Macbeth

Having Macbeth describe it would be less dramatic. People often forget that Shakespeare was writing plays, and the rule in writing plays is "show, don't tell". From time to time Shakespeare feels constrained to have a character describe something in the middle of a play, because what is being described is hard or improper to stage or not worth staging For example, in Act 1 Scene 2 of Macbeth, the sergeant describes the battle, rather than going through the difficulty of staging it just to provide background. And in Taming of the Shrew we get a description of the wedding because it would be improper to portray a wedding on stage. However, it is much more effective to get the information out by having the characters interact with each other, with props or, as in this case, with figments of their imagination. Having Macbeth say, "The dagger appears to be insubstantial as it cannot actually be grasped and does not lose its form when a hand is passed through it" is pathetically limp compared to "Come! Let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still!"

The daggers. He was supposed to leave them in Duncan's bedchamber to incriminate to grooms but he forgot. Lady Macbeth has to take them back, because Macbeth does not want to look at the murder scene again.

Ambition and cruelty

Your teacher probably wants to hear ambition, and that is correct. It is also natural; anyone would have their ambition encouraged by being told that they are going to be king, especially if there is a reasonable possibility it could happen. Being told that you will someday become President or Prime Minister might encourage anyone to develop political ambitions.

Probably courage most distinguishes him at the beginning of the play. As he commits the murder, though, he starts to lose it and begins to be governed by fear. He murders the grooms out of fear.

He is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.

Macduff wins.

At various times in the play various lords show their mistrust and suspicion for Macbeth. Macduff shows it when he refuses to attend Macbeth's coronation at the end of Act II. Banquo starts Act three by saying "I fear thou play'dst most foully for't". In Act III Scene 6 Lennox expresses his suspicions of Macbeth. Ross arrives in England in Act IV Scene 3 to deliver a message as usual, but it is clear that he will not return to Scotland.

This must be Act I scene 4 that we are talking about. The king has just announced that the party is at Macbeth's place, and so everyone is headed to Inverness.

Unbounded sexual lust, unbounded greed, and all other faults. This disguises Malcolm's true faults: he is tedious, cowardly, and doesn't like Scotland much.

The theme of manliness, which Lady Macbeth used in Act 1 Scene 7 to persuade Macbeth to do the murder, reappears in this scene. Lady Macbeth hopes to make Macbeth behave according to her wishes by questioning his manhood as she did before: "Are you a man?", "these flaws and starts . . . would well become a woman's story . . .", "Quite unmann'd in folly?". Macbeth buys into it: "protest me the baby of a girl", "I am a man again." But what Macbeth is dealing with is far too powerful to be controlled by this kind of talk.

Lady Macbeth wants to use their daggers to stab Duncan and then smear them with Duncan's blood. When Macbeth fails to do this, she does it herself.

Strangely enough, he doesn't. In fact he says explicitly that his desire to be king is not worth the cost of murdering Duncan. "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent save vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself." Therefore he tells his wife "we will proceed no further in this business." He is just not that ambitious. But she is and she knows just what buttons to push to get him to agree to the murder. Please note that she does not play on his ambition, which is insignificant, but rather on his sense of manliness. In order to understand this play you need to read or watch Act I Scene 7 over and over and over.

The context helps here. Duncan is surprised to find that the Thane of Cawdor turned out to be a traitor. He says, "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face; he was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust." We know what the second part means: Duncan trusted Cawdor completely. In the first part, the word "art" means skill or ability, "mind's construction" means the way someone's mind is constructed, or what they are thinking, so it means "there is no such thing as the skill or ability to find what someone is thinking in the face", or "you can't judge a book by its cover". Duncan is saying that you cannot tell what someone is thinking by looking at them, and this is true for Duncan anyway. Other people are capable of it.

It means that you cannot tell the difference between a line in the play and a footnote. "All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter" is a line from Act I Scene 3, said by the Third Witch. She is just greeting him, but in greeting him she calls him a future king. The part that says "A thane in early England . . ." is a comment by some indifferent scholar. I say indifferent because whoever added the footnote appears to be unaware that Scotland and England were two different countries and that the play takes place in Scotland.

This is a great question because it goes straight to the dynamic between the Macbeths. Macbeth does not have a "fatal flaw", but he does have weaknesses, the largest of which is his self-image as masculine. Lady Macbeth can get Macbeth to do just about anything by saying "If thou wert a man, then thou durst do it." It's like someone who cannot resist a dare, or the taunt that he is "chicken".

he sees them as a bad sign

An army consisting of a lot of English troops, and some disaffected Scotsmen, including Macduff and Malcolm.

Duncan is his cousin. Duncan is his king. Duncan is his guest. If he murders Duncan, he invites others to murder him. Many people like Duncan for being a nice guy and will be angry when he is killed.

(Apex Learning) That he has become more comfortable with killing in order to keep his throne.

Act V Scene 2 is a conversation among a number of Scottish Lords who have joined up with Malcolm. They do talk about Macbeth, but their remarks tell us more about them and why they left Scotland than about Macbeth himself. The suggestion is, however, that an increasing number of Scotsmen are unsatisfied with him as a king at this point. Scene 3 is more revealing, because we see Macbeth needlessly abusing one of his innocent servants, we hear him acknowledge that he is cursed (confirming the reports in the previous scene), putting on his armour and then taking it off, and dismissing the Doctor. His behaviour is so rude and erratic that the Doctor wants nothing better than to get out of there. But at the same time we see that Macbeth has acknowledged that all hope of any pleasure in life has gone, and yet he still hopes to find a cure for his wife's problems. He will lose the last vestiges of humanity when he hears of her death, the last human being for whom he has any feelings.

Although women in the early seventeenth century would appear to have few rights when compared to British women of the twenty-first century, they were not actually as ill-used as women in some societies before or since. They were allowed freedom of movement around town, and if unmarried had the right to own their own property. Widows and unmarried women could and did own and run their own businesses, and could hire men as their servants. Married women were expected to run and manage their households, which was at that time a full-time job, and one which was not thought to be contemptible generally, since it was the equivalent to managing a small business. The latitude afforded to the eccentric transvestite Mary Frith shows that women had more freedom than people imagine.

He means that when he shed blood that blood will come around and expose him as a murderer. He goes on to say that stones, trees and black birds all give signs which point the finger at "the secretest man of blood", the best-concealed murderer. He is talking about Banquo's ghost which has frightened him so much that he has given away his guilt.

The crucial part. Without Lady Macbeth, this would have been Macbeth's final decision: "We will proceed no further in this business." Macbeth would never have killed Duncan unless Lady Macbeth had goaded him into it.