Exploring the Themes of Ambition, Guilt, and Supernatural Influence in Macbeth

so I've chosen these quotations because they're going to be the most useful ones to you they will fit the most themes the

most exam questions and the most characters Macbeth says I have no spur to prick the size of my intent save

vaulting ambition which leaps itself and falls on the other now here he's saying that he has got his intentions his

intent and they're not going to be enough his intent is like a horse that's going to Vault but when it lands it's

going to fall it's overreaching itself the jump is just too great and the only thing that's helping him control that

jump are Spurs these spurs are just his ambition that's not enough what do you need to wear the Spurs you need a rider

and so what Matt Beth is saying is he's not in control of this ambition the rider is of course Lady Macbeth so what

does this tell us about the supernatural it tells us that Macbeth has met the witches and that is still not enough to

make him kill Duncan he's already thinking it's going to fail they make him think about killing Duncan but

that's not enough to make his intent come to life his ambition is therefore not enough that the other major theme of

the play most teachers tell you that his fatal flaw is ambition not so his ambition is not enough he tells us in

his own words and we know he's been he's because it is a soliloquy and the convention is that you always tell the

truth in a soliloquy so ambition is not his hamartia yes it's his impulse but that isn't what makes him carry through

the murder it is however Lady Macbeth so we have an acknowledgment that Lady Macbeth is at least an equal partner in

the marriage this will allow us to say that his hamartia could perhaps be his love for his wife fair is foul and foul

is fair hover through the fog and filthy air a lovely easily remembered quotation which we can use in lots of ways let's

think about the supernatural here the witches just describe the weather they hint at their own power which may be to

fly through the fog on there but that's not made clear it introduces the perspective active of Duality or

appearance and reality where what seems fair is actually foul and what seems foul is actually Fair it's a world a

universe you can't trust that links to the whole idea that Duncan introduces us to that you can't read the man's

intentions from their face so he keeps appointing traitors the first thing of corridor and then he gets executed and

Duncan replaces him with another traitor who's actually going to kill him Macbeth who becomes a Thane of cordle this of

course links to the idea of Fate suggesting that Duncan's murder is inevitable or we can flip that the other

way and say gnome Beth could have avoided his fate now the reason this is contentious is that in Greek tragedy the

hero tries like anything to avoid their fate and they can't do it whatever they do to avoid the fate brings them closer

to that face in Macbeth the opposite is happening he can wait to be crowned King to which his prophecies are correct he's

going to become king anyway but because he doesn't wait he rushes towards his fate and Embraces it and that is his

tragedy it's actually the opposite of a Greek tragedy something that few people know but is a Grade 9 idea you can also

pick out the fricatives the repetition of the F sound we use that in our most popular swear word because to make a

fricative you bear your teeth that is a sign of aggression and that is why that word is so aggressive in sound it's not

a coincidence it's an evolutionary thing where we threaten the person listening to us by bearing our teeth as though

we're literally going to bite them and the so this conveys the violence of the witch's desires you can argue that the

witches are therefore much more sinister or you can flip that on its head and argue that the portrayal of the witches

is much more childlike they speak in trochaic tetrameter fair is foul and foul is fair hover through the thought

can't filthy air something not Sinister at all very childlike so if you want to you can say that Shakespeare

is walking a tightrope on the one hand portraying The Witches as supernaturally Sinister and on the other hand

undermining that belief by suggesting that they are just a childish fantasy who don't have any real power to control

Macbeth go back to our earlier quotation about his ambition remember the witches have worked on his mind but that is not

enough to make him kill Duncan and that brings us to another interpretation of this quotation and the witches in

general they never actually tell Macbeth to do anything evil they only prophesize the future or they lie to him by telling

him not to worry because you know the forest's not going to March up the hill and no man born of a woman is going to

kill you but they never actually tell him to do anything again another way that Shakespeare signals that Macbeth is

the person who is 100 responsible for his choice to start killing the King the regicide and for all the future murders

we can't blame the supernatural we can't blame the witches next we have Lady Macbeth out down spot out I say one two

white is time to do it hell is murky what need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account so there's

a lot to unpack in that quotation out damn spot reveals how she now realizes her soul is going to go to hell and she

wants to get rid of it obviously the spot of blood that she imagines in her hand represents her guilt and it is a

Christian guilt that she's now going to go to hell she comes back to this idea with hell is murky this links us back to

the filthy Air at the beginning that the witches mentioned that's why she carries a light around with her a taper that

symbolizes Christianity she is also the brains behind the operation she says look why should we be afraid of anyone

finding out because we're the ultimate power in the land no one can do anything about it if they do find out therefore

we will get away with the regicide now what's interesting about that of course is that she is wrong as soon as the

Nobles find out that Macbeth killed Duncan they start to turn on him when do they find that out you ask well when the

Beth sees the ghost of Banquo and starts ranting on about never shaking like gory locks at me and now cats not say I did

it who do they think he's talking about they don't know banquoise dead but they do know that Duncan's dead and they do

know that he was very bloody indeed they suspect Macbeth is confessing to killing Duncan the other interpretation of this

quotation about not fearing being discovered is it shows how powerful Lady Macbeth is in their marriage and it's

the logic of her argument that she now regrets remember in her sleepwalking scene she's going through the things all

the things that she regrets earlier what she's telling us is she thinks the most persuasive argument was this one about

being able to get away with it her tragedy is that she didn't realize how vulnerable she would be when she had

orchestrated this she didn't understand what would happen to her own mind so her ambition has been too great for her

that's caused this excessive grief she's asked for Supernatural help and Allied herself to the forces of evil hence the

hell references and so you can see how easy it is to link this quotation to numerous themes come spirits that tend

on Mortal Thoughts unsets me here fill me from the crown to the toe top full of diarist Cruelty so I love this quotation

because it's so famous we all latch on to the idea of being unsexed but what's really going on here is a rejection of

the patriarchy what she's saying is in order to succeed in this Society you have to be a man and the qualities of

manhood are cruelty Shakespeare is using this to suggest what kind of King King James should be he should be someone who

rejects cruelty remember King James has just been through the Gunpowder Plot and he could start executing plotters

everywhere James would have a license to start going out finding the Nobles who were catholic killing them taking their

lands but Shakespeare doesn't want him to do that he doesn't think that would be a good example of kingship cruelty

and kingship do not belong together and that is one message of the whole play Macbeth fails because he is a cruel

ruler not because he has killed Duncan in fact he would have got away with killing Duncan it starts to unravel when

he killed Banquo if we go into Shakespeare's Source material Holland sheds Chronicles we find out that the

real Macbeth got away with killing the real Duncan and that the real Banquo helped him do it to the real Macbeth was

able to stay as King of Scotland for quite a long time everybody knew he'd killed Duncan and they were perfectly

okay with it so Shakespeare has been quite manipulative with history in order to show King James what being a good

King looks like we can also use the quotation to show that women are excluded from power they only get power

through their relationships with men either their fathers or their husbands and so that encourages Lady Macbeth to

try to manipulate and control her husband so yes she acts evenly but Shakespeare is pointing out that the way

Society treats women they have to act in unfeminine ways if they're going to achieve power we can even extend that to

the witches who we're told look ugly they've got beards because what sort of woman would gain any status in society

in Shakespeare's time looking like that well they wouldn't women were valued for their appearance and their money and

that those two things would make them eligible to marry a man of higher status on their own they could achieve nothing

and so the witches are women who have been excluded from society and have therefore turned to each other and

towards evil the other thing that is uppermost on lady Macbeth's mind is that she has just lost her child not only is

she a grieving mother she's also a failed wife because she hasn't provided an heir to Macbeth this is how the

patriarchal society works and she's failed in that and therefore failed in her role in society and that's part of

the reason she chooses another Avenue to seek power and influence by becoming Queen by encouraging Macbeth to commit

regicide we can see that she's totally focused on becoming queen as the solution to her grief and her lack of

power because she talks about the crown the crown of the head is this bit but obviously she's fixating on the crown

that's going to sit there The Witches tell Banquo that he will be lesser than Macbeth yet greater not so happy yet

much happier he shall get Kings though he be none so number one this is flattery of King James it was believed

at the time that King James was a descendant Banquo and therefore by portraying bankroll as a noble figure in

the play who doesn't participate in the regicide Shakespeare is suggesting that King James comes from this Noble

ancestry even more importantly this Noble ancestry is chosen by God all the powers of evil work their way on Macbeth

they kill off Duncan and eventually they're going to kill off Malcolm and his line and then freons is going to

take over as though he's been appointed by God this plays into the idea of the divine right of kings that God chooses

who's going to be the next king and therefore the king is God's representative on Earth this ties into

the idea of the play being a warning to the Nobles not to try to overthrow King James because they'll be going against

God's divine plan and therefore they'll be punished driven in saying like Macbeth was and then punish with how in

the afterlife the other thing this does is it sets up Banquo as the antithesis to Macbeth in simplistic terms bankro

becomes the model of good behavior and Macbeth becomes the model of bad behavior for the watching Nobles

remember the play was first performed not at the Globe Theater but at St James's Palace for King James and all

the Nobles the play reminds them that the Gunpowder Plot was unsuccessful and suggests that any other plotting against

the king will also be unsuccessful and also end in tragedy for any Rebels the quotation reminds us of fair is foul and

foul is fair this idea of appearance versus reality this equivocation between what looks good and what looks bad again

you'll notice the witches don't actually tell bankro that he has to do anything it's just a prophecy about the future

but what they suggest thing is he is going to be much happier than Macbeth because he's not going to act on his

evil thoughts now that suggests the witches know that Macbeth won't be happy because he will act on those evil

thoughts in fact when he goes back to see the witches later on once he's King one of the witches says by the pricking

of my thumbs Something Wicked This Way Comes and that is Macbeth not the witches themselves so in their

perspective Macbeth is inherently evil and that also explains why he's easily persuaded by

his wife remember not the witches to kill Duncan the quotation in which Lady Macbeth talks about looking at her

babies smiling face and plucking its lips from her nipples and then dashing its brains out is intentionally horrific

on one level it's supposed to show that she has abandoned all sense of femininity she has rejected the

patriarchal roles and also her duty to provide children for her husband at a deeper level it shows us how much the

death of her baby has affected her it's led to this extreme level of violence which she is describing about the baby

but actually she wants Macbeth to inflict on Duncan it's a kind of Revenge killing this is what the world has done

to me it's taken my baby away and killed it and I now can no longer put it on my breast I'm still lactating my milk is

still there remember she asks her milk to be turned to Gaul so she's clearly a recent grief-stricken mother whose baby

has just died well interestingly who is God's representative on Earth in this Society it's the king the king is

divinely chosen according to the divine right of kings and so in her attack against God she attacks the king and

wants Tonkin killed obviously we can talk about the way she manipulates her husband here by suggesting that his

promise to her could never be broken it's even more important than a matter of life and death you can look at the

consonants of B's and D's to show how aggressive this imagery is which reflects her own aggression and also

suggests him at Beth the agree question that he must use in his actions to kill Duncan as always with Lady Macbeth we

can use the quotation to prove that she is a fiend-like queen inherently evil or that Society has made her evil so if our

only role or her main role in life is to provide heirs but her children can never survive because they don't have any

children and this must have happened therefore quite frequently then we can have a massive amount of sympathy for

her obviously that doesn't justify encouraging her husband to go and kill the king but it does throw into Focus

the terrible life of a woman there are so few things that you can succeed at and of course the death of children in

childbirth or soon after was incredibly common so Shakespeare is legitimately asking what kind of society is it that

forces women to Value themselves only on their appearance the person they're married to or their ability to have

children or you can flip that the other way around and say no Shakespeare is totally cool with that and lay them at

best problem is that she doesn't know her place and she exceeds the role of a woman and therefore she's rightly

punished you decide which way you want to go with it if you look at both quotations and weigh them up you're

bound to get top grades whichever way you tell the examiner you've decided out out brief candle life's but a walking

Shadow a poor player that struts his hour upon the stage and then it's heard no more life is a tale told by an idiot

full of Sound and Fury signifying nothing there's so much in this quotation notice out out how he's using

lady Macbeth's language of out damn spot echoing her language on the one hand shows that he is similarly evil but on

the other hand shows how closely they are attuned to each other it emphasizes his love for her interestingly the image

of light in the candle is a Christian image and Macbeth is suggesting that his love for his wife is more powerful than

his love for God again we can see that as indicative of his evil State turning away from God deserving Divine

punishment but on the other hand it is a true love story when he talks about life being a poor player the player means an

actor playing a part and here he's expressing his nihilistic view that life is pointless now let's think about the

play as a tragedy that is an exact idea about how tragedy works if Our Fate is already decided by God then it doesn't

matter what we do on Earth we don't really have free will we're just going to end up at the point that God has

dictate related therefore we are like actors working through a script that someone else has written for us and we

believe as we're performing that script that we're in charge but then at some point the veil is lifted we understand

that we haven't been in control fate or God has so again we could sympathize quite a lot with Macbeth here or we

could argue this is total self-deception he has written his own script he has taken all his own decisions which he

didn't have to take and therefore he is refusing to accept responsibility he's blaming God for his own mistakes

actually his actions have led to his wife feeling tremendous guilt and then committing suicide he doesn't want to

face up to that and therefore he blames the scriptwriter not him not her but God Shakespeare's audience would have seen

this as deeply ironic because he's been acting on his own free will and that's what's led to the tragedy of course they

would also have enjoyed the dark humor of this moment What's the dark humor well the actor playing Macbeth is

actually strutting his hour on the stage he is actually performing someone else's script so underlying that is the idea

that maybe God has written our scripts maybe we're not fully in control of what happens to us and it's very easy

actually to look at the world and think am I really in charge of my destiny or is something else controlling what

happens to me I like to think of Shakespeare as sitting outside of that as a self-invented man he was only

supposed to be a glove maker back in Stratford following in his father's business but instead he's completely

reinvented himself as this hugely successful businessman in the theater World he's gone to London and started

writing plays something that hasn't been around and for more than 20 years so he's right on the cusp of a new

invention a new form of entertainment and a new class the self-made man who doesn't depend on where they were at

their birth for their own success before Shakespeare's time and if we went back 60 years the only way to improve your

social position was to join the church or to join the Army but your fate was decided by who your parents were

Shakespeare totally lived a different life and so we can imagine that he looks on Macbeth as somebody who could have

chosen differently could have had success in a different way the problem for Macbeth is that he has tried to

write his script in blood this of course is also a rejection of God all the audience would have been Christian and

so it turns them if they needed turning entirely against Macbeth they could understand his desire to kill Duncan and

become king but what they wouldn't be able to understand is how he then rejects God so to the Nobles at court

they could think yeah I could get rid of King James and get away with it who's going to call my power to account once

I'm made King but what they couldn't do then is think yeah but I won't have to go to hell and God won't punish me and

by introducing the theme of Christianity so fully in the play Shakespeare is also hoping to stop them acting on their own

desires choosing their own destinies by rising up against King James look like the innocent flower but be the serpent

under it this advice from Lady Macbeth comes straight out of Genesis in the Adam and Eve story Eve meets the serpent

who persuades her to eat the apple or the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil that she shouldn't eat God

has forbidden it however the serpent tempt her the serpent is Satan the devil and Eve is the one that the devil is

able to influence most remember in the play The Witches appear to influence Macbeth but when we get this image

Shakespeare is suggesting something different it's Lady Macbeth who inferences Macbeth just like Eve

influenced Adam just like the serpent influenced Eve this is quite a misogynistic interpretation of the Bible

but it was current at the time and was one that King James really favored in his own writings remember he wrote the

book demonology about Witchcraft and He suggests in that that women are much more evil than men and the proof is well

look how Eve behaved and we're all descended from Eve aren't we so that original sin shows us how evil women are

how open they are Temptation so Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a worse figure than Macbeth the other way of looking at

that of course is to suggest that Shakespeare doesn't really believe that he's just giving King James the view

that King James wants he's flattering King James just as he did by putting the witches into the play because these are

King James's beliefs and King James is the one paying the Moolah he is the one sponsoring Shakespeare he is the number

one dude in the land and Shakespeare is sucking up to the number one dude in the land

don't use that language in your exam though another way of ingratiating himself with King James that's the

technical term for sucking up is this very image King James had a medal produced to commemorate his victory over

the Gunpowder Plot and it showed a snake the plotters underneath the flower so this is a cool little reference that

would have delighted the king and would also have reminded the Nobles that the Catholic plotters were utterly

unsuccessful and therefore any future plots would also be as easy as that to unravel a little known quotation is what

Macbeth says after his wife has died I begin to be weary of the Sun and wish the estate of the world were now undone

we can use this to show that he utterly understands that he is going to die it means that he doesn't believe in the

super natural influence of the witches they give him all these prophecies about how he can never be killed but he knows

that the end is coming and his revenge isn't just to kill as many people as he can in battle it's to wish that the

whole world is undone he wants to destroy everything this suggests that his nihilism is actually childish it's a

childish impulse to want to destroy everything without thinking about the consequences Shakespeare is drawing the

parallel with any Nobles in the audience who want to get rid of King James your desire to become king he is telling them

is ultimately a childish desire symbolically to reject the sun is to reject God the son often symbolized God

in literature and paintings because it sits at the top of the sky just as God sits at the top of the heaven in

rejecting God Macbeth automatically rejects the whole world he wants the world to be on and done in other words

without your faith in God you are nothing the world is meaningless you will become nihilistic as Macbeth is

nihilistic the reason Shakespeare wants to emphasize the Christian faith here is if the Nobles emphasize their own

Christian faith they cannot kill the king who they believe or who are told to believe that the king is appointed by

God they'll certainly believe that their souls will go to hell and Macbeth has served as an example to show that going

against God will lead to punishment on Earth just as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are punished on Earth as well as

Eternal damnation and Punishment in hell you could argue that the extreme nature of this imagery I want to destroy the

whole world is a reflection of how guilty Macbeth now feels for what he's done he's not admitting his guilt he's

transposing those emotions onto other things his blame mean God is blaming the world but this is a childish refusal to

take responsibility for what he himself has done now if you want to understand how to weave your grade 9 understanding

of quotations into a Grade 9 essay this is the video to check out now if you've got the stamina you're bound

to get a grade nine I know I talk too much damn