Bloom's Literature

Macbeth Key Passages

Act I, Scene 7, 1–27
MACBETH. If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly. If th' assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all—here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th' inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th' ingredience of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murtherer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on th' other—

Macbeth has stolen away from the feast with Duncan, just as in Act I, Scene 3, he had withdrawn from his comrades to
contemplate the killing of the king. This scene opens with music and with servants crossing the stage bearing platters of
food, symbols of revelry and companionship. A feast represents communion, both sacred and profane. Here, and again in
Act III, Scene 4, Macbeth's imaginings do not allow him to partake of that unity with others. Already isolated, he will
grow only more so as the play progresses.

In Othello, Desdemona declares: "I cannot say, 'whore. ' / It does abhor me now I speak the word. / To do the act that
might the addition earn, / Not the world's mass of vanity could make me" (4. 2. 161–164). Macbeth similarly cannot say
the word murder; he can call his contemplated regicide only "it." He says "the assassination," not "my assassination"; "his
murtherer," not "me." He uses "we" in "We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases / We still have judgment here."
Perhaps he already thinks himself king and is using the royal plural personal pronoun. Perhaps he is including his wife.
He may also be stating a general proposition that again removes him from the immediate situation. When he shifts to "I"
later in this soliloquy, he abandons his plan to kill Duncan. The hypermetric lines of 11 and even 12 syllables (for
example, lines 2, 7, 10, and 11) and deranged syntax reflect his agitation.

In this soliloquy's opening lines, Macbeth seeks to reduce the future to the instant, to deny actions any consequence
beyond the moment. Lady Macbeth shares this view: "This night's great business … / shall to all our nights and days to
come / Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom" (1. 5. 68–70). Later, she declares: "what's done, is done" (3.2.12).
Even before he commits his first murder, Macbeth recognizes the fallacy of this position. Even if he could avoid
damnation for his crime—and his use of the subjunctive "we'ld" (we would) shows he understands he cannot—he will
face condemnation in this world. His regicide will sanction his own deposition.

As he continues to think aloud, he discovers other reasons that dissuade him from killing the king. Typical of this play, he
finds three arguments: hospitality, kinship, and Duncan's excellences as a ruler. Social, familial, and political concerns
argue against Macbeth's bloody thoughts. Most important among reasons, as the imagery of the end of the speech
indicates, is the biblical injunction against murder. Macbeth speaks of trumpet-tongued angels, damnation, and cherubim.
In "Education and the University," F. R. Leavis commented: "What we have in this passage is a conscience-tormented
imagination, vivid with terror of the supernatural, proclaiming a certitude that 'murder will out, ' a certitude appalling to
Macbeth not because of the consequences on 'this bank and shoal of time' (1.7.6) but by reason of a sense of sin—the
radical hold on him of religious sanctions" (318).

By the end of this passage, Macbeth has argued himself into rejecting the plan to kill Duncan. Rosenberg observes of this
speech,

What Macbeth is envisioning, in his wild

poetry, is in fact a projection of the struggle
being fought out in his interior battleground—
his impulses of innocence and humankindness
striving to manage and tame the Dionysian
storm. The progression of the soliloquy
parallels what happens within Macbeth
himself; violent impulses are eventually
subdued by the more powerful force of a rising
tenderness (261).

Macbeth acknowledges that he has "no spur / to prick the sides of my intent," a trope suggested by the earlier reference to
the horsed cherubim. But, before he can complete his final sentence, Lady Macbeth enters. She will provide the spur that
will goad him to do what he knows is wrong and will lead to his downfall.

Act II, Scene 1, 33–64

MACBETH. Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going,
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecat's off'rings; and wither'd Murther,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
 The very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[A bell rings.]
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell,
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

Macbeth's vivid imagination has been evident from his first appearance, when the thought of killing Duncan entranced
him so because he could picture the deed in his mind's eye. Now that same thought of murder conjures up a mind-forged
dagger, such as he is about to use, and then coats it with Duncan's soon-to-be-spilled blood. He has resolved to commit
the murder, but his subconscious that raised the vision remains as horrified by the deed as it was in Act I, Scene 3.

He dismisses the dagger as unreal, but his description of night again reveals how vexed his thoughts remain. He speaks of
bad dreams troubling sleep, a foreshadowing of his own inability to sleep once he kills Duncan. His mind reverts to the
witches, whom he links to murder. These references to witches and Hecate join him to the forces of darkness and evil,
marking him as damned as they are. Then, his mind shifts to Tarquin, ravisher of Lucrece. For a momentary pleasure, this
king of ancient Rome was deposed. Macbeth's allusion indicates that his action will not produce lasting happiness; rather
it will bring about his downfall. Still, he imagines that the bell he hears summons him to kill Duncan, even though the last
words of the speech raise once more the prospect of divine judgment, not just for Duncan, but for Macbeth.

Act V, Scene 5, 17–28

MACBETH. She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
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.

These, among the best known of Shakespeare's lines, serve as Macbeth's elegy to his dead wife and to his squandered life.
A comparison between Macduff's heartfelt response to the news of his spouse's murder and Macbeth's unfeeling reflection
reveals how far the latter has isolated himself from humanity. He recognizes his transformation earlier in this scene when,
hearing a cry of women prompted by the discovery of the queen's body, he reflects:

The time has been, my senses would have cool'd

To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me. (5. 5. 9–15)

The opening lines of this monologue are ambiguous. Perhaps Macbeth wishes his wife had died at another time when he
would not be distracted by imminent battle. Then he would have been able to mourn properly. Perhaps he wishes she had
lived longer. Alternatively, he might mean that Lady Macbeth was going to die sometime anyway. In this last
interpretation, he expresses the same fatalism as Hamlet: "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all" (Hamlet 5. 2. 220–222). The rest of the speech reflects at least as
much on his condition as it does on his wife's, again indicating how far removed Macbeth has grown from the woman he
once called "my dearest partner of greatness" (1.5.11). Indicating this division, the two never appear onstage together after
Act III, Scene 4.
Macbeth and his wife had thought to arrest time, to reduce the future to the instant (1.5.58), to make the killing of Duncan
"the be-all and the end-all" (1.7.5). Now, Macbeth acknowledges that time—the play contains 44 mentions of this word—
moves inexorably onward. Macbeth's speeches follow a stream-of-consciousness pattern. In his soliloquy opening Act I,
Scene 7, the image of trumpet-tongued angels leads to horsed cherubim and the reference of horses conjures up the
reference to a spur. Here, "yesterdays" lighting the way suggests a candle, which reminds the audience of the one Lady
Macbeth carries in her sleepwalking scene. That earlier candle now emerges as a beacon that possibly guided her to
suicide. The candle calls to mind a shadow, one meaning of which is an actor (see A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5. 1.
423), hence the reference to the poor player. The Globe Theatre's Latin motto, "Totus Mundus Agit Historionum," means,
"All the world plays the player." Or, as Jacques's loose translation states, "All the world's a stage" (As You Like It, 2. 7.
139). Rosenberg regards this imagistic linking as "reflecting the agonized, roaming mind" (613).

Macbeth nihilistically reduces life to a meaningless script created by an idiot and acted by fools. Macbeth here reaches the
nadir of despair, denying himself, as well as everyone else, volition and free will, rejecting any meaning in life. Rosenberg
writes: "Macbeth puts into words the mortal frustration with a world that seems to lie in wait to baffle and enervate the
trusting" (613). Immediately after Macbeth delivers these lines, a messenger arrives to announce that Birnam Wood is
coming to Dunsinane. The witches had assured Macbeth that he would not be defeated until "Great Birnam wood to high
Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him" (4. 1. 93–94). Yet, the moving grove presaging his overthrow instills in him new
determination. Resolving to confront the enemy despite the witches' warning, he disdains fortune as he had in fighting
Macdonwald and Norway (1.2.17). The heroic soldier resurfaces for one final battle. The candle blazes up one last time
before it is extinguished. For Macbeth, like the previous thane of Cawdor, "Nothing in his life / [Becomes] him like the
leaving it" (1. 4. 7–8).

Further Information

Adelman, Janet," 'Born of Woman': Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth." In Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce:
Estranging the Renaissance, edited by Marjorie Garber, 90–121. Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Aitchinson, Nick. Macbeth, Man and Myth Stroud, U. K. : Sutton, 1999.

Batholomeusz, Dennis. Macbeth and the Players. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Blissett, William." 'The Secret'st Man of Blood': A Study of Dramatic Irony in Macbeth." Shakespeare Quarterly 10
(1959): 397–408.

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead, 1999.

Bloom, Harold. ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Macbeth. New York: Chelsea House, 2006.

Booth, Stephen. King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1983.

Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy. London: Macmillan, 1904.

Braunmuller, A. R., ed. Macbeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Brooks, Cleanth." 'The Naked Babe' and the Cloak of Manliness." In The Well Wrought Urn. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1947.

Brown, John Russell, ed. Focus on Macbeth. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Bullough, Geoffrey, ed. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 7: Major Tragedies. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1973.

Calderwood, James L. If It Were Done: Macbeth and Tragic Action. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.

Coursen, H. R. Macbeth: A Guide to the Play. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1997.

Crane, R. S. The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1953.

Dawson, Lawrence. Tragic Alphabet. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1974.
Elliott, G. R. Dramatic Providence in Macbeth. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1958.

Evans, Gareth Lloyd. "Macbeth: 1946–1980 at Stratford-upon-Avon. In Focus on Macbeth, edited by John Russell
Brown, 87–110. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Fawkner, H. W. Deconstructing Macbeth: The Hyperontological Voice. London: Associated University Presses, 1990.

Furness, Horace Howard, ed. Macbeth. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1901.

Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.

Grove, Robin. "Multiplying Villainies of Nature." In Focus on Macbeth, edited by John Russell Brown, 113–130.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Harbage, Alfred. William Shakespeare: A Reader's Guide. New York: Noonday, 1963.

Hawkes, Terence, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Macbeth. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall, 1977.

Jorgensen, Paul. Our Naked Frailties: Sensational Art and Meaning in Macbeth. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1971.

Kemble, Fanny. "Lady Macbeth." In Every Saturday. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868.

Kinney, Arthur. Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare's Macbeth and the Cultural Moment. Detroit, Mich. : Wayne State
University Press, 2001.

Kliman, Bernice W. Shakespeare in Performance: Macbeth. Manchester, U. K. : Manchester University Press, 1992.

Knights, L. C. "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth." In Explorations. New York: New York University Press, 1964.

———. Some Shakesperean Themes. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1959.

Leavis, F. R. "Education and the University." Scrutiny 9 (March 1941): 306–322.

Leggatt, Alexander, ed. William Shakespeare's Macbeth: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 2006.

Long, Michael. Macbeth. Boston: Twayne, 1989.

McElroy, Bernard. Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies. Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, 1973.

Muir, Kenneth. "Image and Symbol in Macbeth." Shakespeare Survey 19 (1966): 45–54.

Muir, Kenneth, and Philip Edwards. Aspects of Macbeth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Mullin, Michael, ed. Macbeth Onstage: An Annotated Facsimiles of Glen Byam Shaw's 1955 Promptbook. Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1976.

Norbrook, David." Macbeth and the Politics of Historiography." In Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of
Seventeenth-Century England, edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker, 78–116. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987.

Nostbakken, Faith. Understanding Macbeth: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport,
Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1997.

Paul, Henry N. The Royal Play of Macbeth. New York: Macmillan, 1950.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Macbeth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Schoenbaum, Samuel, ed. Macbeth: Critical Essays. New York: Garland, 1991.
Sinfield, Alan, ed. Macbeth. London: Macmillan, 1992.

Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935.

Tanner, Tony. Prefaces to Shakespeare. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

Wain, John, ed. Macbeth: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1968.

Walker, Roy. The Time Is Free: A Study of Macbeth. London: Andrew Dakers, 1949.

Wickham, Glynn. "Hell-Castle and Its Door-Keeper." Shakespeare Survey 19 (1966): 68–74.

Film and Video Productions

Casson, Philip, dir. A Performance of Macbeth. With Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, and John Brown. Thames Television,
1979.

Doran, Gregory, dir. Macbeth. With Richard Armitage, Diane Beck, and Ken Bones. Illuminations and Royal Shakespeare
Company, 2001.

Gold, Jack, dir. Macbeth. With Brenda Bruce, Eileen Way, and Anne Dyson. BBC, 1983.

Goold, Rupert, dir. Macbeth. With Oliver Burch, Suzanne Burden, and Ben Carpenter. BBC and PBS, 2010.

Polanski, Roman, dir. Macbeth. With Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, and Martin Shaw. Playboy Productions and Caliban
Films, 1971.

Warren, Charles, dir. Macbeth. With Brian Badcoe, Brian Godfrey, and Tim Hardy. Thames Television, 1988.

Welles, Orson, dir. Macbeth. With Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, and Dan O'Herlihy. Mercury Productions, 1948.

Winarski, Paul, dir. Macbeth. With Stephen J. Lewis, Dawn Winarski, and John Schugard. Showcase Films, 1998.

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