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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Actually understand Macbeth. Read every line of Shakespeare’s original text alongside a modern English translation.
Macbeth has become manic, cruel, and haughty—many of his men desert to Malcolm's side. In Birnam Wood, Malcolm and his generals devise a strategy to hide their numbers—they cut branches to hold up in front of them. As Macbeth prepares for the siege, Lady Macbeth dies, perhaps of suicide.
Analysis. As a storm rages, three witches appear, speaking in rhyming, paradoxical couplets: "when the battle's lost and won" (1.1.4); "fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1.10). They agree to meet again on the heath (plain) when the battle now raging ends. There they'll meet Macbeth .
Macbeth is a play about ambition run amok. The weird sisters ' prophecies spur both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to try to fulfill their ambitions, but the witches never make Macbeth or his wife do anything. Macbeth and his wife act on their own to fulfill their deepest desires.
Lady Macbeth 's husband and a Scottish nobleman, the Thane of Glamis. He is made Thane of Cawdor for his bravery in battle, and becomes King of Scotland by murdering the previous King, Duncan … read analysis of Macbeth
LitCharts makes it easy to find quotes by scene, character, and theme. We assign a color and icon like this one to each theme, making it easy to track which themes apply to each quote below. Hover through the fog and filthy air. Unlock explanations and citation info for this and every other Macbeth quote.
Read the full play summary, an in-depth character analysis of Macbeth, and explanations of important quotes from Macbeth. From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes Macbeth Study Guide has everything you need to ace quizzes, tests, and essays.
Macbeth is a tragedy that tells the story of a soldier whose overriding ambition and thirst for power cause him to abandon his morals and bring about the near destruction of the kingdom he seeks to rule.
The main theme of Macbeth —the destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral constraints—finds its most powerful expression in the play’s two main characters. Macbeth is a courageous Scottish general who is not naturally inclined to commit evil deeds, yet he deeply desires power and advancement.
