Macbeth by William Shakespeare : 5-Minute Cram Summary
A 5-minute cram guide to Macbeth by William Shakespeare, covering the plot, characters, five core themes, and a full exam quiz.
The play opens on a blasted heath in Scotland during a battle. Three witches, the Weird Sisters, meet and agree to find Macbeth. Meanwhile, reports reach King Duncan that his general Macbeth has fought brilliantly, crushing a rebellion and defeating an invading Norwegian army. Duncan rewards Macbeth by naming him the new Thane of Cawdor: the previous holder having been convicted of treason.
Macbeth and his fellow general Banquo encounter the three witches on the heath. The witches greet Macbeth with three titles: Thane of Glamis (his current title), Thane of Cawdor (just awarded, he doesn't know yet), and "King hereafter." To Banquo they say he will be "lesser than Macbeth, and greater": he will not be king himself but his descendants will be kings.
The witches vanish. Messengers arrive to inform Macbeth he has indeed been made Thane of Cawdor. Two prophecies already true: Macbeth is shaken. He begins thinking about the third.
King Duncan announces that his son Malcolm will be his heir: the Prince of Cumberland. This is a disappointment to Macbeth's ambition, since it means the crown will not simply fall to the next most powerful man. Macbeth writes to his wife, telling her everything about the witches' prophecy.
Lady Macbeth reads the letter and immediately decides Duncan must be murdered. She fears her husband is "too full o' the milk of human kindness" to do what is necessary. She calls on supernatural forces to strip her of feminine softness and fill her with cruelty. When Macbeth arrives, she tells him Duncan must die that night: he is coming to stay at their castle.
Duncan arrives at Macbeth's castle at Inverness, warmly welcomed. That evening, alone, Macbeth agonizes. He knows the murder is wrong: Duncan is his king, his kinsman, and his guest. He decides against it and tells Lady Macbeth he will not proceed. She attacks his manhood and courage relentlessly until he agrees. The plan: get Duncan's guards drunk, kill Duncan in his sleep, and blame the guards.
Late at night, Macbeth walks toward Duncan's chamber. He hallucinates a floating dagger, its handle pointing toward him and its blade dripping blood: leading him to Duncan's room. He questions whether it is real or a vision produced by his "heat-oppressed brain." He follows it.
Lady Macbeth has drugged the guards. Macbeth enters Duncan's chamber and murders him with the guards' daggers while they sleep. He returns shaking, still holding the daggers. He hears a voice cry "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep." He is unable to say "Amen" when he tried to pray: his ability to connect with God is already gone.
Lady Macbeth, seeing he has brought the daggers away, takes them back herself and smears the sleeping guards with Duncan's blood to frame them. A loud knocking begins at the gate. Macbeth stares at his bloody hands: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"
In the morning, Macduff arrives to wake the king and discovers the body. Macbeth, "in his fury," kills the two guards before they can be questioned: claiming he acted out of grief and rage. Macduff is immediately suspicious. Malcolm and Donalbain, Duncan's two sons, fear they will be murdered next and flee: Malcolm to England, Donalbain to Ireland. Their flight makes them appear guilty and gives Macbeth a convenient excuse to take the crown.
Macbeth is crowned King of Scotland. But suspicion lingers. Macduff refuses to attend the coronation.
Now king, Macbeth feels threatened by Banquo: the witches said Banquo's descendants, not Macbeth's, would be kings. Macbeth hires two murderers to kill Banquo and his son Fleance on the road. Banquo is killed, but Fleance escapes into the darkness. The prophecy about Banquo's line remains alive.
That night, Macbeth hosts a royal banquet. A murderer reports Banquo's death to Macbeth at the door. When Macbeth turns to take his seat at the table, he finds Banquo's ghost sitting in his chair: visible only to him. Macbeth shouts at the ghost in terror, to the confusion of his guests. Lady Macbeth tries to cover, telling the guests her husband has had these fits since childhood. But Macbeth's behavior is increasingly erratic and frightening. The banquet ends in disorder.
The lords are alarmed. Macbeth learns that Macduff has refused to come to court and has gone to England. He resolves to visit the witches again for more prophecies.
Macbeth visits the witches and demands to know his future. They conjure three apparitions with prophecies:
First apparition (an armed head): "Beware Macduff." Second apparition (a bloody child): "No man of woman born shall harm Macbeth." Third apparition (a crowned child holding a tree): Macbeth shall never be defeated "until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him."
Macbeth feels reassured: no man of woman born can kill him, and forests don't move. He asks one more question: will Banquo's descendants ever reign? The witches show him a vision of eight kings descended from Banquo. Macbeth is furious. He immediately resolves to have Macduff's castle seized and his family killed.
Murderers attack Macduff's castle. Lady Macduff and her young son are killed. The scene is one of the most brutal in the play: an innocent woman and child murdered purely as an act of Macbeth's revenge and terror.
In England, Macduff meets Malcolm and urges him to raise an army and take back Scotland. Malcolm tests Macduff's loyalty by pretending to be worse than Macbeth: claiming he is lustful, greedy, and without virtue. Macduff passes the test by refusing to defend a truly corrupt king. Malcolm reveals he was testing him and reveals the English king has already promised ten thousand troops.
Ross arrives with the devastating news: Macduff's entire family has been slaughtered. Macduff weeps. Malcolm urges him to convert his grief into revenge. Macduff vows to face Macbeth personally.
Lady Macbeth has completely broken down. Her gentlewoman and a doctor watch as she sleepwalks, rubbing her hands in a washing motion she cannot stop. She speaks fragments from the night of the murders, "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!," reliving Duncan's murder, Banquo's death, and the slaughter of Lady Macduff. The doctor concludes her disease is beyond medicine: "More needs she the divine than the physician." Soon after, she dies: the cause implied to be suicide.
Malcolm's army marches on Dunsinane. At Birnam Wood, Malcolm orders every soldier to cut a branch and carry it as camouflage: the forest appears to move. A messenger reports to Macbeth that the forest is advancing. The first prophecy has come true in a way Macbeth never imagined.
Macbeth hears that Lady Macbeth is dead. He delivers one of Shakespeare's most famous soliloquies, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow," expressing nihilistic despair: life is meaningless, a brief candle, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
In battle, Macbeth fights fiercely, clinging to the prophecy that no man of woman born can kill him. He encounters Macduff. Macduff reveals he was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped": born by Caesarean section, not "of woman born" in the natural sense. The final prophecy has its true meaning. Macbeth, now without the witches' protection, fights on defiantly but is killed by Macduff.
Macduff enters with Macbeth's severed head. Malcolm is proclaimed the rightful King of Scotland. Order is restored. The play ends.
A. Macbeth is a brave and loyal Scottish general who murders King Duncan after the witches' prophecy awakens his ambition. He becomes king but descends into paranoia and tyranny. His tragic flaw is unchecked ambition combined with a weak will that allows Lady Macbeth to push him past his own moral limits.
A. Ruthlessly ambitious, Lady Macbeth immediately plans Duncan's murder upon reading her husband's letter about the witches' prophecy, calling on spirits to "unsex" her and remove her natural feelings of guilt. Initially stronger than Macbeth, she eventually cracks under guilt and sleepwalks, obsessively trying to wash imaginary blood from her hands before dying by suicide.
A. Duncan is a good, gracious, and trusting king who honors Macbeth for his bravery in battle. His very goodness makes his murder more terrible: he is killed in his sleep at Macbeth's castle, a violation of sacred hospitality and loyalty.
A. Malcolm is Duncan's eldest son, who flees to England after his father's murder. He raises an army with English support and leads the forces that eventually defeat and kill Macbeth, becoming the rightful King of Scotland at the end of the play.
A. Banquo also receives a prophecy from the witches, that he will not be king himself but his descendants will be. Unlike Macbeth, Banquo is suspicious of the witches and does not act on ambition. Macbeth has him murdered, and his ghost appears at Macbeth's banquet, visible only to Macbeth, driving him to public breakdown.
A. Macduff suspects Macbeth from the start and flees to England to join Malcolm's army. Macbeth retaliates by having Macduff's wife and children massacred. Macduff kills Macbeth in the final battle, fulfilling the prophecy since he was born by Caesarean section rather than in the natural sense of "of woman born."
A. Ross and Lennox are Scottish nobles who serve as messengers and observers throughout the play. Ross delivers the news of Macduff's family's murder, and their shifting loyalties reflect the instability of Macbeth's Scotland as they eventually side with Malcolm.
A. The witches open the play on a blasted heath, prophesying that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and then King, and that Banquo's descendants will be kings. Their prophecies are true but misleading: they tell half-truths that lead Macbeth to false confidence, representing the dangerous temptation of fate and the corruption of ambition.
A. Hecate appears briefly to scold the witches for dealing with Macbeth without her and to oversee the second set of prophecies. Her role establishes that the witches operate within a larger supernatural order, one whose prophecies are designed to destroy Macbeth through false confidence.
Quoted works:
· Macbeth by William Shakespeare. First performed c. 1606; first published in the First Folio, 1623. Short quotations used for educational commentary under fair use.
This page is a study aid for students. All quotations are clearly attributed to their original sources. For a richer and fuller experience, we encourage you to read the original book.
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