Macbeth

The play opens with thunder and three witches, who agree to meet Macbeth “when the battle’s lost and won.” Meanwhile, a bleeding captain tells King Duncan how Macbeth won the day against rebels, slicing one traitor open “from the nave to the chops.” Duncan orders the disloyal Thane of Cawdor executed and gives his title to Macbeth.

Before the news reaches him, Macbeth and Banquo cross a heath and meet the witches. They hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, which he already is, then as Thane of Cawdor, and finally as the man who “shalt be king hereafter.” Banquo, they say, will never be king, but his children will be. Moments later, the king’s messengers arrive and greet Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. One prophecy has already come true, and Macbeth starts thinking about murder.

Duncan names his son Malcolm as heir, which puts someone new between Macbeth and the crown. Then he invites himself to Macbeth’s castle at Inverness. Lady Macbeth reads her husband’s letter about the witches and decides that Duncan will not leave alive. Macbeth wavers. He knows Duncan is his king, his relative and his guest. His wife calls him a coward, promises to drug the king’s guards, and talks him into it.

Late that night, Macbeth waits for his wife’s signal and sees a dagger hanging in the air, pointing toward Duncan’s room. He can’t grab it, and soon it is dripping with blood. A bell rings, and he goes to do the deed. We never see the murder, because Shakespeare keeps it offstage.

Macbeth comes back shaking, still holding the bloody daggers. He thought he heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!” Lady Macbeth scolds him, takes the daggers back to the room herself, and smears the sleeping guards with blood so they will look guilty. Then a loud knocking starts at the castle gate.

A hungover Porter finally opens the gate for Macduff and Lennox. Macduff goes to wake the king and runs out screaming. In the chaos, Macbeth kills the two guards, claiming he was too furious to stop himself. Lady Macbeth faints, and readers still argue about whether it is real. Duncan’s sons decide they are not safe and flee, which makes them look guilty. Macbeth is crowned king at Scone, but Macduff refuses to attend.

Macbeth is king, yet he feels anything but safe. Banquo heard the prophecies too, and if his son Fleance becomes the father of kings, Macbeth will have murdered Duncan for someone else’s family. So he hires murderers to kill Banquo and Fleance as they ride back to the palace. This time he doesn’t tell his wife the plan. “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,” he says.

The murderers ambush Banquo at dusk and kill him, but Fleance escapes into the dark.

That night Macbeth throws a grand feast for his lords. When he goes to sit down, he finds Banquo’s bloody ghost in his chair. Nobody else can see it. Macbeth shouts at the empty seat while his guests stare, and Lady Macbeth tries to cover for him before sending everyone home. Afterward, Macbeth decides he has waded so far into blood that turning back would be as hard as going on. He will visit the witches again. Meanwhile, word spreads that Macduff has gone to England to raise an army with Malcolm.

In a dark cave, the witches stir their cauldron (“Double, double, toil and trouble”) and summon three apparitions for Macbeth. An armed head warns him to beware Macduff. A bloody child says that “none of woman born” can harm him. A child wearing a crown and holding a tree promises he will never be defeated until Birnam Wood marches to his castle at Dunsinane. Macbeth feels unbeatable. Then the witches show him a line of eight kings, all descended from Banquo, with Banquo’s ghost smiling and pointing at them.

When Macbeth hears that Macduff has fled to England, he orders the murder of Macduff’s wife, children and servants. The killers find Lady Macduff and her son alone at home and kill them.

In England, Malcolm tests Macduff’s loyalty by pretending he would be an even worse king than Macbeth. Macduff passes the test. Then Ross arrives with the news about Macduff’s family. “All my pretty ones?” Macduff asks, unable to believe it. When Malcolm urges him to take it like a man, Macduff answers, “I must also feel it as a man.” With ten thousand English soldiers, they march for Scotland.

At Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman watch Lady Macbeth sleepwalk with a candle, rubbing her hands and muttering about blood, Duncan and Lady Macduff. “Out, damned spot!” she cries. The woman who once said “a little water clears us of this deed” now believes that all the perfumes of Arabia couldn’t sweeten her hand.

Macbeth’s soldiers are deserting him, and his lords have joined Malcolm. He clings to the prophecies. Near Birnam Wood, Malcolm orders each soldier to cut a branch and carry it, to hide how big the army is. A cry goes up inside the castle. Lady Macbeth is dead. Macbeth answers with his famous speech about life being “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” Then a messenger reports that the wood seems to be moving.

Macbeth fights on and kills Young Siward, still sure that no man born of a woman can harm him. Then he meets Macduff, who tells him that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d,” meaning he was delivered by an early cesarean birth. Macbeth refuses to surrender. “Lay on, Macduff,” he says (people often misquote it as “Lead on”), and they fight to the death. Macduff returns with Macbeth’s head. Malcolm, now king, calls Macbeth a “dead butcher” and his wife a “fiend-like queen,” and says she is thought to have taken her own life. He invites everyone to his coronation at Scone.