Language and form

Shakespeare uses three ways of speaking:

• Blank verse: unrhymed lines of ten syllables with a da-DUM rhythm (iambic pentameter). Noble characters use it, such as Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Duncan and Banquo.
• Prose: ordinary speech without a regular rhythm. The comic Porter speaks prose, and so does Lady Macbeth when she sleepwalks, which shows her mind has broken.
• Rhyme: the witches chant in short rhyming lines with a different beat. Scenes often end with a rhyming couplet, such as ‘Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell’ (Act 2 Scene 1).

A change in the way a character speaks often shows a change in their state of mind.

Blood begins as a sign of honour and becomes a sign of guilt.

• At first the ‘bloody’ captain reports Macbeth's bravery in battle (Act 1 Scene 2).
• After the murder, Macbeth's hands are so bloody that ‘all great Neptune's ocean’ (Act 2 Scene 2) could not clean them.
• After seeing Banquo's ghost he says, ‘It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood’ (Act 3 Scene 4): murder leads to more murder.
• Lady Macbeth cannot wash the imaginary blood from her hands (Act 5 Scene 1).

The image follows the Macbeths through the play like a stain they cannot remove.

Sleep stands for innocence and peace. After the murder, Macbeth hears a cry: ‘Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep’ (Act 2 Scene 2). He never rests easily again, and Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep.

Darkness hides evil. Macbeth begs, ‘Stars, hide your fires’ (Act 1 Scene 4), and Lady Macbeth calls, ‘Come, thick night’ (Act 1 Scene 5). Before Banquo's murder Macbeth calls on ‘seeling night’ (Act 3 Scene 2) to blindfold the day.

By Act 5 the darkness has turned on Lady Macbeth: she must have a light by her all night.

Clothing images suggest that Macbeth's titles do not fit him.

When he is told he is Thane of Cawdor, he asks, ‘Why do you dress me / In borrowed robes?’ (Act 1 Scene 3).

By the end, a Scottish lord says he feels his title ‘Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief’ (Act 5 Scene 2). The crown is too big for the man who stole it.

The image shows that power gained by murder never truly belongs to Macbeth.

Shakespeare links good with the natural and evil with the unnatural.

• Duncan's murder upsets nature: an old man reports that a falcon ‘Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed’ (Act 2 Scene 4), a small bird of the night killing a powerful one, like Macbeth killing his king.
• Lady Macbeth asks spirits to stop ‘compunctious visitings of nature’ (Act 1 Scene 5), the natural feelings of pity.
• At the end nature fights back: Birnam Wood, carried as branches by Malcolm's army, comes to Dunsinane.