Themes
- Ambition
- “Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of no woman born, yet I will try at last.” 5.8. L, 30-33
Even though the prophecy was realised, Macbeth keeps fighting because
he believes that he can still win. ç
- “Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath. Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.” -Macduff 5.6. L, 9-10.
- Foreshadowing the end of the battle, Macduff is saying that there will be blood, and death.
The play’s conclusion itself (Macbeth and his wife dead at the hands of Macduff, the rightful king Malcolm being crowned...) sums up Shakespeare’s message on ambition’s danger.
- Fate and Free Will
- Bring me no more reports; let them fly all! / Till Burnam Wood remove to Dunsinane / I cannot taint with fear. - Macbeth, 5.3, lines 1-3
- Macbeth starts putting so much faith in the prophecies that he stops using his free will and judgement during the final battle. In fact, by trusting fate so much Macbeth secures it.
- Gender Roles
- “Why should I play the Roman fool, and die / On mine own sword? While I see lives, the gashes / Do better upon them.” -Macbeth, 5.8, 1-3
Here, Macbeth is trying to appear strong by fighting against the Scottish thanes instead of killing himself- which is what Lady Macbeth did. Here, Macbeth is implicitely reinforcing the gender role that the man is strong while the woman is weak and unable to handle stress or bear a cross.
- We might have met them dareful, beard to beard, and the beat them backward home. 5.5 7-8
In the play Macbeth is confident that he is able to withstand any siege from Malcolm's forces. As a man, you are expected to be strong. Macbeth was not willing to give up his position as king despite the death of his wife. Macduff eventually kills Macbeth and he then becomes the new king.
- Reality and Illusion
- Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. - Macbeth, 5.6, 24-26
- Macbeth is calling life itself an illusion, as if it is devoid of meaning. It is as if Macbeth is requestioning everything he’s done up until this point of the play to make his life better, to make himself more powerful etc.
- “Then fly, false thanes…” -Macbeth, 5.3, 7
- In Macbeth’s perspective, Angus and Macduff etc are all traitors for disobeying him while the opposite is true in the thanes’ perspective since Macbeth killed Duncan. It shows the objectiveness of reality in Macbeth, both supernatural and actual.
- Violence
- “Tyrant, show thy face! / If though be’st slain and with no stroke of mine, / My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still.” - Macduff, 5.7, 14-16
- Shows how violence comes full-circle in Macbeth and how the play’s characters seem to crave it.
- “Fare you well. / Do we but find the tyrant’s power tonight, / Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.” - Siward, 5.7, 6-8
- The violence and desperation of the thanes and Scottish people in Act V show the extent of Macbeth’s tyranny as well as the way that violence comes full-circle within the play.
- “I have almost forgot the taste of fears: / The time has been, my senses would have cooled / To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of faire / Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir / As life were in’t. I have supped full with horrors. / Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, / Cannot once start me.” - Macbeth, 5.5, 9-14
- Macbeth is saying that he has seen so much violence that now he isn’t scared by just a scream: as if he’s become callous. It advances the theme of violence spawning violence.
Motifs
- Blood
- Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh! - Lady Macbeth, 53-55.
- Shows how Lady Macbeth is guilty.
‘’Yet who would have thought the old man [Macbeth] to have had so much blood in him?’’ 5.1. L, 42-43
- Blood meaning violence, and sin.
“My [Macbeth] soul is too much charged with blood of thine[Macduff] already.”
5.8. L, 5-6.
Macbeth is troubled by the guilt of killing Macduff’s family.
- Sleep
- Let I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds. Doctor, 62-63
The doctor explains that Lady Macbeth could still die peacefully even though she is sleepwalking
- -The Queen, my lord, is dead. -She should have died hereafter. 5.5. 16-17
A woman’s cry is heard, and Seyton appears to tell Macbeth that his wife is dead.
- Macbeth always talked about Duncan as if he were sleeping as opposed to dead, and interestingly his wife’s last onstage appearance before death is sleepwalking.
- Visions
- “Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One: two: why, then ‘tis time to do ‘t.” -Lady M., 5.1, 38-39
- Lady Macbeth hallucinates as she sleepwalks, showing her guilty conscience.
- Prophecy
- Macbeth relies heavily on the prophecies pronounced by the Weird Sisters during the final battle
- Fear not , till birnam wood do come to Dunsinane! And now a wood comes toward Dunsinane - Macbeth 5.6 44-45
- Macbeth sees the Birnam wood reason high on Dunsinane hill which is one of the prophecies.
- Weather
- Children
Young Siward dying
- I would not wish them a fairer death: And so his knell is knolled - Siward 5.8 48-49
Siward says his son was killed in a very respectable way while trying to defeat Macbeth. He departed well and settled his account.
