Macbeth is a tragedy about a brave soldier who hears a prophecy that he will be king and decides to make it come true, and it shows, step by bloody step, how one murder demands the next until nothing is left of the man who committed the first.
Written around 1606, it is the shortest and fastest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, full of witches, ghosts, blood, and sleeplessness. This guide covers the plot act by act, the main characters, the themes, and the most famous lines, and ends with a reading of what the witches actually promise. For the other plays, see our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Macbeth for quick reference.
Macbeth in Brief
The whole story in a few sentences, before the act-by-act detail.
Returning from battle, the Scottish general Macbeth meets three witches who hail him as a future king. Urged on by his wife, he murders King Duncan while Duncan is a guest in his castle, and takes the crown when Duncan’s sons flee.
But the witches also promised that his friend Banquo’s descendants would be kings, so Macbeth has Banquo killed, and then, fearing the nobleman Macduff, has Macduff’s wife and children slaughtered. Lady Macbeth, tormented by guilt, walks in her sleep and dies. Trusting prophecies that seem to make him safe, Macbeth faces the army of Duncan’s son Malcolm, discovers that the prophecies were tricks, and is killed by Macduff. Malcolm becomes king.
Macbeth Plot Summary, Act by Act
What happens in each of the play’s five acts.
Act 1: The Prophecy
After a victorious battle against rebels and invaders, Macbeth and his fellow general Banquo meet three witches on a heath. They hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, which he is, Thane of Cawdor, and “king hereafter,” and tell Banquo that his children will be kings. Moments later, messengers arrive: King Duncan has made Macbeth Thane of Cawdor, a title stripped from a traitor. One prophecy has already come true, and Macbeth’s thoughts turn at once to murder. Then Duncan names his son Malcolm as heir to the throne.
At Macbeth’s castle, Lady Macbeth reads his letter about the witches. She fears her husband is too kind to seize the crown, and calls on dark spirits to fill her with cruelty. When she learns that Duncan will stay the night with them, she takes charge. Macbeth wavers and tells her they will go no further, but she mocks his courage and lays out a plan: drug Duncan’s servants and blame the murder on them. Macbeth agrees.
Act 2: The Murder
That night, Macbeth sees a bloody dagger floating in the air, leading him to Duncan’s room. At the sound of his wife’s signal bell, he goes in and kills the king. He returns shaken and still holding the servants’ daggers, too horrified to take them back. Lady Macbeth returns them herself and smears the sleeping servants with blood, as a knocking at the castle gate begins.
A drunken porter, pretending to be the gatekeeper of hell, lets in the nobleman Macduff, who discovers the body. Macbeth kills the servants, claiming it was an outburst of grief and rage. Fearing for their lives, Duncan’s sons flee, Malcolm to England and Donalbain to Ireland, and their flight makes them look guilty. Macbeth is crowned king, but Macduff stays away from the coronation.
Act 3: Banquo’s Ghost
King now, Macbeth cannot forget that the witches promised the crown to Banquo’s descendants, not his own. He hires murderers to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance, and keeps the plan from his wife. The murderers kill Banquo on the road, but Fleance escapes.
At a royal banquet that night, Banquo’s bloody ghost appears and sits in Macbeth’s place. Only Macbeth can see it, and his terrified outbursts alarm his guests until Lady Macbeth sends them away. Alone with her, Macbeth resolves to visit the witches again, admitting that he has waded so far into blood that going back would be as hard as going on. Meanwhile, Macduff has gone to England to seek help against him.
Act 4: The Apparitions
The witches summon three apparitions for Macbeth. The first warns him to beware Macduff. The second tells him that no man born of woman can harm him. The third promises that he will never be defeated until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Macbeth feels safe, but when he asks about Banquo, they show him a procession of kings descended from Banquo. Learning that Macduff has fled to England, Macbeth orders the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, and they are killed in their home.
In England, Malcolm tests Macduff’s loyalty by pretending to be even more wicked than Macbeth. Convinced that Macduff is honest, he reveals that the English king has given him an army. Then Ross arrives with the news that Macduff’s whole family has been slaughtered. Macduff’s grief turns to a vow of revenge.
Act 5: The Prophecies Fulfilled
A doctor and a lady-in-waiting watch Lady Macbeth walk in her sleep, rubbing her hands as if washing them and reliving the murders; the doctor says she needs a priest more than a physician. Malcolm’s army gathers at Birnam Wood, where each soldier cuts a branch to hide their numbers. In his castle at Dunsinane, Macbeth learns that his wife is dead, and then that the wood seems to be moving toward the castle.
Macbeth goes out to fight. He kills a young English soldier and boasts that no man born of woman can harm him. Then Macduff finds him and reveals that he was cut from his mother’s womb before his birth. Macbeth realizes the witches have tricked him, but refuses to surrender and fights on. Macduff kills him and brings his head to Malcolm, who is hailed as king of Scotland.
Characters
The main figures in the play, and what drives each of them.
Macbeth
A Scottish general, brave and admired, who murders his king to take the throne. He sees the horror of what he does more clearly than any other Shakespearean villain, and does it anyway. Each crime makes the next one easier, until he is numb even to his wife’s death.
Lady Macbeth
Macbeth’s wife, who drives him to the first murder when he hesitates. She begins as the stronger of the two, dismissing guilt with “A little water clears us of this deed,” and ends walking in her sleep, trying to wash away blood that will not come off.
The Three Witches
Called the Weird Sisters in the play, they make the prophecies that set everything in motion. What they say is always true in some sense, and always misleading.
Banquo
Macbeth’s fellow general, who hears the same witches and is tempted by the same promise, but does not act on it. Murdered on Macbeth’s orders, he returns as a ghost.
Duncan
The king of Scotland, a gentle and trusting ruler who rewards Macbeth generously and is murdered as a guest under his roof.
Macduff
A Scottish nobleman who discovers Duncan’s body and suspects Macbeth early. He flees to England to raise an army, leaving his family behind, and Macbeth has them killed. He is the one man the witches’ promise does not protect Macbeth from.
Malcolm
Duncan’s elder son and heir. He flees after the murder, returns with an English army, and becomes king at the end.
Fleance
Banquo’s young son, who escapes the murderers. He never returns in the play, but his escape keeps alive the prophecy that Banquo’s descendants will be kings.
Themes
The ideas that run through Macbeth and give it its lasting power.
Ambition
Macbeth knows he has no good reason to kill Duncan. Weighing the murder, he admits he has nothing to drive him on “but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’ other.” The image is of a rider leaping into the saddle so hard that he falls off the far side, and it describes exactly what happens to him.
Prophecy and Choice
Is Macbeth fated to become king, or does he choose it? The witches predict; they never command. Banquo hears a prophecy too and waits. Macbeth himself says at first that if chance will make him king, chance can crown him without his help, and then he decides not to wait. The play keeps asking how much of his fate is his own doing.
Guilt, Blood, and Sleep
Guilt in Macbeth takes physical form. The Macbeths’ hands are stained with blood that will not wash off, and after the murder Macbeth hears a voice cry “Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep.” Neither of them sleeps in peace again: he is tormented by terrible dreams, and she walks through the castle at night, reliving what they did.
Appearance and Deception
From the witches’ opening chant, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” nothing in the play is what it seems. Lady Macbeth tells her husband to look innocent and hide his purpose. Duncan admits that “There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face,” just before he trusts Macbeth completely. And the witches’ promises turn out to mean something quite different from what they seem to say.
Key Quotations
The most famous lines in Macbeth, who speaks them, and what they mean.
“Fair Is Foul, and Foul Is Fair”
The witches, Act 1, scene 1. The play’s first scene ends on this chant, announcing a world where good and evil are turned upside down. Macbeth’s very first line echoes it: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”
“Look Like th’ Innocent Flower, but Be the Serpent Under ’t”
Lady Macbeth, Act 1, scene 5, telling her husband how to greet Duncan. Seem harmless and welcoming; hide the deadly purpose underneath.
“Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me?”
Macbeth, Act 2, scene 1, moments before the murder. He sees a dagger in the air, “The handle toward my hand,” and wonders whether it is real or “A dagger of the mind.” His imagination is already committing the crime. Our guide to Shakespeare’s soliloquies looks at how speeches like this work.
“Will All Great Neptune’s Ocean Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand?”
Macbeth, Act 2, scene 2, just after the murder. His answer is no: his bloody hand would sooner turn all the seas red. Lady Macbeth replies that “A little water clears us of this deed,” a line that returns to haunt her.
“Double, Double Toil and Trouble”
The witches, Act 4, scene 1, stirring their cauldron: “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” The same scene gives us “By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes,” spoken as Macbeth approaches.
“Out, Damned Spot”
Lady Macbeth, Act 5, scene 1, walking in her sleep: “Out, damned spot, out, I say!” She is trying to scrub away blood that only she can see. The woman who once said a little water would clear them now cannot get her hands clean.
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”
Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, on hearing that his wife is dead. The days creep on meaninglessly to the end of time, and life is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” It is the bleakest speech in Shakespeare, and the sound of a man who has destroyed everything that gave his life meaning.
“Lay On, Macduff”
Macbeth, Act 5, scene 8, his last words before the final fight: “Lay on, Macduff, / And damned be him that first cries ‘Hold, enough!’” Knowing now that the witches have tricked him, he chooses to die fighting.
Language and Form
How Shakespeare builds the play, and the techniques that make it work.
Speed
Macbeth moves faster than any other Shakespearean tragedy. There is almost no subplot, and the murder of a king happens before the end of Act 2. The pace itself becomes part of the story: once Macbeth starts killing, events rush toward the end.
The Witches’ Rhymes
Most of the play is in blank verse, but the witches speak in short, rhyming, chant-like lines, so they sound unlike anyone else. The difference marks them as creatures from outside the human world.
Blood and Darkness
Blood runs through the whole play, from the battlefield in the second scene to the imaginary spot on Lady Macbeth’s hand. So does darkness: before their crimes, both Macbeths call on the night to hide them, Macbeth with “Stars, hide your fires” and his wife with “Come, thick night.”
The Porter
Just after the murder, a drunken porter stumbles to the gate, joking that he is the gatekeeper of hell. The comedy breaks the tension, but the joke is also true: Macbeth’s castle has become a kind of hell. Among the sinners the porter imagines letting in is an “equivocator,” someone who lies by speaking in double meanings, which is exactly what the witches do.
A Closer Reading: What the Witches Never Said
The witches never tell Macbeth to kill anyone; his tragedy is that he treats their words as instructions, first to act and then to feel safe, and misreads them both times.
In Act 1, the witches simply say that Macbeth “shalt be king hereafter.” They say nothing about how. Macbeth himself sees the choice clearly: “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me / Without my stir.” And Banquo, who hears a prophecy just as flattering, warns him what such voices are for: “oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s / In deepest consequence.” Banquo waits. Macbeth stirs.
His second mistake is the mirror of the first. In Act 4, the apparitions tell him that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will not be defeated until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Once, he treated a prophecy as a task to be carried out; now he treats these as guarantees. “That will never be,” he says of the moving forest. Both promises turn out to be true in a way he never imagined: the wood comes, carried as branches by Malcolm’s soldiers, and Macduff was born by being cut from his mother’s womb.
The porter’s “equivocator” was a warning, and at the end Macbeth finally understands it. He curses the “juggling fiends” who “palter with us in a double sense, / That keep the word of promise to our ear / And break it to our hope.” It is a perfect description of the witches, but it is also a description of how Macbeth has listened all along: hearing what he wanted, and acting on it. The witches supplied the words. Every choice about what to do with them was his.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Macbeth, answered briefly.
What Is Macbeth About?
A Scottish general who, after three witches predict he will be king, murders the king to take the throne, then commits more and more murders to keep it, until he is overthrown and killed.
Do the Witches Make Macbeth Kill Duncan?
No. They predict that he will be king, but never tell him to kill anyone. The decision is his, pushed hard by Lady Macbeth. Banquo hears a prophecy too and does nothing, which shows that a different choice was possible.
Why Does Lady Macbeth Walk in Her Sleep?
Guilt. She suppressed it at the time of the murder, but it returns in her sleep, where she relives the killings and tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands. Her death is later reported as having been by her own hand.
Who Kills Macbeth?
Macduff, whose wife and children Macbeth had murdered. Because Macduff was cut from his mother’s womb rather than born naturally, the prophecy that no man “of woman born” could harm Macbeth does not protect him.
When Was Macbeth Written?
Around 1606, a few years after King James VI of Scotland also became king of England. Its Scottish setting, and its witches, would have had particular interest for audiences under a Scottish king.
Related Reading
Three pages that take Macbeth further.