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Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Act 1, scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—Strange Garments:
At multiple points throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of clothing to explore themes of power and masculinity.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Ross and Angus address Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, disturbed that the Weird Sisters' prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, insists that the title does not belong to him:
Macbeth: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
Macbeth's metaphor implies that he views titles of political authority as items of clothing that can be worn, removed, and exchanged. Banquo reinforces this notion by remarking that new responsibilities, like new clothes, may fit uncomfortably at first:
Banquo: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.
In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth reasons that the honors Duncan has bestowed on him should be "worn" while still new. Lady Macbeth retorts with a clothing metaphor of her own, criticizing Macbeth for his cowardice, and likening his earlier willingness to kill Duncan to a drunkard's clothes:
Macbeth: He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Following the discovery of Duncan's murder in Act 2, Scene 3, Banquo advises the thanes to get dressed before any further discussion takes place:
Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet
Banquo's comment about "naked frailties" likens emotional vulnerability to a state of physical undress. Macbeth orders the thanes to "briefly put on manly readiness," suggesting that he views both courage and masculinity as costumes that can be taken off as easily as they are put on.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth goes to be invested at Scone, where he is dressed in coronation robes and crowned to symbolize his transition from thane to king. In Act 2, Scene 4, Macduff uses yet another clothing metaphor to suggest that this transition may not go smoothly:
Macduff: Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new.
As the play continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Macbeth is ill-suited to the role and title of king. In Act 5, Scene 2, Cathness uses the metaphor of a belt to imply that Macbeth has lost control of his country:
Cathness: He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus responds by likening Macbeth to a dwarf wearing a giant's robe:
Angus: Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Like a man wearing clothes that are too large for him, Macbeth is unable to handle the massive responsibility of ruling Scotland. Duncan, a "giant," was able to do it, but Angus suggests that Macbeth is a "dwarf" who cannot hope to wear his predecessor's robe.
As the invading English troops draw near, Macbeth grows increasingly vulnerable. In Act 5, Scene 3, he demands that Seyton bring him his armor, even though it is not yet needed. At this point, Macbeth is still convinced that the Weird Sisters' prophecies make him invincible, so he has no need to protect his physical body—instead, the armor provides him with a sense of emotional security.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Seeds and Roots:
Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of seeds and roots to illustrate themes of kingship and lineage. Duncan's use of imagery in Act 1, Scene 4, for example, suggests that he views Scotland as a kind of vast garden, with himself as the caretaker:
Duncan: I have begun to plant thee and will labor
To make thee full of growing.
Malcolm echoes his father's wording when he first addresses the Scottish lords as their king in Act 5, Scene 11:
Malcolm: What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time
While Duncan and Malcolm seek to cultivate loyal subjects and make their country flourish, Macbeth is characterized as an inadequate caretaker. In Act 4, Scene 3, Malcolm laments that Scotland "sinks beneath the yoke," likening Macbeth to a plowman who overburdens his oxen. In Act 5, Scene 2, Lennox uses plant imagery to draw a sharp contrast between Malcolm and Macbeth's approaches to rule:
Lennox: Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
While Malcolm represents life and prosperity, Macbeth is a bothersome interloper who threatens to choke out the plants growing in the garden that is Scotland.
Shakespeare also associates seeds and roots with the theme of lineage. The play's first mention of seeds comes in Act 1, Scene 3, when Banquo speaks to the witches:
Banquo: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not
The Weird Sisters respond by prophesying that Banquo's children will be kings, linking the image of growing grain to patrilineal inheritance. Banquo continues this motif in Act 3, Scene 1 by imagining himself as the "root and father" of a thriving family tree. Later in the same scene, Macbeth echoes this figurative language to express the jealousy he feels toward his friend. While Banquo has a son and is prophesied to become the ancestor of many kings, Macbeth has no children to carry on his name or his bloodline:
Macbeth: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth bitterly remarks that he has not committed the ultimate act treason for his own sake but to make "the seeds of Banquo kings." This comment, along with his preoccupation with his own "barren scepter," indicates that Macbeth feels threatened and also emasculated by Banquo's superior reproductive ability.
Related Themes:
Act 1, scene 4
Explanation and Analysis—Seeds and Roots:
Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of seeds and roots to illustrate themes of kingship and lineage. Duncan's use of imagery in Act 1, Scene 4, for example, suggests that he views Scotland as a kind of vast garden, with himself as the caretaker:
Duncan: I have begun to plant thee and will labor
To make thee full of growing.
Malcolm echoes his father's wording when he first addresses the Scottish lords as their king in Act 5, Scene 11:
Malcolm: What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time
While Duncan and Malcolm seek to cultivate loyal subjects and make their country flourish, Macbeth is characterized as an inadequate caretaker. In Act 4, Scene 3, Malcolm laments that Scotland "sinks beneath the yoke," likening Macbeth to a plowman who overburdens his oxen. In Act 5, Scene 2, Lennox uses plant imagery to draw a sharp contrast between Malcolm and Macbeth's approaches to rule:
Lennox: Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
While Malcolm represents life and prosperity, Macbeth is a bothersome interloper who threatens to choke out the plants growing in the garden that is Scotland.
Shakespeare also associates seeds and roots with the theme of lineage. The play's first mention of seeds comes in Act 1, Scene 3, when Banquo speaks to the witches:
Banquo: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not
The Weird Sisters respond by prophesying that Banquo's children will be kings, linking the image of growing grain to patrilineal inheritance. Banquo continues this motif in Act 3, Scene 1 by imagining himself as the "root and father" of a thriving family tree. Later in the same scene, Macbeth echoes this figurative language to express the jealousy he feels toward his friend. While Banquo has a son and is prophesied to become the ancestor of many kings, Macbeth has no children to carry on his name or his bloodline:
Macbeth: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth bitterly remarks that he has not committed the ultimate act treason for his own sake but to make "the seeds of Banquo kings." This comment, along with his preoccupation with his own "barren scepter," indicates that Macbeth feels threatened and also emasculated by Banquo's superior reproductive ability.
Related Themes:
Act 1, scene 5
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Milk and Blood:
In Macbeth, milk and blood are both motifs that combine to represent the upholding and sundering of kinship bonds. At one point, Malcolm refers to the "sweet milk of concord," and when milk is mentioned, it is often associated with motherhood and used to symbolize compassion, family, and unity. In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth will be unable to commit an act as ruthless as murder because he is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness," metaphorically linking milk to feelings of care and compassion for others. Lady Macbeth again refers to milk when she calls on supernatural forces to purge her of her femininity:
Lady Macbeth: Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall
In other words, Lady Macbeth wishes to trade her feminine and nurturing qualities for something more destructive. In Act 1, Scene 7, she shows just how far she is willing to go:
Lady Macbeth: I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, [...]
Although Lady Macbeth is aware of how fulfilling motherhood can be, she claims that she is willing to kill her own child for the sake of ambition.
While milk is associated with the bond between mother and child, blood is used to represent kinship bonds between men. In Act 2, Scene 3, Macbeth uses a metaphor to refer to Duncan's and his sons' bloodline as a "fountain" that has been "stopped":
Macbeth: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopped; the very source of it is stopped.
Macbeth is responsible for the murder of Macduff's children, who should have continued their father's bloodline, so this metaphor underscores the idea of interruption—by killing Macduff's children, he has stopped the flow of Duncan's bloodline. As a result, in Act 5, Scene 10, Macbeth considers himself to be metaphorically stained with Macduff's blood:
Macbeth: My soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Since Macbeth has no children of his own, blood from his perspective comes to represent violence rather than kinship bonds. In Act 4, Scene 1, he refers to acts of violence as his "firstborn," since he has no heirs to carry on his bloodline:
Macbeth: From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.
By transforming blood from a symbol of kinship to a symbol of mere violence, Shakespeare seems to be commenting that, by purging himself of his feminine "milk of human kindness," Macbeth has also lost his masculine generative force.
Related Themes:
Act 1, scene 6
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Act 1, scene 7
Explanation and Analysis—Strange Garments:
At multiple points throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of clothing to explore themes of power and masculinity.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Ross and Angus address Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, disturbed that the Weird Sisters' prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, insists that the title does not belong to him:
Macbeth: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
Macbeth's metaphor implies that he views titles of political authority as items of clothing that can be worn, removed, and exchanged. Banquo reinforces this notion by remarking that new responsibilities, like new clothes, may fit uncomfortably at first:
Banquo: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.
In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth reasons that the honors Duncan has bestowed on him should be "worn" while still new. Lady Macbeth retorts with a clothing metaphor of her own, criticizing Macbeth for his cowardice, and likening his earlier willingness to kill Duncan to a drunkard's clothes:
Macbeth: He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Following the discovery of Duncan's murder in Act 2, Scene 3, Banquo advises the thanes to get dressed before any further discussion takes place:
Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet
Banquo's comment about "naked frailties" likens emotional vulnerability to a state of physical undress. Macbeth orders the thanes to "briefly put on manly readiness," suggesting that he views both courage and masculinity as costumes that can be taken off as easily as they are put on.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth goes to be invested at Scone, where he is dressed in coronation robes and crowned to symbolize his transition from thane to king. In Act 2, Scene 4, Macduff uses yet another clothing metaphor to suggest that this transition may not go smoothly:
Macduff: Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new.
As the play continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Macbeth is ill-suited to the role and title of king. In Act 5, Scene 2, Cathness uses the metaphor of a belt to imply that Macbeth has lost control of his country:
Cathness: He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus responds by likening Macbeth to a dwarf wearing a giant's robe:
Angus: Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Like a man wearing clothes that are too large for him, Macbeth is unable to handle the massive responsibility of ruling Scotland. Duncan, a "giant," was able to do it, but Angus suggests that Macbeth is a "dwarf" who cannot hope to wear his predecessor's robe.
As the invading English troops draw near, Macbeth grows increasingly vulnerable. In Act 5, Scene 3, he demands that Seyton bring him his armor, even though it is not yet needed. At this point, Macbeth is still convinced that the Weird Sisters' prophecies make him invincible, so he has no need to protect his physical body—instead, the armor provides him with a sense of emotional security.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Literary Allusions:
Macbeth contains several literary allusions. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth makes a reference to the proverb of the cat that wished to eat fish but refused to wet its feet:
Lady Macbeth: Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”
Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?
Lady Macbeth's reference is anachronistic, since the proverb, attributed to 16th-century English playwright John Heywood, would certainly not have been known to the population of medieval Scotland. This reference is also Macbeth's only allusion to a specific work of literature (other than its biblical allusions). Other literary allusions come in the form of general references to theater and the nature of storytelling.
In Act 2, Scene 4, for example, Ross compares the earth to a stage and life to an act of theatrical performance:
Ross: Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threatens his bloody stage.
In Act 5, Scene 5, Macbeth echoes Ross's words by portraying humans as "players" and the world as a stage:
Macbeth: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In this passage, Shakespeare draws a parallel between the act of living and the act of reading. Time, like a word or a sentence, is composed of "syllables," and life, as Macbeth suggests in his usage of the alliterative phrase "petty pace," can be as repetitive and monotonous as language. Shakespeare even alludes to his own role as a playwright by depicting God as a storyteller narrating the "tale" of life.
Explanation and Analysis—Disease and Medicine:
Macbeth is filled with references to both physical and psychological illness. The motif of disease often represents the inner turmoil of characters warped by ambition, while the motif of medicine is associated with political order.
Throughout Macbeth, drunkenness is a common source of illness. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth's reluctance to murder Duncan by comparing him to a drunkard who, upon waking up with a hangover, regrets the actions of the night before:
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
In Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth hallucinates the image of a bloody dagger and wonders if his inability to accurately perceive reality is the result of some kind of mental disturbance:
Macbeth: Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
Following Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth attributes Macbeth's auditory hallucinations to mental distress and chastises him for being "brainsickly," and Macbeth later explains his reaction to seeing Banquo's ghost by claiming to have a "strange infirmity." As the doctor in Act 5, Scene 1 observes, the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's ambition have driven them to the point of psychological illness:
Doctor: Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.
In Act 5, Scene 3, the doctor explains to Macbeth that, while earthly medicine can cure physical ailments, it cannot treat emotional disturbances:
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
Although medicine may not be able to cure Lady Macbeth's psychological illness, it may be able to treat the metaphorical disease that afflicts Scotland. Macbeth personifies Scotland as a person suffering from illness and asks the doctor to diagnose the ailment and devise an antidote:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
While Macbeth perceives the English invasion as the source of Scotland's troubles, other characters view Macbeth himself as the disease. Malcolm invades Scotland with the help of Edward the Confessor, who in Act 4, Scene 3 is revealed to have supernatural healing powers, implying that his rule, unlike Macbeth's, is divinely sanctioned. Regardless of who or what is considered to be plaguing Scotland, though, the play clearly leans heavily on the motif of disease to metaphorically illustrate the ways in which the country is suffering.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Milk and Blood:
In Macbeth, milk and blood are both motifs that combine to represent the upholding and sundering of kinship bonds. At one point, Malcolm refers to the "sweet milk of concord," and when milk is mentioned, it is often associated with motherhood and used to symbolize compassion, family, and unity. In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth will be unable to commit an act as ruthless as murder because he is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness," metaphorically linking milk to feelings of care and compassion for others. Lady Macbeth again refers to milk when she calls on supernatural forces to purge her of her femininity:
Lady Macbeth: Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall
In other words, Lady Macbeth wishes to trade her feminine and nurturing qualities for something more destructive. In Act 1, Scene 7, she shows just how far she is willing to go:
Lady Macbeth: I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, [...]
Although Lady Macbeth is aware of how fulfilling motherhood can be, she claims that she is willing to kill her own child for the sake of ambition.
While milk is associated with the bond between mother and child, blood is used to represent kinship bonds between men. In Act 2, Scene 3, Macbeth uses a metaphor to refer to Duncan's and his sons' bloodline as a "fountain" that has been "stopped":
Macbeth: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopped; the very source of it is stopped.
Macbeth is responsible for the murder of Macduff's children, who should have continued their father's bloodline, so this metaphor underscores the idea of interruption—by killing Macduff's children, he has stopped the flow of Duncan's bloodline. As a result, in Act 5, Scene 10, Macbeth considers himself to be metaphorically stained with Macduff's blood:
Macbeth: My soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Since Macbeth has no children of his own, blood from his perspective comes to represent violence rather than kinship bonds. In Act 4, Scene 1, he refers to acts of violence as his "firstborn," since he has no heirs to carry on his bloodline:
Macbeth: From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.
By transforming blood from a symbol of kinship to a symbol of mere violence, Shakespeare seems to be commenting that, by purging himself of his feminine "milk of human kindness," Macbeth has also lost his masculine generative force.
Related Themes:
Act 2, scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Disease and Medicine:
Macbeth is filled with references to both physical and psychological illness. The motif of disease often represents the inner turmoil of characters warped by ambition, while the motif of medicine is associated with political order.
Throughout Macbeth, drunkenness is a common source of illness. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth's reluctance to murder Duncan by comparing him to a drunkard who, upon waking up with a hangover, regrets the actions of the night before:
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
In Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth hallucinates the image of a bloody dagger and wonders if his inability to accurately perceive reality is the result of some kind of mental disturbance:
Macbeth: Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
Following Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth attributes Macbeth's auditory hallucinations to mental distress and chastises him for being "brainsickly," and Macbeth later explains his reaction to seeing Banquo's ghost by claiming to have a "strange infirmity." As the doctor in Act 5, Scene 1 observes, the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's ambition have driven them to the point of psychological illness:
Doctor: Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.
In Act 5, Scene 3, the doctor explains to Macbeth that, while earthly medicine can cure physical ailments, it cannot treat emotional disturbances:
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
Although medicine may not be able to cure Lady Macbeth's psychological illness, it may be able to treat the metaphorical disease that afflicts Scotland. Macbeth personifies Scotland as a person suffering from illness and asks the doctor to diagnose the ailment and devise an antidote:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
While Macbeth perceives the English invasion as the source of Scotland's troubles, other characters view Macbeth himself as the disease. Malcolm invades Scotland with the help of Edward the Confessor, who in Act 4, Scene 3 is revealed to have supernatural healing powers, implying that his rule, unlike Macbeth's, is divinely sanctioned. Regardless of who or what is considered to be plaguing Scotland, though, the play clearly leans heavily on the motif of disease to metaphorically illustrate the ways in which the country is suffering.
Related Themes:
Act 2, scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Act 2, scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—Strange Garments:
At multiple points throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of clothing to explore themes of power and masculinity.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Ross and Angus address Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, disturbed that the Weird Sisters' prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, insists that the title does not belong to him:
Macbeth: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
Macbeth's metaphor implies that he views titles of political authority as items of clothing that can be worn, removed, and exchanged. Banquo reinforces this notion by remarking that new responsibilities, like new clothes, may fit uncomfortably at first:
Banquo: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.
In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth reasons that the honors Duncan has bestowed on him should be "worn" while still new. Lady Macbeth retorts with a clothing metaphor of her own, criticizing Macbeth for his cowardice, and likening his earlier willingness to kill Duncan to a drunkard's clothes:
Macbeth: He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Following the discovery of Duncan's murder in Act 2, Scene 3, Banquo advises the thanes to get dressed before any further discussion takes place:
Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet
Banquo's comment about "naked frailties" likens emotional vulnerability to a state of physical undress. Macbeth orders the thanes to "briefly put on manly readiness," suggesting that he views both courage and masculinity as costumes that can be taken off as easily as they are put on.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth goes to be invested at Scone, where he is dressed in coronation robes and crowned to symbolize his transition from thane to king. In Act 2, Scene 4, Macduff uses yet another clothing metaphor to suggest that this transition may not go smoothly:
Macduff: Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new.
As the play continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Macbeth is ill-suited to the role and title of king. In Act 5, Scene 2, Cathness uses the metaphor of a belt to imply that Macbeth has lost control of his country:
Cathness: He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus responds by likening Macbeth to a dwarf wearing a giant's robe:
Angus: Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Like a man wearing clothes that are too large for him, Macbeth is unable to handle the massive responsibility of ruling Scotland. Duncan, a "giant," was able to do it, but Angus suggests that Macbeth is a "dwarf" who cannot hope to wear his predecessor's robe.
As the invading English troops draw near, Macbeth grows increasingly vulnerable. In Act 5, Scene 3, he demands that Seyton bring him his armor, even though it is not yet needed. At this point, Macbeth is still convinced that the Weird Sisters' prophecies make him invincible, so he has no need to protect his physical body—instead, the armor provides him with a sense of emotional security.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Milk and Blood:
In Macbeth, milk and blood are both motifs that combine to represent the upholding and sundering of kinship bonds. At one point, Malcolm refers to the "sweet milk of concord," and when milk is mentioned, it is often associated with motherhood and used to symbolize compassion, family, and unity. In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth will be unable to commit an act as ruthless as murder because he is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness," metaphorically linking milk to feelings of care and compassion for others. Lady Macbeth again refers to milk when she calls on supernatural forces to purge her of her femininity:
Lady Macbeth: Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall
In other words, Lady Macbeth wishes to trade her feminine and nurturing qualities for something more destructive. In Act 1, Scene 7, she shows just how far she is willing to go:
Lady Macbeth: I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, [...]
Although Lady Macbeth is aware of how fulfilling motherhood can be, she claims that she is willing to kill her own child for the sake of ambition.
While milk is associated with the bond between mother and child, blood is used to represent kinship bonds between men. In Act 2, Scene 3, Macbeth uses a metaphor to refer to Duncan's and his sons' bloodline as a "fountain" that has been "stopped":
Macbeth: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopped; the very source of it is stopped.
Macbeth is responsible for the murder of Macduff's children, who should have continued their father's bloodline, so this metaphor underscores the idea of interruption—by killing Macduff's children, he has stopped the flow of Duncan's bloodline. As a result, in Act 5, Scene 10, Macbeth considers himself to be metaphorically stained with Macduff's blood:
Macbeth: My soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Since Macbeth has no children of his own, blood from his perspective comes to represent violence rather than kinship bonds. In Act 4, Scene 1, he refers to acts of violence as his "firstborn," since he has no heirs to carry on his bloodline:
Macbeth: From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.
By transforming blood from a symbol of kinship to a symbol of mere violence, Shakespeare seems to be commenting that, by purging himself of his feminine "milk of human kindness," Macbeth has also lost his masculine generative force.
Related Themes:
Act 2, scene 4
Explanation and Analysis—Strange Garments:
At multiple points throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of clothing to explore themes of power and masculinity.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Ross and Angus address Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, disturbed that the Weird Sisters' prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, insists that the title does not belong to him:
Macbeth: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
Macbeth's metaphor implies that he views titles of political authority as items of clothing that can be worn, removed, and exchanged. Banquo reinforces this notion by remarking that new responsibilities, like new clothes, may fit uncomfortably at first:
Banquo: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.
In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth reasons that the honors Duncan has bestowed on him should be "worn" while still new. Lady Macbeth retorts with a clothing metaphor of her own, criticizing Macbeth for his cowardice, and likening his earlier willingness to kill Duncan to a drunkard's clothes:
Macbeth: He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Following the discovery of Duncan's murder in Act 2, Scene 3, Banquo advises the thanes to get dressed before any further discussion takes place:
Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet
Banquo's comment about "naked frailties" likens emotional vulnerability to a state of physical undress. Macbeth orders the thanes to "briefly put on manly readiness," suggesting that he views both courage and masculinity as costumes that can be taken off as easily as they are put on.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth goes to be invested at Scone, where he is dressed in coronation robes and crowned to symbolize his transition from thane to king. In Act 2, Scene 4, Macduff uses yet another clothing metaphor to suggest that this transition may not go smoothly:
Macduff: Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new.
As the play continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Macbeth is ill-suited to the role and title of king. In Act 5, Scene 2, Cathness uses the metaphor of a belt to imply that Macbeth has lost control of his country:
Cathness: He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus responds by likening Macbeth to a dwarf wearing a giant's robe:
Angus: Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Like a man wearing clothes that are too large for him, Macbeth is unable to handle the massive responsibility of ruling Scotland. Duncan, a "giant," was able to do it, but Angus suggests that Macbeth is a "dwarf" who cannot hope to wear his predecessor's robe.
As the invading English troops draw near, Macbeth grows increasingly vulnerable. In Act 5, Scene 3, he demands that Seyton bring him his armor, even though it is not yet needed. At this point, Macbeth is still convinced that the Weird Sisters' prophecies make him invincible, so he has no need to protect his physical body—instead, the armor provides him with a sense of emotional security.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Literary Allusions:
Macbeth contains several literary allusions. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth makes a reference to the proverb of the cat that wished to eat fish but refused to wet its feet:
Lady Macbeth: Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”
Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?
Lady Macbeth's reference is anachronistic, since the proverb, attributed to 16th-century English playwright John Heywood, would certainly not have been known to the population of medieval Scotland. This reference is also Macbeth's only allusion to a specific work of literature (other than its biblical allusions). Other literary allusions come in the form of general references to theater and the nature of storytelling.
In Act 2, Scene 4, for example, Ross compares the earth to a stage and life to an act of theatrical performance:
Ross: Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threatens his bloody stage.
In Act 5, Scene 5, Macbeth echoes Ross's words by portraying humans as "players" and the world as a stage:
Macbeth: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In this passage, Shakespeare draws a parallel between the act of living and the act of reading. Time, like a word or a sentence, is composed of "syllables," and life, as Macbeth suggests in his usage of the alliterative phrase "petty pace," can be as repetitive and monotonous as language. Shakespeare even alludes to his own role as a playwright by depicting God as a storyteller narrating the "tale" of life.
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Act 3, scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Seeds and Roots:
Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of seeds and roots to illustrate themes of kingship and lineage. Duncan's use of imagery in Act 1, Scene 4, for example, suggests that he views Scotland as a kind of vast garden, with himself as the caretaker:
Duncan: I have begun to plant thee and will labor
To make thee full of growing.
Malcolm echoes his father's wording when he first addresses the Scottish lords as their king in Act 5, Scene 11:
Malcolm: What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time
While Duncan and Malcolm seek to cultivate loyal subjects and make their country flourish, Macbeth is characterized as an inadequate caretaker. In Act 4, Scene 3, Malcolm laments that Scotland "sinks beneath the yoke," likening Macbeth to a plowman who overburdens his oxen. In Act 5, Scene 2, Lennox uses plant imagery to draw a sharp contrast between Malcolm and Macbeth's approaches to rule:
Lennox: Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
While Malcolm represents life and prosperity, Macbeth is a bothersome interloper who threatens to choke out the plants growing in the garden that is Scotland.
Shakespeare also associates seeds and roots with the theme of lineage. The play's first mention of seeds comes in Act 1, Scene 3, when Banquo speaks to the witches:
Banquo: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not
The Weird Sisters respond by prophesying that Banquo's children will be kings, linking the image of growing grain to patrilineal inheritance. Banquo continues this motif in Act 3, Scene 1 by imagining himself as the "root and father" of a thriving family tree. Later in the same scene, Macbeth echoes this figurative language to express the jealousy he feels toward his friend. While Banquo has a son and is prophesied to become the ancestor of many kings, Macbeth has no children to carry on his name or his bloodline:
Macbeth: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth bitterly remarks that he has not committed the ultimate act treason for his own sake but to make "the seeds of Banquo kings." This comment, along with his preoccupation with his own "barren scepter," indicates that Macbeth feels threatened and also emasculated by Banquo's superior reproductive ability.
Related Themes:
Act 3, scene 4
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Act 4, scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Milk and Blood:
In Macbeth, milk and blood are both motifs that combine to represent the upholding and sundering of kinship bonds. At one point, Malcolm refers to the "sweet milk of concord," and when milk is mentioned, it is often associated with motherhood and used to symbolize compassion, family, and unity. In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth will be unable to commit an act as ruthless as murder because he is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness," metaphorically linking milk to feelings of care and compassion for others. Lady Macbeth again refers to milk when she calls on supernatural forces to purge her of her femininity:
Lady Macbeth: Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall
In other words, Lady Macbeth wishes to trade her feminine and nurturing qualities for something more destructive. In Act 1, Scene 7, she shows just how far she is willing to go:
Lady Macbeth: I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, [...]
Although Lady Macbeth is aware of how fulfilling motherhood can be, she claims that she is willing to kill her own child for the sake of ambition.
While milk is associated with the bond between mother and child, blood is used to represent kinship bonds between men. In Act 2, Scene 3, Macbeth uses a metaphor to refer to Duncan's and his sons' bloodline as a "fountain" that has been "stopped":
Macbeth: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopped; the very source of it is stopped.
Macbeth is responsible for the murder of Macduff's children, who should have continued their father's bloodline, so this metaphor underscores the idea of interruption—by killing Macduff's children, he has stopped the flow of Duncan's bloodline. As a result, in Act 5, Scene 10, Macbeth considers himself to be metaphorically stained with Macduff's blood:
Macbeth: My soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Since Macbeth has no children of his own, blood from his perspective comes to represent violence rather than kinship bonds. In Act 4, Scene 1, he refers to acts of violence as his "firstborn," since he has no heirs to carry on his bloodline:
Macbeth: From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.
By transforming blood from a symbol of kinship to a symbol of mere violence, Shakespeare seems to be commenting that, by purging himself of his feminine "milk of human kindness," Macbeth has also lost his masculine generative force.
Related Themes:
Act 4, scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Act 4, scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—Seeds and Roots:
Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of seeds and roots to illustrate themes of kingship and lineage. Duncan's use of imagery in Act 1, Scene 4, for example, suggests that he views Scotland as a kind of vast garden, with himself as the caretaker:
Duncan: I have begun to plant thee and will labor
To make thee full of growing.
Malcolm echoes his father's wording when he first addresses the Scottish lords as their king in Act 5, Scene 11:
Malcolm: What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time
While Duncan and Malcolm seek to cultivate loyal subjects and make their country flourish, Macbeth is characterized as an inadequate caretaker. In Act 4, Scene 3, Malcolm laments that Scotland "sinks beneath the yoke," likening Macbeth to a plowman who overburdens his oxen. In Act 5, Scene 2, Lennox uses plant imagery to draw a sharp contrast between Malcolm and Macbeth's approaches to rule:
Lennox: Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
While Malcolm represents life and prosperity, Macbeth is a bothersome interloper who threatens to choke out the plants growing in the garden that is Scotland.
Shakespeare also associates seeds and roots with the theme of lineage. The play's first mention of seeds comes in Act 1, Scene 3, when Banquo speaks to the witches:
Banquo: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not
The Weird Sisters respond by prophesying that Banquo's children will be kings, linking the image of growing grain to patrilineal inheritance. Banquo continues this motif in Act 3, Scene 1 by imagining himself as the "root and father" of a thriving family tree. Later in the same scene, Macbeth echoes this figurative language to express the jealousy he feels toward his friend. While Banquo has a son and is prophesied to become the ancestor of many kings, Macbeth has no children to carry on his name or his bloodline:
Macbeth: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth bitterly remarks that he has not committed the ultimate act treason for his own sake but to make "the seeds of Banquo kings." This comment, along with his preoccupation with his own "barren scepter," indicates that Macbeth feels threatened and also emasculated by Banquo's superior reproductive ability.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
Birds are mentioned multiple times throughout Macbeth and serve several different purposes. The presence of different types of birds is often used to set the mood of a scene, characters are compared to birds to emphasize certain character traits, and birds function as a motif to represent the theme of the unnatural.
In Act 1, Scene 6, the presence of martlets at Macbeth's Inverness castle create a welcoming and mildly sacred atmosphere, which proves deceptive later when awful deeds are carried out within the castle walls:
Banquo: This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven’s breath
Smells wooingly here.
Despite the previously welcoming atmosphere created by the mention of birds, Duncan is murdered in Act 2, Scene 2, and the hooting of owls creates an ominous and gloomy atmosphere.
Lady Macbeth: It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives stern'st good-night.
At multiple points throughout the play, birds are metaphorically used to highlight different aspects of a character's personality. While male characters are often compared to birds of prey, women are characterized as domestic birds. When Lady Macbeth asks her husband about his plans to kill Banquo, he dismisses her questions while referring to her as "dearest chuck," a variant of the word "chick." This term of endearment comes off as patronizing—despite the ruthlessness that she demonstrated earlier in the play, Macbeth still regards his wife as a dainty, domesticated bird who has no business interfering with the affairs of larger creatures.
In Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff compares Macbeth to a predatory bird and his wife and children to chickens in order to emphasize Macbeth's cruelty:
Macduff: O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
In one fell swoop?
Throughout Macbeth, birds are also used as a symbol of magic and divination. In Act 1, Scene 5, the cry of a raven presages the death of Duncan:
Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
And in Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth worries that someone will uncover his crime by divining it in the flight pattern of birds:
Macbeth: Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought
forth
The secret'st man of blood.
Birds are also more generally used to contrast the natural with the unnatural. In Act 2, Scene 4, the unnatural nature of Duncan's death at the hands of Macbeth is reflected in the behavior of local birds:
Old Man: 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
And in Act 4, Scene 2, Lady Macduff uses a bird metaphor to criticize her husband:
Lady Macduff: He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.
Macduff's act of abandonment, she argues, is unnatural, since even nature's smallest bird will fight an owl in order to protect its children.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Scotland:
Throughout Macbeth, characters frequently attribute human characteristics to the nation of Scotland. For example, in Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff personifies Scotland as a fallen soldier who must be protected from attackers:
Macduff: Let us rather
Hold fast the mortal sword and, like good men,
Bestride our downfall'n birthdom.
In the same scene, Malcolm depicts Scotland as an individual who cries, bleeds, and can be wounded:
Malcolm: It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds.
Macduff, in despair that his country is suffering, addresses Scotland as though it were a person that Macbeth has personally wronged:
Macduff: O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again
Ross also personifies Scotland as an individual with a conscience and sense of identity, but claims that this identity is no longer that of a mother:
Ross: Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave.
Furthermore, multiple characters personify Scotland as a person suffering from an illness. In Act 5, Scene 3, Macbeth even asks his doctor to examine his country's urine so that he might diagnose what ails her and develop a suitable treatment:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
Generally speaking, when characters personify Scotland, they usually use the pronoun "she," which is typical when talking about countries—a nation often has the concept of motherhood attached to it, like with the term "motherland," and servants of a country may regard it as a woman whose pride and dignity must be safeguarded. The language of Macbeth also reflects that, in Shakespeare's time, a country was considered to be synonymous with its ruler: the king of England is referred to as just "England," and Duncan and Malcolm both speak using the royal "we" to signify the fact that, as monarchs, they speak on behalf of all their subjects.
Act 5, scene 1
Explanation and Analysis—Disease and Medicine:
Macbeth is filled with references to both physical and psychological illness. The motif of disease often represents the inner turmoil of characters warped by ambition, while the motif of medicine is associated with political order.
Throughout Macbeth, drunkenness is a common source of illness. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth's reluctance to murder Duncan by comparing him to a drunkard who, upon waking up with a hangover, regrets the actions of the night before:
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
In Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth hallucinates the image of a bloody dagger and wonders if his inability to accurately perceive reality is the result of some kind of mental disturbance:
Macbeth: Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
Following Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth attributes Macbeth's auditory hallucinations to mental distress and chastises him for being "brainsickly," and Macbeth later explains his reaction to seeing Banquo's ghost by claiming to have a "strange infirmity." As the doctor in Act 5, Scene 1 observes, the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's ambition have driven them to the point of psychological illness:
Doctor: Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.
In Act 5, Scene 3, the doctor explains to Macbeth that, while earthly medicine can cure physical ailments, it cannot treat emotional disturbances:
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
Although medicine may not be able to cure Lady Macbeth's psychological illness, it may be able to treat the metaphorical disease that afflicts Scotland. Macbeth personifies Scotland as a person suffering from illness and asks the doctor to diagnose the ailment and devise an antidote:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
While Macbeth perceives the English invasion as the source of Scotland's troubles, other characters view Macbeth himself as the disease. Malcolm invades Scotland with the help of Edward the Confessor, who in Act 4, Scene 3 is revealed to have supernatural healing powers, implying that his rule, unlike Macbeth's, is divinely sanctioned. Regardless of who or what is considered to be plaguing Scotland, though, the play clearly leans heavily on the motif of disease to metaphorically illustrate the ways in which the country is suffering.
Related Themes:
Act 5, scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Strange Garments:
At multiple points throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of clothing to explore themes of power and masculinity.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Ross and Angus address Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, disturbed that the Weird Sisters' prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, insists that the title does not belong to him:
Macbeth: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
Macbeth's metaphor implies that he views titles of political authority as items of clothing that can be worn, removed, and exchanged. Banquo reinforces this notion by remarking that new responsibilities, like new clothes, may fit uncomfortably at first:
Banquo: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.
In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth reasons that the honors Duncan has bestowed on him should be "worn" while still new. Lady Macbeth retorts with a clothing metaphor of her own, criticizing Macbeth for his cowardice, and likening his earlier willingness to kill Duncan to a drunkard's clothes:
Macbeth: He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Following the discovery of Duncan's murder in Act 2, Scene 3, Banquo advises the thanes to get dressed before any further discussion takes place:
Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet
Banquo's comment about "naked frailties" likens emotional vulnerability to a state of physical undress. Macbeth orders the thanes to "briefly put on manly readiness," suggesting that he views both courage and masculinity as costumes that can be taken off as easily as they are put on.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth goes to be invested at Scone, where he is dressed in coronation robes and crowned to symbolize his transition from thane to king. In Act 2, Scene 4, Macduff uses yet another clothing metaphor to suggest that this transition may not go smoothly:
Macduff: Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new.
As the play continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Macbeth is ill-suited to the role and title of king. In Act 5, Scene 2, Cathness uses the metaphor of a belt to imply that Macbeth has lost control of his country:
Cathness: He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus responds by likening Macbeth to a dwarf wearing a giant's robe:
Angus: Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Like a man wearing clothes that are too large for him, Macbeth is unable to handle the massive responsibility of ruling Scotland. Duncan, a "giant," was able to do it, but Angus suggests that Macbeth is a "dwarf" who cannot hope to wear his predecessor's robe.
As the invading English troops draw near, Macbeth grows increasingly vulnerable. In Act 5, Scene 3, he demands that Seyton bring him his armor, even though it is not yet needed. At this point, Macbeth is still convinced that the Weird Sisters' prophecies make him invincible, so he has no need to protect his physical body—instead, the armor provides him with a sense of emotional security.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Seeds and Roots:
Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of seeds and roots to illustrate themes of kingship and lineage. Duncan's use of imagery in Act 1, Scene 4, for example, suggests that he views Scotland as a kind of vast garden, with himself as the caretaker:
Duncan: I have begun to plant thee and will labor
To make thee full of growing.
Malcolm echoes his father's wording when he first addresses the Scottish lords as their king in Act 5, Scene 11:
Malcolm: What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time
While Duncan and Malcolm seek to cultivate loyal subjects and make their country flourish, Macbeth is characterized as an inadequate caretaker. In Act 4, Scene 3, Malcolm laments that Scotland "sinks beneath the yoke," likening Macbeth to a plowman who overburdens his oxen. In Act 5, Scene 2, Lennox uses plant imagery to draw a sharp contrast between Malcolm and Macbeth's approaches to rule:
Lennox: Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
While Malcolm represents life and prosperity, Macbeth is a bothersome interloper who threatens to choke out the plants growing in the garden that is Scotland.
Shakespeare also associates seeds and roots with the theme of lineage. The play's first mention of seeds comes in Act 1, Scene 3, when Banquo speaks to the witches:
Banquo: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not
The Weird Sisters respond by prophesying that Banquo's children will be kings, linking the image of growing grain to patrilineal inheritance. Banquo continues this motif in Act 3, Scene 1 by imagining himself as the "root and father" of a thriving family tree. Later in the same scene, Macbeth echoes this figurative language to express the jealousy he feels toward his friend. While Banquo has a son and is prophesied to become the ancestor of many kings, Macbeth has no children to carry on his name or his bloodline:
Macbeth: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth bitterly remarks that he has not committed the ultimate act treason for his own sake but to make "the seeds of Banquo kings." This comment, along with his preoccupation with his own "barren scepter," indicates that Macbeth feels threatened and also emasculated by Banquo's superior reproductive ability.
Related Themes:
Act 5, scene 3
Explanation and Analysis—Strange Garments:
At multiple points throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of clothing to explore themes of power and masculinity.
In Act 1, Scene 3, Ross and Angus address Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth, disturbed that the Weird Sisters' prophecy seems to have been fulfilled, insists that the title does not belong to him:
Macbeth: The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me
In borrowed robes?
Macbeth's metaphor implies that he views titles of political authority as items of clothing that can be worn, removed, and exchanged. Banquo reinforces this notion by remarking that new responsibilities, like new clothes, may fit uncomfortably at first:
Banquo: New honors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold
But with the aid of use.
In Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth reasons that the honors Duncan has bestowed on him should be "worn" while still new. Lady Macbeth retorts with a clothing metaphor of her own, criticizing Macbeth for his cowardice, and likening his earlier willingness to kill Duncan to a drunkard's clothes:
Macbeth: He hath honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself?
Following the discovery of Duncan's murder in Act 2, Scene 3, Banquo advises the thanes to get dressed before any further discussion takes place:
Banquo: And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet
Banquo's comment about "naked frailties" likens emotional vulnerability to a state of physical undress. Macbeth orders the thanes to "briefly put on manly readiness," suggesting that he views both courage and masculinity as costumes that can be taken off as easily as they are put on.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth goes to be invested at Scone, where he is dressed in coronation robes and crowned to symbolize his transition from thane to king. In Act 2, Scene 4, Macduff uses yet another clothing metaphor to suggest that this transition may not go smoothly:
Macduff: Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new.
As the play continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Macbeth is ill-suited to the role and title of king. In Act 5, Scene 2, Cathness uses the metaphor of a belt to imply that Macbeth has lost control of his country:
Cathness: He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus responds by likening Macbeth to a dwarf wearing a giant's robe:
Angus: Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Like a man wearing clothes that are too large for him, Macbeth is unable to handle the massive responsibility of ruling Scotland. Duncan, a "giant," was able to do it, but Angus suggests that Macbeth is a "dwarf" who cannot hope to wear his predecessor's robe.
As the invading English troops draw near, Macbeth grows increasingly vulnerable. In Act 5, Scene 3, he demands that Seyton bring him his armor, even though it is not yet needed. At this point, Macbeth is still convinced that the Weird Sisters' prophecies make him invincible, so he has no need to protect his physical body—instead, the armor provides him with a sense of emotional security.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Disease and Medicine:
Macbeth is filled with references to both physical and psychological illness. The motif of disease often represents the inner turmoil of characters warped by ambition, while the motif of medicine is associated with political order.
Throughout Macbeth, drunkenness is a common source of illness. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth's reluctance to murder Duncan by comparing him to a drunkard who, upon waking up with a hangover, regrets the actions of the night before:
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
In Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth hallucinates the image of a bloody dagger and wonders if his inability to accurately perceive reality is the result of some kind of mental disturbance:
Macbeth: Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
Following Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth attributes Macbeth's auditory hallucinations to mental distress and chastises him for being "brainsickly," and Macbeth later explains his reaction to seeing Banquo's ghost by claiming to have a "strange infirmity." As the doctor in Act 5, Scene 1 observes, the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's ambition have driven them to the point of psychological illness:
Doctor: Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.
In Act 5, Scene 3, the doctor explains to Macbeth that, while earthly medicine can cure physical ailments, it cannot treat emotional disturbances:
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
Although medicine may not be able to cure Lady Macbeth's psychological illness, it may be able to treat the metaphorical disease that afflicts Scotland. Macbeth personifies Scotland as a person suffering from illness and asks the doctor to diagnose the ailment and devise an antidote:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
While Macbeth perceives the English invasion as the source of Scotland's troubles, other characters view Macbeth himself as the disease. Malcolm invades Scotland with the help of Edward the Confessor, who in Act 4, Scene 3 is revealed to have supernatural healing powers, implying that his rule, unlike Macbeth's, is divinely sanctioned. Regardless of who or what is considered to be plaguing Scotland, though, the play clearly leans heavily on the motif of disease to metaphorically illustrate the ways in which the country is suffering.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Scotland:
Throughout Macbeth, characters frequently attribute human characteristics to the nation of Scotland. For example, in Act 4, Scene 3, Macduff personifies Scotland as a fallen soldier who must be protected from attackers:
Macduff: Let us rather
Hold fast the mortal sword and, like good men,
Bestride our downfall'n birthdom.
In the same scene, Malcolm depicts Scotland as an individual who cries, bleeds, and can be wounded:
Malcolm: It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds.
Macduff, in despair that his country is suffering, addresses Scotland as though it were a person that Macbeth has personally wronged:
Macduff: O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again
Ross also personifies Scotland as an individual with a conscience and sense of identity, but claims that this identity is no longer that of a mother:
Ross: Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave.
Furthermore, multiple characters personify Scotland as a person suffering from an illness. In Act 5, Scene 3, Macbeth even asks his doctor to examine his country's urine so that he might diagnose what ails her and develop a suitable treatment:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
Generally speaking, when characters personify Scotland, they usually use the pronoun "she," which is typical when talking about countries—a nation often has the concept of motherhood attached to it, like with the term "motherland," and servants of a country may regard it as a woman whose pride and dignity must be safeguarded. The language of Macbeth also reflects that, in Shakespeare's time, a country was considered to be synonymous with its ruler: the king of England is referred to as just "England," and Duncan and Malcolm both speak using the royal "we" to signify the fact that, as monarchs, they speak on behalf of all their subjects.
Act 5, scene 4
Explanation and Analysis—Disease and Medicine:
Macbeth is filled with references to both physical and psychological illness. The motif of disease often represents the inner turmoil of characters warped by ambition, while the motif of medicine is associated with political order.
Throughout Macbeth, drunkenness is a common source of illness. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth's reluctance to murder Duncan by comparing him to a drunkard who, upon waking up with a hangover, regrets the actions of the night before:
Lady Macbeth: Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
In Act 2, Scene 1, Macbeth hallucinates the image of a bloody dagger and wonders if his inability to accurately perceive reality is the result of some kind of mental disturbance:
Macbeth: Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
Following Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth attributes Macbeth's auditory hallucinations to mental distress and chastises him for being "brainsickly," and Macbeth later explains his reaction to seeing Banquo's ghost by claiming to have a "strange infirmity." As the doctor in Act 5, Scene 1 observes, the consequences of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's ambition have driven them to the point of psychological illness:
Doctor: Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.
In Act 5, Scene 3, the doctor explains to Macbeth that, while earthly medicine can cure physical ailments, it cannot treat emotional disturbances:
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
Although medicine may not be able to cure Lady Macbeth's psychological illness, it may be able to treat the metaphorical disease that afflicts Scotland. Macbeth personifies Scotland as a person suffering from illness and asks the doctor to diagnose the ailment and devise an antidote:
Macbeth: If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo
That should applaud again.—Pull ’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence?
While Macbeth perceives the English invasion as the source of Scotland's troubles, other characters view Macbeth himself as the disease. Malcolm invades Scotland with the help of Edward the Confessor, who in Act 4, Scene 3 is revealed to have supernatural healing powers, implying that his rule, unlike Macbeth's, is divinely sanctioned. Regardless of who or what is considered to be plaguing Scotland, though, the play clearly leans heavily on the motif of disease to metaphorically illustrate the ways in which the country is suffering.
Related Themes:
Act 5, scene 5
Explanation and Analysis—Literary Allusions:
Macbeth contains several literary allusions. In Act 1, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth makes a reference to the proverb of the cat that wished to eat fish but refused to wet its feet:
Lady Macbeth: Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”
Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?
Lady Macbeth's reference is anachronistic, since the proverb, attributed to 16th-century English playwright John Heywood, would certainly not have been known to the population of medieval Scotland. This reference is also Macbeth's only allusion to a specific work of literature (other than its biblical allusions). Other literary allusions come in the form of general references to theater and the nature of storytelling.
In Act 2, Scene 4, for example, Ross compares the earth to a stage and life to an act of theatrical performance:
Ross: Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threatens his bloody stage.
In Act 5, Scene 5, Macbeth echoes Ross's words by portraying humans as "players" and the world as a stage:
Macbeth: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In this passage, Shakespeare draws a parallel between the act of living and the act of reading. Time, like a word or a sentence, is composed of "syllables," and life, as Macbeth suggests in his usage of the alliterative phrase "petty pace," can be as repetitive and monotonous as language. Shakespeare even alludes to his own role as a playwright by depicting God as a storyteller narrating the "tale" of life.
Act 5, scene 10
Explanation and Analysis—Milk and Blood:
In Macbeth, milk and blood are both motifs that combine to represent the upholding and sundering of kinship bonds. At one point, Malcolm refers to the "sweet milk of concord," and when milk is mentioned, it is often associated with motherhood and used to symbolize compassion, family, and unity. In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth will be unable to commit an act as ruthless as murder because he is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness," metaphorically linking milk to feelings of care and compassion for others. Lady Macbeth again refers to milk when she calls on supernatural forces to purge her of her femininity:
Lady Macbeth: Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall
In other words, Lady Macbeth wishes to trade her feminine and nurturing qualities for something more destructive. In Act 1, Scene 7, she shows just how far she is willing to go:
Lady Macbeth: I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, [...]
Although Lady Macbeth is aware of how fulfilling motherhood can be, she claims that she is willing to kill her own child for the sake of ambition.
While milk is associated with the bond between mother and child, blood is used to represent kinship bonds between men. In Act 2, Scene 3, Macbeth uses a metaphor to refer to Duncan's and his sons' bloodline as a "fountain" that has been "stopped":
Macbeth: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopped; the very source of it is stopped.
Macbeth is responsible for the murder of Macduff's children, who should have continued their father's bloodline, so this metaphor underscores the idea of interruption—by killing Macduff's children, he has stopped the flow of Duncan's bloodline. As a result, in Act 5, Scene 10, Macbeth considers himself to be metaphorically stained with Macduff's blood:
Macbeth: My soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
Since Macbeth has no children of his own, blood from his perspective comes to represent violence rather than kinship bonds. In Act 4, Scene 1, he refers to acts of violence as his "firstborn," since he has no heirs to carry on his bloodline:
Macbeth: From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.
By transforming blood from a symbol of kinship to a symbol of mere violence, Shakespeare seems to be commenting that, by purging himself of his feminine "milk of human kindness," Macbeth has also lost his masculine generative force.
Related Themes:
Act 5, scene 11
Explanation and Analysis—Seeds and Roots:
Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the motif of seeds and roots to illustrate themes of kingship and lineage. Duncan's use of imagery in Act 1, Scene 4, for example, suggests that he views Scotland as a kind of vast garden, with himself as the caretaker:
Duncan: I have begun to plant thee and will labor
To make thee full of growing.
Malcolm echoes his father's wording when he first addresses the Scottish lords as their king in Act 5, Scene 11:
Malcolm: What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time
While Duncan and Malcolm seek to cultivate loyal subjects and make their country flourish, Macbeth is characterized as an inadequate caretaker. In Act 4, Scene 3, Malcolm laments that Scotland "sinks beneath the yoke," likening Macbeth to a plowman who overburdens his oxen. In Act 5, Scene 2, Lennox uses plant imagery to draw a sharp contrast between Malcolm and Macbeth's approaches to rule:
Lennox: Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
While Malcolm represents life and prosperity, Macbeth is a bothersome interloper who threatens to choke out the plants growing in the garden that is Scotland.
Shakespeare also associates seeds and roots with the theme of lineage. The play's first mention of seeds comes in Act 1, Scene 3, when Banquo speaks to the witches:
Banquo: If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which grain will grow and which will not
The Weird Sisters respond by prophesying that Banquo's children will be kings, linking the image of growing grain to patrilineal inheritance. Banquo continues this motif in Act 3, Scene 1 by imagining himself as the "root and father" of a thriving family tree. Later in the same scene, Macbeth echoes this figurative language to express the jealousy he feels toward his friend. While Banquo has a son and is prophesied to become the ancestor of many kings, Macbeth has no children to carry on his name or his bloodline:
Macbeth: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.
Macbeth bitterly remarks that he has not committed the ultimate act treason for his own sake but to make "the seeds of Banquo kings." This comment, along with his preoccupation with his own "barren scepter," indicates that Macbeth feels threatened and also emasculated by Banquo's superior reproductive ability.
Related Themes:
