The idea in this video is that I'm going to give you 12 events in the play. They're all going to be in chronological order. And if you learn something about each of these 12, you will be able to answer any single question at top grade. level. The play starts off with the most important event about Macbeth's character and it is the rebellion against Scotland.
Not only are the Norwegians invading but Scotland is also some of the Scottish nobles have sided with the Norwegians. We find out that Macbeth has killed the rebel Scottish leader, Macdonald, and the way he has killed him tells us a huge amount. So the sergeant tells us that Macbeth shook hands and bade farewell to Macdonald, but not until he had unseen.
him from the nave the navel to the chops or the chaps the chin so he'd sliced him open from his belly button all the way up to here and then he'd shaken hands with him and said goodbye mate although he's not australian but you get the idea he is the master of a one-liner he's really enjoyed this moment it has been a personal killing you can't do this to somebody at length it would involve a dagger and it would have been personal. This tells us not only that Macbeth is a fantastic warrior, not only that he is fearless, but that he absolutely revels in killing. At the beginning he is a hero because that killing is on behalf of his king and his country. But that quote shows us what his true hamartia his true weakness is he absolutely really enjoys what he does now when we get to the prophecies you're going to have to say to yourself well how much of the desire to kill king duncan is in order for him to become king versus how much is his innate desire to kill so to answer that question we go to episode number two Two, the meeting with the witches.
Now, you already know that the witches are in the play in order to flatter King James and his obsession with witchcraft. But consider this, the witches never tell Macbeth what to do. They don't say, in order to become king, you've got to kill King Duncan.
They just say, you're going to become king. They don't say, in order to become Thane of Cawdor, he has to kill the Thane of Cawdor. Instead, they just say, you'll become Thane of Cawdor.
And of course, what happens? He finds out straight away, almost, that he is the Thane of Cawdor. And so logic would dictate, hmm, the witches made this prophecy about me becoming Thane of Cawdor, and now suddenly I am. Well, that's just fate taking over.
I'm going to be all right. These witches are giving me fantastic news. But no, that isn't the immediate thought in Macbeth's head. Instead, his mind turns immediately to murder, even though the witches have just shown him murder isn't necessary for a prophecy to come true. So Macbeth says to himself, why?
Why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair? So he's like looking at his own decision making and thinking. Look, Macbeth, the witches are literally just showing you that fate will take care of you becoming king. Why, oh why, are you suddenly thinking about becoming king?
This is Shakespeare telling us what's wrong with Macbeth. The next idea that Macbeth has is, well, if chance may have me king, so if fate is going to make him king anyway, chance may crown me without my stir. I don't have to do anything.
So this is super important because most of you will have been taught that the reason that Beth turns to murder is ambition and that's not necessarily so. You can argue that his ambition is so immediate that he can't wait to become king and because he can't wait then he thinks about murder. So you can argue that but later I'm going to show you why that is not the case. the best argument. Then we have this marvelous moment when he decides to write to Lady Macbeth.
Now the first thing we have to ask ourselves is why on earth does he write the letter in the first place. The letter of course tells about the witch's prophecies, calls his wife my dearest partner in greatness and he talks about the greatness that is promised thee. So he doesn't say to her, look, I'm going to become king. No, no.
He says, the main thing about this is that you are going to become queen. Macbeth understands Lady Macbeth's ambition is greater than his own ambition. Now that we know that, let's think about why he's written to her.
If we look at the staging, we can see that Macbeth arrives just after she's written to her. after Lady Macbeth has read the letter. In other words, the messenger delivering it has ridden like crazy ahead of Macbeth to get the letter there first. Why?
Macbeth can deliver that news in person, easy peasy. It's gonna be instant communication. But he doesn't want that.
He wants Lady Macbeth to think through a plan. How is her ambition to be queen going? to be realized he has this psychological understanding of her you've probably been taught that she is the one with the psychological understanding of Macbeth that she is the one who manipulates him but the letter tells us that is topsy-turvy that is not so he is exploiting his psychological knowledge of her to get her help because he knows he can't kill Duncan himself.
As I'll show you in a minute he doesn't have enough drive to get him to kill Duncan despite his ambition. Now another quote that you need to use to show that Lady Macbeth doesn't have this deep psychological understanding of her husband is her reaction when she asks to be unsexed. She says she needs this power of cruelty to be filled from the toe to the crown top full of direst cruelty because of what Macbeth is missing.
Macbeth is too full of the milk of human kindness. Now what did we learn about Macbeth at the very beginning? That he revels in killing. He takes real pleasure not just in defending his country but in this sense of humor that he can use with these one-liners as he dispatches Macdonald.
This is not by any any assessment it's impossible to say that this is a man who is full of the milk of human kindness. It makes no sense at all and so her assessment of him is clearly and completely wrong. That is one of the reasons why her assessment of herself is going to be completely wrong. Remember, she's going to say to Macbeth, yep, let me plan the murder, put all this night's great business in my dispatch, and then, of course, she pulls out. of it because Duncan looks like her father.
Later on she thinks there is no problem with bloodshed, with murder. She talks about blood just being painted fears. She doesn't believe that Banquo can scare me.
Macbeth when he's dead. She takes a completely practical view. She doesn't think that the imagination and guilt is going to play any part in her life. But we get to the sleepwalking scene and we find out she's consumed by guilt so much that she commits suicide. And so rather than this being just a divine punishment, it's actually something she's brought on herself because she simply doesn't have good.
psychological insight she doesn't understand her husband and she doesn't understand herself that is why she ends up feeling so guilty and committing suicide now that diversion will help you write any essay on Lady Macbeth and it will get to grade 9 because nobody else is going to be writing that stuff unless they've watched this video so keep it on the down low okay now we come to our next incident which is the plan to kill Duncan. This is the one about ambition. So Macbeth says, I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls. falls on the other. Let's unpick this.
He's got the intent. What is it that he intends to do? Kill Duncan.
Brilliant. What's gonna make him kill Duncan in this metaphor are spurs. So you know what spurs are, they're on the boots of the rider.
And so Macbeth is his intent, he's got this ambition, and he says, this is not enough. My ambition is vaulting, it's going to make me leap towards killing Duncan. But is he going to succeed? No, he's going to overleap, and he's going to fall on the other side.
So he says, look, I've got this ambition, but if I... I just use ambition to kill Duncan, I am going to fail. My ambition is not enough.
And so we go back to the metaphor. If his ambition are his spurs, what is the rider going to be that's wearing those spurs? The rider is partly or wholly going to be Lady Macbeth. She's the one who is going to help him come.
over this hurdle so that they do not fail. That is the whole point of the discussion that he has with Lady Macbeth. She isn't the one who comes up with the plan to persuade him. She is the one who delivers the plan that he always wanted.
He manoeuvres her into giving him this plan and backing him. Let's go back to the letter. He called her my dearest partner of greatness. Think how unusual that would have been at the time in a patriarchal society where women were literally the property of their fathers and husbands.
Macbeth wipes all that patriarchal stuff away and he says to her, you and I are partners. We are equals. You and I alone in this society exist.
this way this is why we're gonna be so great Shakespeare also gives Macbeth a soliloquy just before he kills Duncan why is that important well in a soliloquy the character speaks their true feelings so we get a complete insight into Macbeth's mind so he's on his way this is the famous dagger speech you know is this a dagger I see before me it's handle turned towards my hand all that stuff so he doesn't mention Lady Macbeth one There isn't a single moment where he says I'm killing Macbeth in order to satisfy my wife. Like he doesn't even mention her name. There's nothing to do with her. In fact what he focuses on first because these are the first words is the dagger. What does this tell us?
He's in love with killing. It is the killing which excites him. As he goes through the soliloquy he then sees blood on the dagger.
Why? It's the blood. the blood that excites him.
We know that from the way that he killed Macdonald in such an up-close and personal way. This is the thrill for him. Yes, he will also become king and that plan is going to work, he believes, because his wife has come up with the practicalities of it.
How are we going to silence the grooms? We're going to drug them. How is Macbeth going to know that they're ready asleep and they won't wake up when he comes in to kill Duncan? Oh, she's going to have a signal. on the bell.
He's going to go in and kill them. How will he make sure that everybody thinks the grooms did it? Oh, he's going to use their daggers to kill Duncan, and then he's going to leave the daggers on their bodies covered in blood.
Whose plan? Lady Macbeth's. He trusts her plan. He knows that this plan will work, and if we jump forward in time, it does work. The thing that will go wrong is the killing of Banquo.
If they don't kill Banquo, and I'll show you in a minute, they don't kill Banquo, they get away with it, they become king and queen, no rebellion, everything's fine and dandy. Event number six is the way they both react to the murder. You can pick any number of reactions here, how Macbeth thinks he's murdered sleep, how Lady Macbeth calls him a coward, but all those things are secondary.
The most important question. quote here is what Macbeth says about himself to know my deed to a best not know myself this act of murder has confirmed to Macbeth the things about himself he would rather not admit yes on one level this is destroying the great chain of being this is an attack against God because he's killing the king who has been appointed by God that is shame Shakespeare's political message. Okay, but the psychological message also for Macbeth is he now can't have a story in which he is the hero of his own life. Why? Because he's given in to his innate desires to kill.
Not just that he's killed a king, but that he's filled with bloodlust, that this is his personality. He has this psychopathic attraction to spilling blood. And so he immediately regrets the killing and says, Wake Duncan with thy knocking, I wish thou couldst. Immediately he regrets what he's done.
He now has to admit what he's really like. Here's some grade 9 context for you to use if you can follow it. In a tragedy which comes to us, to Shakespeare, from Greek theatre, the hero is...
noble but they have one fatal flaw that's called their hamartia well we can see that's Macbeth he's been this hero saved the country he's got this one fatal flaw which I'm telling you is not ambition but his desire to kill if you want to go with ambition that's fine examiners love that teachers love that so he is if you like a typical Greek tragic hero except in Greek tragedy the hero gets this idea of what their fate is going to be and they do everything they can to avoid that fate. Macbeth is completely topsy-turvy. He is the opposite. He tries to reach his fate.
He knows that if he just waits he will be fated to become king but his hamartia is that he doesn't wait. He doesn't allow that fate to fulfill its self instead he takes agency power control he takes the decision to get there himself another reason this is important is Shakespeare is writing at a time when people have stopped believing that their lives are mapped out by their birth you know you go back 50 years from Shakespeare and you'll find that by and large people are born into their roles in life they follow the same careers as their parents. They wouldn't have the word careers, the same occupation. You're born to a blacksmith, you become a blacksmith.
You're born to a farmer, you become a farmer. You're born to a thatcher, you become a thatcher. Shakespeare was born to a glove maker and a wool farmer. What does he do? He doesn't farm sheep, he doesn't make gloves.
He completely changes his own destiny and Shakespeare isn't on his own. London is filling up with people. who are writing new ways of living not just metaphorically in living those new lives but also literally they're writing these plays which creates the theaters which didn't exist before you know Shakespeare's walking into theaters that are only 10 15 years old or sometimes one day old this is a boom industry it's completely new it's like when you take your Mickey out of your parents because they talk about a time when they didn't have mobile phones and there was no such thing as the internet.
Okay, this is a massive social revolution and Shakespeare is in the middle of it. Another quote that reveals bloodlust is Macbeth's real problem is his description of the dead Duncan. He talks about Duncan's silver skin laced with his golden blood.
So obviously we've got these precious metals, silver and gold, to symbolise... Duncan's royalty. But which bit is more important?
Duncan's blood. That's why it's golden. That symbolizes obviously how important Duncan is, but it also symbolizes what important to Macbeth not just becoming king but taking Duncan's blood he's obsessed with this image of blood we're going to come back to it later in the video now we come to number seven Macbeth's plan and to kill Banquo now Lady Macbeth also agrees that killing Banquo is a really good idea yes she says in them nature's patterns not eternal so she's saying to Macbeth look Banquo is not eternal why don't you kill him?
But he doesn't let Lady Macbeth plan this. Why not? Well, partly it's because he wants to protect her.
He says, be innocent of the knowledge, dearest Chuck. That's the psychological understanding he has about his wife. He knows that if she engages in the plan to kill Banquo she's gonna feel completely guilty about it and it could destroy her.
What reason would she have for feeling guilty? Well because it's not really connected to ambition. Let me explain.
Macbeth does not have to kill Banquo. The witches have just said that he's not going to become king but his sons will become kings so it's quite logical for him to live a really long time as king why would Macbeth think that because the witches said Banquo will not be a king yeah so that means Banquo is not going to kill Macbeth to become king and it also means that when Fleance becomes king that's got to be way into the future because Banquo is going to be too old or dead to become king himself. And so if he just waits, he knows that his fate is going to be pretty sweet. But instead, he thinks about murdering Banquo, so Banquo can't have any more children, and murdering Fleance.
Well, that's not ambition, is it? Macbeth's already king. If he kills Banquo and Fleance, that's not going to make him king for any longer.
The only reason he can come up with... is jealousy so he says the gods have put a barren scepter and a fruitless crown so he says the gods have put a fruitless crown upon his head and a barren scepter in his hands he's barren with no fruit in other words what the gods have done is they've said to him you're not going to have children mate and Macbeth believes that because his children have died we know that because they Lady Macbeth tells us about the child who has recently died. She's still got milk in her breast, but the child is dead. So we know he's acting out of grief and despair that he doesn't have any children.
And he's beginning to think he never will. They won't survive. This is why he has this metaphor of his fruitless crown and his barren sector.
And so it's simple jealousy that it's not his kids. who are going to become king, but Banquo's that makes him decide to kill both Banquo and Fleance. Well, what's the spur that's going to make him act on that jealousy to go from jealousy to murder?
You know it. He loves the killing. He loves the bloodlust. This is why when the murderers come back to tell him what they've done, they emphasize the blood, the 20 trenchant gashes on Banquo's face.
This is why we come to event number eight, Banquo's ghost. What does Macbeth focus on? Never shake thy gory locks at me.
Thou canst not say I did it. So first up, he focuses on the blood coming, rivulets running down Banquo's hair. It's the blood that catches his attention. attention because it is the blood that most fascinates him.
You can decide whether this is just a projection of Macbeth's imagination or whether the ghost actually appears but either way you're going to argue that it's the blood that draws him to Banquo's ghost. The next thing that happens is that he says thou canst not say I did it. Well none of the nobles at Caul... All at this feast know that that Beth has had Banquo killed. So who do they think he's talking about with blood all over his head?
You can't say I did it, obviously. They put two and two together and they make five, which turns out to be four, because the five is that Beth is confessing to killing Duncan and the four accidentally is, well, you're right, I'm not confessing that, but you got me. So from this moment...
this Turning point in the play, all the nobles now have a reason to question Macbeth, a legitimate reason to suspect him of killing Duncan and it's from this moment that the nobles start to desert him. So if we go back to the idea of a Greek tragedy, Macbeth has engineered his own destruction. This is the hamartia moment, this is when the fatal flaw leads to to his death.
If this moment hadn't happened, nobles wouldn't blame him for killing Duncan, he'd still be king. This is the moment when we find out his true hamartia. Well, what was it? It's that he loves killing, he loves the blood.
This is why everybody turns against him. So I'm actually going to skip the second meeting with the witches, although I do love the quote by the pricking of my thumbs. something wicked this way comes because it allows us to realize it's not the witches who are the most evil characters present. They are evil but they think that Macbeth is more wicked.
He is the one who is coming. So I love that because it gives me a great alternative perspective and it proves that Macbeth isn't driven by the witch's power. He's driven by his own evil which I'm saying is his addiction to killing and bloodlust. He decides he's going to kill Macduff and he decides that even when he's heard that Macduff has already gone to England.
Well what does he do with his bloodlust? He doesn't say alright I need a plan. He says well I can't kill Macduff I'll just kill his wife, I'll kill his children and then I'll kill everybody in his castle, everyone he's related to, everyone he ever cared about. kill the lot of them. Why?
Because you know it, he loves killing. And how he explains it to himself is, I am in blood stepped in so far that returning were as tedious as go over. So he's invented this metaphor of a river of blood and he says, look, I'm halfway through, so if I go back and stop killing, I'll have all those memories of the people I've killed.
well, I might as well just go and really enjoy myself, get to the other side of the river. Might be sweet over there. I'll just keep killing loads more people. And then, you know, I've got all these memories of all the ones I've killed so far. Adding more, it's not gonna cause any problem.
I'm already in this river of blood. And it won't be so tedious. It'll be more exciting. It'll be more thrilling if I keep murdering. Now, Shakespeare doesn't have to give him those lines, but he does it to point us to Macbeth's hamartia his motive for murdering duncan in the first place our next event is lady macbeth's sleepwalking and her mental illness so what's interesting here is macbeth thought he'd murdered sleep but actually he's sleeping really fine thank you and it's his wife who can't sleep it shows us once again his great psychological insight into his wife's state of mind he was right not to include her in the plan to kill Banquo, Lady Macbeth isn't just obsessed with the killing of Duncan, the thing that she's been guilty of, she's also incredibly upset about the later killings that Macbeth has carried out.
She recognizes that she's created or given license this monster who can't stop killing and that's why the smell of blood won't leave her hand. It's not just Duncan's blood it's the blood that Macbeth keeps spilling. This is why you she says the Thane of Fife had a wife, where is she now? Lady Macbeth now realizes that Macbeth isn't killing out of ambition, he's just killing indiscriminately because he loves it.
This could be another psychological reason why they are sleeping apart. She is now divorced from him in a metaphorical sense because he's not a man that she married, or at least. He's not the man she thought she married.
Macbeth of course knew himself better. She's the one who thought he was full of the milk of human kindness. She has been deluded about him all this time and now that she's seen what he's really done, she's been deluded about him.
really like, she can't cope. Macbeth, on the other hand, still loves his wife. Consider this, he's on the battlements and he knows the English are invading and he's getting ready for that invasion. And during that he hires a doctor to try and cure the psychological sickness of his wife. Then he brings the doctor up to him and said how does it go?
You know he cares passionately. his wife getting better. Now at this stage, and this is crucial, he also knows that the witches have lied to him.
He knows that there's no way he can survive. Why? Well he's a general and he can see too many of his lords with all their soldiers have deserted and gone to the English side so he knows there's absolutely no way that he's going to survive this and yet he wants his wife to be able to live on she can only live on if he cures her mental state soon she's going to have to live without him because he's going to die and what other evidence apart from mr. Sallis telling you we have that Macbeth knows he's going to die die well I love this quote about the witches he says infected be the air whereon they ride and damned all those that trust them so he knows that their prophecies are a complete lie before the audience see that play out in real time he's absolutely certain that he can't trust this idea of invincibility he knows it's hogwash now we come to his reaction action to the death of Lady Macbeth. This can be quoted to show that he doesn't care about her.
Out, out, brief candle could be interpreted as a moment where he just treats her life as insignificant, just like snuffing out a candle flame. She should have died hereafter can be seen as a throwaway line. Yeah, I'm happy for her to die.
Why did she have to do it now? I've got important things on my mind. But we've already seen that isn't his psychological state. Instead when he talks about the candle this is like a religious symbol. The light on the candle is used in Christian iconography and symbolism to suggest God's light.
Well obviously he's turned against God but what's he replaced that with? The worship of his wife. He worships her in a very real sense and that backs up the idea that he takes such supreme care of her or wants to as he's going into battle.
This proves his love. When she dies, he loses all interest in his own life. He decides to turn against God in a real way. He says, life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Well, who's the idiot in this metaphor?
It's not him. How do I know? know that?
Well because he talks about him living a script that someone else has written. He says I'm a poor player. Life's but a walking shadow.
A poor player that struts his life upon the stage. In other words when we're alive we're just playing the role of actors on a stage and our words and actions have already been written down. Who's written them?
Well obviously God. This is the idiot that Macbeth Beth is having a go at. He's saying God has created his own life, God has created the flaws in him and so God is ultimately responsible for Beth's fate.
Now obviously we can be deeply critical of this as a modern audience as well as a Christian audience at the time. So this turning against God automatically condemns him to hell. Obviously the audience don't need that, they've got plenty of reasons for condemning him to hell.
Not least he's killed the king who's been appointed by God in their belief but he is now not taking any responsibility for his own actions he's not saying yeah I brought this on myself if only I just killed Duncan I could have remained King Lady Macbeth could have remained Queen she wouldn't have gone mad I wouldn't have gone on this mad killing spree and more importantly the English wouldn't be invading me and I wouldn't be just about to lose my throne and my life but no he doesn't blame himself at all he just turns around and says everything I've done has been for absolutely nothing this is called nihilism it's a nihilistic view of life that life is ultimately pointless because it means that whether we do good or bad doesn't make any difference because there's no one to judge us at the end and there is no point to life other than the meaning we give it this is the point at which Macbeth decides is going to be Easier to die. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow brings on its petty pace. So all his future days seem utterly pointless and petty.
He'd rather end it now. Well, in a Roman tragedy, he would now kill himself. He'd do the honorable thing, kill himself to retain his status as a hero, even though a flawed one.
But Macbeth says, why should I? play the Roman fool and fall upon my sword so he takes this idea of classical heroism and rejects it completely he says no I'm not going to kill myself only an idiot would do that I am going to see how this story pans out I am the player on the stage the actor on the stage and I want to get to the end of the play to see how I'm going to die he doesn't believe he's going to escape death but he wants to know the ending how's it going to happen and this brings us to the fight with Macduff so Macbeth says to Macduff thou loosest labor in other words you're wasting your strength you're wasting your time this strongly suggests to us that they're mid-fight and Macbeth is clearly winning and then he's thinking oh god who the hell is going to kill me like you know how's this going to happen I want to know the end he's already killed Seward who is told you know I lead a charmed life you can't kill me Seward says I reckon I can and Macbeth goes go on then try it kill Seward and he's like who is not born a woman you know he's going around his castle show yourself I want to find this person who isn't born of a woman so Macduff turns around and says aha I wasn't born of a woman I was untimely ripped from my mother's womb and so Macbeth then says oh I'm full of fear. What's he afraid of?
They stop the fight to have this discussion. Macbeth says oh really, maybe I won't fight you then, I don't really want to be killed and Macduff says well if you're not killed you can surrender and we'll just parade you around the streets like a monster. So Macbeth's final words are a welcoming of death. He says lay on Macduff and damned be him who first cries hold enough.
so he knows it's going to end in death he knows it's going to be him and he's anxious to get there more quickly this means that he can die in battle possibly it means in the narrative that he can tell himself about his own life that he is going to die still a warrior still a hero in his own mind this of course is deeply ironic to Shakespeare's audience who see him as the anti-hero you And Shakespeare makes sure that we don't end the play there with this image of Macbeth seeing himself as a hero. So Shakespeare's parting words here is that Macbeth was a dead butcher, someone who just liked killing, not somebody who had this massive ambition to become king. That wasn't his fatal flaw.
It was that he enjoyed killing. The ambition is given To Lady Macbeth, she is described as the fiend-like queen. Now that's a really interesting assessment.
It tells us that in the view of Malcolm, Macbeth's hamartia was his wife. as well as his own bloodlust. It wasn't ambition, it was the desire to kill and it was fuelled by his wife's ambition, the fiend-like queen.
Now when you get to the end of the play you've got the choice of deciding whether this is a misogynistic view of Lady Macbeth or whether it's a patriarchal view that Shakespeare has brought into and you can also write about his perspective about the role of a king, how the whole play is about the king. play is in support of King James because King James is descended from Banquo and how it's a warning a cautionary tale towards the nobles not to think about rebellion or murdering the king. You will need that contextual information in order to write a really logical argument that gets top marks but the thing that this video helps you most with is understanding the psychology of the story. of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and the lack of influence of the witches in his decision making.
Those three things are going to superpower you towards a top grade. You only need 12 of those events, 12 of those quotes and you can get grade 9. If you want to see what a grade 9 essay on Macbeth looks like, luckily that's the video coming up next.