1. General topics, quotes and ideas to get you started
Themes of Macbeth
General topics, quotes and ideas to get you started

2. Guilt/Regret
“What cannot you and I perform on the unguarded Duncan, what not put upon his …officers…shall bear the guilt of our great quell” - Lady Macbeth (1.7)
She persuaded Macbeth to kill Duncan using guilt and cast guilt upon the guards

3. Guilt/Regret
“All is but toys, renown and grace is dead” – Macbeth, (2.3)
Macbeth feels regret and possibly guilt for having killed the King

4. Guilt/Regret
“I am afraid to think what I have done…look on’t again I dare not…Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” –Macbeth (2.2)
He is regretting murdering Duncan

5. Guilt/Regret
“Of all men else I have avoided thee… My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already” – Macbeth (5.8)
Macbeth feels no guilt for killing Macduff’s family until he is caught and is about to die

6. Macbeth’s Sanity
“Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?” – Banquo (1.3)
The witches - are they really real? Were they imagined?

7. Macbeth’s Sanity
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still” – Macbeth (2.1)
Hallucinations of a dagger, which leads him to kill the king immediately after the hallucination. He could plead insanity in today’s court system

8. Macbeth’s Sanity
“Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee. Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold. Thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with!” – Macbeth (3.4)
Banquo’s ghost at the banquet– Macbeth is starting to lose his mind?

9. Macbeth’s Sanity
“My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already” – Macbeth (5.8)
Regains sanity at final moments of life, knows his time is come and he does not want to add Macduff to his list of casualties.

10. Macbeth’s Sanity
“I bear a charmed life which must not yield to one of woman born” – Macbeth (5.8)
Thought he was safe because he couldn’t be killed (based on the witches predictions) and descends into a kind of boastful madness

11. Lady Macbeth’s Sanity
“Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valor of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round” – Lady Macbeth (1.5)
When she reads the letter from Macbeth, she starts to lose her sanity, knowing that she is going to have to help Macbeth murder the king

12. Lady Macbeth’s Sanity
“What beast was ’t, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man” – Lady Macbeth (1.7)
Persuades Macbeth that killing the king is the right thing to do

13. Lady Macbeth’s Sanity
“Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale at what it did so freely? … Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire?”– Lady Macbeth (1.7)
Planning to kill the king without any conscience or consideration of the consequences, her insanity begins.

14. Lady Macbeth’s Sanity
“It is an accustomed action with her to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.” - Gentlewoman (5.1)
Sleepwalking and compulsively ‘washing’ her hands of blood – shows her descent into madness

15. Lady Macbeth’s Sanity
“Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from her rest…Therein the patient must minister to himself.” - Doctor (5.3)
Her suicide—she has lost the battle because she is so overwhelmed by guilt that it has gotten the better of her

16. Macbeth’s Ambition
“Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it.” - Lady Macbeth (1.5)
Macbeth has a ‘normal’ amount ambition in the beginning as the Thane of Glamis

17. Macbeth’s Ambition
“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on th' other.” – Macbeth (1.7)
After hearing he will be king, Macbeth’s ambition grows, although he is reluctant to do something immoral to satisfy it as he knows it will end badly

18. Macbeth’s Ambition
“Both of you know Banquo was your enemy…So is he mine; and in such bloody distance that every minute of his being thrusts against my near’st of life.” – Macbeth (3.1)
Once he has killed the King, Macbeth’s conscience starts to interfere less and less with his ambition

19. Macbeth’s Ambition
“The castle of Macduff I will surprise, seize upon Fife, give to th' edge o' th' sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line.” – Macbeth (4.1)
Eventually Macbeth will stop at nothing to secure his place on the throne

20. Lady Macbeth’s Ambition
“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be what thou art promised…Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valor of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round…” – Lady Macbeth (1.5)
She receives the letter about the witches prophesy and begins to find ways to make it happen. She is very ambitious and power hungry at the start of the play

21. Lady Macbeth’s Ambition
“I…know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.” – Lady Macbeth (1.7)
Lady Macbeth makes it clear that she will let nothing stand between her and the satisfaction of her desires

22. Lady Macbeth’s Ambition
“Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers… If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, for it must seem their guilt.” – Lady Macbeth (2.2)
She places the bloody daggers on the guards to take guilt off Macbeth when he can’t bear to go back and do it

23. Lady Macbeth’s Ambition
“Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus and hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep seat. The fit is momentary; upon a thought he will again be well. If much you note him, you shall offend him and extend his passion.” - Lady Macbeth (3.4)
Makes things up at the banquet to take attention away from Macbeth’s guilt and ‘save face’ - covers for Macbeth while he is freaking out about Banquo’s ghost

24. Destiny/chance
“This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good…If good, why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature? … If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir. ” – Macbeth (1.3)
The witches give Macbeth the idea he will be king – but he debates whether or not he should take it upon himself to make it happen rather than waiting for his ‘destiny’ to unfold

25. Destiny/chance
”But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail… What cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Duncan? What not put upon his spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt of our great quell?” – Lady Macbeth (1.7)
Lady Macbeth takes it on herself to make sure that Macbeth achieves his destiny of becoming King - Shouldn’t destiny make itself happen?

26. Destiny/chance
“Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there. Go, carry them, and smear the sleepy grooms with blood.” – Lady Macbeth (2.3)
Did Macbeth forget to leave the daggers on the guards because it is his destiny to fail?

27. Destiny/chance
“There’s blood upon thy face…'Tis better thee without than he within. Is he dispatched?” – Macbeth, to the muderer (3.4)
In the play there are many chance occurrences that could be the work of fate:
Murderers arriving to tell Macbeth about Banquo’s death immediate at the beginning of the banquet
Macduff arriving in the middle of the night to see the king
Fleance escaping

28. Violence and Masculinity
“Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty…” – Lady Macbeth(1.5)
Lady Macbeth asks to be rid of her femininity and to become a man in order that she can do cruel things

29. Violence and Masculinity
“When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man” (1.7)
Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband to do cruel acts by insisting that he can if he is manly enough

30. Violence and Masculinity
“Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men, as hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept all by the name of dogs. The valued file distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle…According to the gift which bounteous nature hath in him closed… And so of men. Now, if you have a station in the file, Not i' th' worst rank of manhood, say ’t…” – Macbeth (3.1)
In the same way that Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth, Macbeth convinces the murderers to kill Banquo by questioning their manhood

31. Violence and Masculinity
“Let’s make us med'cines of our great revenge, to cure this deadly grief… Dispute it like a man... Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief convert to anger. Blunt not the heart, enrage it.” – Malcolm (4.3)
When Macduff finds out that Macbeth has murdered his family, Malcolm encourages him to take the news in a ‘manly’ fashion by seeking revenge through violence