Themes

Ambition drives the play, and destroys both Macbeths.

• Lady Macbeth says her husband is ‘not without ambition, but without / The illness should attend it’ (Act 1 Scene 5): he wants power but lacks the wickedness to grab it.
• Macbeth admits his only motive is ‘Vaulting ambition’ (Act 1 Scene 7), which leaps too far and falls.
• Once king, he is never satisfied. He needs Banquo dead too, then Macduff's family.

Shakespeare shows ambition that ignores right and wrong leading to fear, guilt and death. Macbeth gets everything he wanted and finds it worthless.

The play contrasts good kings with a tyrant.

• Duncan is generous and trusting, and rewards loyalty.
• Macbeth rules through fear and murder. Scotland suffers: Macduff cries, ‘Bleed, bleed, poor country!’ (Act 4 Scene 3).
• Malcolm lists the ‘king-becoming graces’ (Act 4 Scene 3), such as justice, truth and mercy, that a true king needs.
• Edward the Confessor, the English king, is said to heal the sick by his touch, a sign that God blesses a rightful king.

When Malcolm is crowned at the end, rightful rule returns and Scotland can heal.

Both Macbeths are tormented by guilt, but at different times.

• Macbeth feels it straight away: he hears a voice say ‘Macbeth does murder sleep’ (Act 2 Scene 2), and later his mind is ‘full of scorpions’ (Act 3 Scene 2). Banquo's ghost is a sign of his guilty conscience.
• Lady Macbeth seems untouched at first: ‘A little water clears us of this deed’ (Act 2 Scene 2). But in the end guilt breaks her. She sleepwalks, scrubbing at blood that isn't there: ‘Out, damned spot, out, I say!’ (Act 5 Scene 1).

Shakespeare suggests that a crime this unnatural cannot be hidden from the conscience, even if it is hidden from the world.

From the first scene, nothing is what it seems: ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (Act 1 Scene 1).

• Duncan admits ‘There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face’ (Act 1 Scene 4), just before trusting Macbeth.
• Lady Macbeth tells her husband to ‘Look like th' innocent flower, / But be the serpent under 't’ (Act 1 Scene 5).
• Macbeth agrees: ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know’ (Act 1 Scene 7).
• The witches' prophecies sound like promises but hide traps.

The theme warns the audience that evil often hides behind an honest face.

The play asks what it means to be a man.

• Lady Macbeth links manhood to violence: ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man’ (Act 1 Scene 7).
• Macbeth uses the same trick on the murderers, saying that ‘in the catalogue you go for men’ (Act 3 Scene 1), the way any breed of dog counts as a dog.
• Macduff offers a different idea. Told to take his grief like a man, he says, ‘I must also feel it as a man’ (Act 4 Scene 3).

Shakespeare seems to side with Macduff: real manhood includes feeling, not just killing.

Is Macbeth's fall his fate, or his own choice?

• Fate: the prophecies all come true, and the apparitions seem to know the future.
• Free will: Macbeth first hopes that ‘chance may crown me / Without my stir’ (Act 1 Scene 3), but then chooses to act. Banquo hears prophecies too, and chooses not to kill.
• Later Macbeth even challenges fate, calling it to fight him: ‘come fate into the list’ (Act 3 Scene 1).

Most readers decide the witches tempt, but Macbeth chooses. That is what makes him a tragic hero rather than just a victim.