can slip through. When Macbeth arrives she tells him to look like an innocent flower but be the serpent under it. Leave the planning to her.

Macbeth wavers that evening. That wavering is important because people sometimes talk about him as if the witches forced him. They did not. He lists the reasons against the murder himself. Duncan is his king, his kinsman, and his guest. Duncan has been humble in power and clear in judgment. The murder would teach others how to murder him later. He tells Lady Macbeth they will proceed no further in this business.

She does not accept that.

Her answer is brutal and famous. She calls him coward. She says she would have plucked her nipple from the smiling mouth of her own baby and dashed its brains out rather than break such a promise as he made to her. It is a horrible image on purpose. She says men prove themselves by acting. If he was a man when he dared to imagine it, he will be more than a man when he does it. She has the plan ready. Duncan's two chamber grooms drink every night. She will drug their wine. Macbeth will kill the sleeping Duncan with their own daggers. They will smear blood on the sleepy grooms and cry murder in the morning. Macbeth looks at this terrible competence and says, bring forth men children only, for thy undaunted mettle should make nothing but males.

He agrees.

Act 1: Witches, Cawdor, and a letter that lights a fire

Act 1 works because it gives you fate and choice side by side without letting you settle which is stronger.

The witches open the play with thunder and a riddle. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. They agree to meet Macbeth upon the heath. That is all. No backstory. No motive given. Shakespeare never explains if they see the future or plant it.

Then Duncan shows his style of rule. He trusts quickly. He believed Cawdor was loyal until the rebellion proved otherwise. He says there is no art to find the mind's construction in the face, meaning you cannot tell a traitor by looks. Then he trusts the next man just as fully. He embraces Macbeth and Banquo, loads them with thanks, and walks straight into Macbeth's house for the night.

Lady Macbeth carries the middle of the act. Her sleepwalking scene comes much later, but the seed is here. She fears tenderness in Macbeth more than she fears Duncan's guards. She prays for darkness to hide the knife. When Duncan arrives with Banquo and the court, she plays the perfect hostess. Duncan likes the castle. He likes the air. He gives Lady Macbeth a diamond for being kind. The audience knows what she is thinking while she smiles.

Banquo is the quiet contrast I kept watching. He warns Macbeth that the instruments of darkness tell small truths to win us for larger harms. He asks for counsel. He prays to be kept loyal. Macbeth asks him to stick close when the time comes, without saying what time he means. Banquo answers carefully. He will keep his allegiance clear if he can. That careful line will get him killed later.

Act 2: The night Duncan is murdered at Inverness

Act 2 is short and cold. It reads like the house itself is holding its breath.

Banquo cannot sleep. He walks the courtyard with his son Fleance and talks about cursed thoughts that visit him in rest. He gives his sword and dagger to Fleance for safe keeping. Macbeth comes out, pretending he is also awake for innocent reasons. They talk about the witches for a minute. Banquo says he dreamed of them. Macbeth lies and says he never thinks of them. Then Macbeth asks Banquo for support if something honorable comes his way. Banquo says yes, so long as he can keep a clear conscience. Fleance and Banquo go to bed. Macbeth is left alone.

Then comes the dagger speech.

Macbeth sees a dagger in the air before him, handle toward his hand. He asks if it is real or a vision from his heated brain. He tries to grab it and fails. He talks himself through it. He decides words make such horrors worse and that now is the time for deeds. A bell rings. Lady Macbeth's signal. He says he goes, and it is done. The bell invites him. Do not hear it, Duncan, for it is a knell that calls thee to heaven or to hell.

The murder happens offstage. We hear an owl scream and crickets cry. Lady Macbeth waits, jumpy, saying the grooms snored so loud she drugged them easy, and that if Duncan had not looked like her father as he slept, she would have done it herself. Macbeth comes back with his hands red and his head ruined. He says he heard voices crying that he murders sleep, that Glamis hath murdered sleep and Cawdor shall sleep no more. He brings the grooms' daggers with him by mistake. He will not go back to put them there. Lady Macbeth calls him weak and goes herself to smear the grooms with blood.

Knocking starts at the gate. Loud, ordinary knocking. It goes on and on while the two of them wash and dress and try to look innocent. The porter, drunk and joking about hell gate, lets in Macduff and Lennox. Macduff has been sent by Duncan to call the king. He finds the body. He shouts murder and treason. Bells ring. Malcolm and Donalbain, Duncan's sons, come half dressed. Lady Macbeth faints on cue, or perhaps from nerves. Macbeth kills the two grooms in a rage he claims is love for Duncan. He says who could be calm with Duncan's silver skin laced with golden blood.

Malcolm and Donalbain do not buy it. They decide whoever killed the father will kill the sons next. Malcolm will flee to England. Donalbain will flee to Ireland. Their flight makes them look guilty, which is exactly what Macbeth needs. Ross and old Siward talk it over. Macbeth is named king and rides to Scone to be crowned.

I found this act painful in the best sense. Shakespeare keeps cutting from cosmic evil to plain detail. An owl. A cricket. Someone knocking because he is cold. Lennox talks about chimneys blown down and strange screams in the night, as if nature protested. The world feels bruised.

Act 3: Banquo and Fleance on the road, then a ghost at the feast

If Act 2 is the crime, Act 3 is the cover up falling apart.

Macbeth is king now but cannot rest. The witches hailed Banquo as father to a line of kings. Macbeth remembers that part better than Banquo seems to. He says to be thus is nothing, to be safely thus. Being king means nothing if Banquo's children take it next. He decides Banquo and Fleance must die. He hires two murderers, then adds a third, and feeds them stories about how Banquo kept them poor and kept them from advancement. He does not tell Lady Macbeth the details this time. He tells her to be pleasant to Banquo at the feast that night and to leave the rest to him. She notices he keeps his sorrows locked up and asks what is wrong. He talks about scorpions in his mind and says terrible deeds must be done.

The ambush happens at dusk near the palace. Banquo and Fleance ride in with a torch. The murderers strike. Banquo shouts to Fleance to fly, to save himself and take revenge later. Banquo dies with twenty gashes in his head, if the murderer is to be believed. Fleance escapes in the dark. That escape is small on the page and huge for the story. One boy running means the prophecy still lives.

Macbeth tries to play host that night and fails in public. He learns Banquo is dead but Fleance is escaped, and he feels the worm that was his fear is still alive and gnawing. He sits to the feast, jokes with Lennox, and then sees Banquo's ghost sitting in his own chair. Only he sees it. He shouts at it. He asks why it shakes its gory locks at him. Lady Macbeth tries to cover, telling the guests her husband has had such fits since youth. She pulls him aside and shames him. Is this the man who feared a painted devil. The ghost comes again. Macbeth talks to an empty stool. The lords stare. Lady Macbeth ends the feast early and sends everyone home.

Lennox and another lord talk after. Their talk is careful and loaded. They list what the official story asks them to believe. That Malcolm and Donalbain paid the grooms to kill their own father. That Banquo's killers were his enemies, though Macbeth wept for Banquo. They mention Macduff now refuses to come to court. He stays in Fife at his castle. They hope Malcolm lives in England in safety and that holy help comes soon.

What hit me here was how lonely the Macbeths become with each other. In Act 1 they plot together line by line. In Act 3 Macbeth hides his plan about Banquo to spare her, or to spare himself her judgment, and she is left asking why he keeps alone of all his sorrows. They sleep apart in spirit. They eat apart at their own feast.

A short note on Fleance. He has few lines. He holds a torch for his father. He runs when told. Some productions cut him to almost nothing. But the play needs him alive. Without that torch going out in the dark, Macbeth's fear has no future shape.

Act 4: Macduff leaves, the witches show more, and Fife pays

Act 4 splits in two places, Macbeth visiting the witches and Macduff building a case in England, and the cut between them is the moral of the play.

Macbeth goes back to the witches with demands. He says he will have answers even if churches fall and nations starve. The witches call spirits. The first is an armed head that warns him to beware Macduff, the Thane of Fife. The second is a bloody child that says none of woman born shall harm Macbeth. The third is a child crowned with a tree in his hand who says Macbeth shall never be vanquished until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him. Macbeth laughs. Who can march a wood. Who is not born of woman. He feels double sure, like a wall of stone.

Then he asks about Banquo's children. The witches show him eight kings walking, the last with a glass in his hand, and Banquo's ghost smiling and pointing at them. Macbeth curses and faints or rages. When he steadies, Lennox tells him Macduff has fled to England to join Malcolm. Macbeth decides that from now on his first thought will be his first act. He orders the castle at Fife taken and everyone in it killed, wife, babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line.

That order is the point where pity for Macbeth gets hard to keep. Killing Duncan was intimate and haunted. Ordering the death of Macduff's household from a distance is colder. It is policy.

The scene in England is plain and long, and I needed its plainness. Malcolm tests Macduff before he trusts him. He claims he is lustful, greedy, and without grace, to see if Macduff will still back such a prince. Macduff answers honestly, saying Scotland cannot bear such a king, and then breaks down for his country. Malcolm drops the act and says he was only testing loyalty. He says old Siward and the English king will lend an army. Then Ross arrives from Scotland with news. At first he will not speak. Pressed, he says Macduff's castle was surprised, his wife and children were savagely slaughtered, and to tell how would outrun the telling. Macduff hears it and goes very still. He blames himself for leaving them exposed. Malcolm tells him to turn grief to anger. Macduff says he must feel it as a man first, then he will take it like a man and meet Macbeth sword to sword.

Lady Macduff gets a short scene before that news lands, and it stays with me. She asks Ross why her husband left them. Ross says he was wise and noble. She answers that wisdom that leaves wife and flight behind is folly. She jokes with her little son about fathers who betray and mothers who sell birds. The boy is quick and funny. Then murderers enter and kill them both. The boy calls, murder, and dies first. It is cruel and fast, and Shakespeare gives them just enough life to make the loss real.

Act 5: Sleepwalking, Birnam Wood, Dunsinane, and not of woman born

Act 5 moves between Dunsinane and the country around it, and dread builds through small reports.

Lady Macbeth sleepwalks.

Her waiting woman has watched her rise, write, seal letters, and return to bed without waking. The doctor watches too. Lady Macbeth comes in with a taper, rubbing her hands as if washing. Out, damned spot, she says. Out. She talks about Duncan's blood, about Banquo buried who will not leave his grave, about the Thane of Fife who had a wife. Where is she now. She smells blood still on her little hand. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it. The doctor tells the waiting woman that she needs a priest more than a physician. What is done cannot be undone. The scene is quiet after so much battle talk, and that quiet makes it worse. The woman who could drug grooms and frame servants cannot sleep without light.

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

Macbeth meanwhile armors himself with prophecy. He hears ten thousand men approach and sneers that they cannot hurt him until Birnam Wood moves. He calls his servant a cream faced loon for looking frightened. He asks the doctor about his wife and gets angry when the doctor says her trouble is in the mind. He wants a drug to erase sorrow. He puts on his armor before it is needed. Seyton, his last loyal officer, stays close. Everyone else slips away to Malcolm.

Malcolm's army reaches Birnam Wood. Malcolm, old Siward, Macduff, and the thanes agree on a simple trick. Each soldier will cut down a bough and hold it before him to hide their numbers. They will march that way to Dunsinane. On stage it looks strange and plain. Men carrying trees. The prophecy starts to walk.

Inside Dunsinane castle, Macbeth hears women cry. Seyton reports the queen is dead. Malcolm later says she died by self and violent hands. Macbeth does not go to her. He speaks the most famous lines in the play about how life is a tale.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day. Life is a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I read that as exhaustion more than wisdom. A man who killed sleep now finds waking empty.

Then a messenger runs in saying he looked toward Birnam and thought the wood began to move. Macbeth calls him liar and slave and feels his charm crack. He says if this is true he will fight anyway. He will not run. Ring the alarm bell. Blow wind. Come ruin. At least he will die with armor on his back.

The battle is a series of duels and exits rather than a big set piece. Young Siward meets Macbeth and dies quickly. Old Siward learns his son died facing forward and says that is enough. Macbeth meets Macduff and warns him to leave. He says he has no wish to kill him and already has too much of his blood. Macduff says he has no words, only his sword. Macbeth boasts that he bears a charmed life and cannot be harmed by any of woman born. Macduff answers with the fact that breaks the charm.

Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped. In plain terms, a caesarean birth, cut out before natural labor. Not of woman born in the narrow sense the apparition meant.

Macbeth pauses. He says he will not fight thee. The thought of losing to the one loophole sickens him. Macduff calls him coward and says he will have him painted on a pole like a rare monster for show. That taunt works where swords did not. Macbeth says he will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm. He will try the last. They fight offstage. Macduff returns with Macbeth's head. Malcolm is hailed King of Scotland. He thanks the thanes, makes them earls, and calls back the exiles. Order returns, at least on paper.

What lands hard and what feels thin on a reread

What lands hardest for me is speed tied to conscience. Macbeth thinks of murder in Act 1 scene 3, does it in Act 2, sees the ghost in Act 3, orders a massacre in Act 4, and loses his wife and castle in Act 5. Guilt does not fade with time here. It grows teeth. He cannot sleep. He envies Duncan in the grave. He envies Banquo dead. He cannot sit at his own feast. Lady Macbeth starts as the strong one, calling on night to hide her plans, then ends washing air in her sleep. Their arc is clear without speeches explaining it. You watch sleep go, then appetite, then company, then hope.

The witches land too because they do so little. They do not order Duncan's death. They hail and vanish. Banquo asks for the same attention and gets a different future. The play lets you argue whether Macbeth was trapped or merely told what he wanted to hear. I lean toward the second on this read. He hears king and fills in murder himself. The later apparitions work the same way. They give him riddles that sound like safety. He hears what suits him. Birnam Wood cannot march, so he is safe. No man born of woman can hurt him, so he is safe. Shakespeare lets him mistake wordplay for armor.

Macduff earns his place as the counterweight. He is not clever like Hamlet or funny like Falstaff. He is blunt. He finds Duncan's body and shouts plain horror. He refuses the coronation feast. He leaves his family to save his country and pays for that choice with their lives. His grief in England feels human in a play full of spells. When he tells Malcolm to dispute it like a man, meaning fight it out, Malcolm's answer to turn grief to medicine sounds thin beside it. Macduff must feel it first. That order feels right.

Fair criticism belongs here too.

The middle can feel rushed in a way that helps the theme but hurts some people. Duncan is good but faint. We get one night of his kindness at Inverness, his trust in Cawdor and then in Macbeth, his gift to Lady Macbeth, and then a corpse. Malcolm and Donalbain flee and vanish for three acts. Donalbain never really returns. Lady Macduff and her son appear only to die. Some readers will feel they exist for pathos rather than as full persons. I felt that with young Siward as well. He walks on, names himself, dies to prove Macbeth is still dangerous. It works on stage. On the page it can read as quick.

The verse can also hide motive at key spots. Why does Lady Macbeth break so fast between the feast and the sleepwalking. Is it the blood. Is it childlessness. Is it the loss of power to her husband's secrets. The play gives images, a spot, a smell, a hand that will not clean, but no straight answer. Some will love that openness. I wanted one more private scene with her before Act 5, something like Macbeth's dagger speech, to hear her alone. We get her great speeches early and her broken sleep late, with little between.

Length is another honest note. Short can be a virtue. Classrooms finish it in a week. Actors love its drive. But Banquo and Fleance, the Macduffs, even Duncan's court, get fewer beats than the webs around Claudius or Lear. If you want wide political detail, this is not that play. It stays close to two people and the cost of one crime.

Still, I would tell a friend to start here if Shakespeare feels heavy. Read it in two sittings. First through Duncan's murder at Inverness, watching the witches and Lady Macbeth push and pull at Macbeth. Then from Banquo's murder through Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, watching Fleance run, Macduff mourn, Lady Macbeth sleepwalk with her taper, and the trees march. Keep the Folger notes near for thane and Weird Sisters and untimely ripped. Say the famous lines out loud once. Fair is foul. Out, damned spot. Tomorrow and tomorrow. Then close the book and notice how quiet your own house feels.

FAQ

When was Macbeth first printed, and by whom?

Macbeth appeared for the first time in the 1623 First Folio published by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard. This summary follows the Folger edition text as printed in the Simon and Schuster paperback.

Why does Macbeth think he cannot be beaten at Dunsinane?

The apparitions tell him none of woman born shall harm him and that he is safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Malcolm orders his soldiers to cut boughs from Birnam Wood for cover, and Macduff explains he was untimely ripped from his mother's womb.

What happens to Lady Macbeth after Duncan's murder?

She starts strong, drugging the grooms and smearing blood to frame them, but later sleepwalks through the castle trying to wash imagined blood from her hands. Her doctor and waiting woman watch her break down, and Malcolm later reports she died by her own hand.