The characters of Macbeth are arranged around one question: what kind of person chooses murder, and what does the choice do to them? Around the Macbeths, Shakespeare places people who faced the same temptation and chose differently, and people who paid for choices that were not theirs.
This guide covers every major character in the play, grouped by the circles they move in: the Macbeths, the witches, the king and his heirs, Macbeth’s rivals, and the minor characters. For the plot, themes, and famous lines, see our full guide to Macbeth.
At a Glance
Here are the main characters of Macbeth for quick reference.
The Macbeths
A husband and wife who plan a murder together, and are destroyed by it in opposite ways.
Macbeth
A Scottish general and the Thane of Glamis, first described as a hero. After the opening battle, a wounded captain praises “brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),” and King Duncan calls him “valiant cousin, worthy gentleman.” Then three witches greet him as a future king, and within moments his mind has jumped to murder. He is horrified by his own thought, which “Shakes so my single state of man,” but he does not let it go.
What makes Macbeth unusual among Shakespeare’s villains is how clearly he sees what he is doing. Before the murder, he lists every reason against it: Duncan is his king, his kinsman, and his guest, and a good ruler whose virtues “Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued.” He admits he has no motive “but only / Vaulting ambition.” He kills anyway, and the murder does not bring him peace. “To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus,” he says as king, and he goes on killing to feel safe: Banquo, then Macduff’s family. By the end, “full of scorpions” in his mind, he is numb even to his wife’s death, and he dies fighting.
Lady Macbeth
Macbeth’s wife, and at first the stronger of the two. Reading his letter about the witches, she fears he is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way,” and she calls on dark spirits to “unsex me here” and fill her with cruelty. When Macbeth wavers, she mocks his courage until he agrees, and she plans the details: drug the guards, then blame them.
Yet there are cracks from the start. On the night of the murder, she admits she could not kill Duncan herself: “Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done ’t.” Afterward she dismisses guilt with “A little water clears us of this deed,” and later, “What’s done is done.” But by Act 3 she is already saying, “Naught’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content,” and Macbeth stops telling her his plans. In Act 5 she walks in her sleep, rubbing her hands and crying, “Out, damned spot, out, I say!” She dies offstage, reportedly by her own hand. The woman who thought guilt could be washed away is destroyed by it.
The Witches
The mysterious figures whose words start the tragedy.
The Three Witches
Called the Weird Sisters in the play, from an old word for fate. They are strange to look at, women with beards, and they speak in short, rhyming chants unlike anyone else, beginning with “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” They hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and future king, and tell Banquo, “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Later they show Macbeth three apparitions, whose promises seem to make him safe.
The witches never tell Macbeth to kill anyone. Whether they know the future, shape it, or simply tempt people to shape it themselves is one of the play’s great questions. Their promises are always true in some sense and always misleading, which is exactly what Banquo warns of: “The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s / In deepest consequence.” A scene featuring the goddess Hecate, their leader, and a few passages in another are generally believed not to be by Shakespeare.
The King and His Heirs
The rightful royal line that Macbeth interrupts.
Duncan
The king of Scotland, generous, gentle, and trusting. He rewards Macbeth with the title of Thane of Cawdor, taken from a traitor, and remarks sadly of that traitor that “There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face.” Moments later he greets Macbeth with warm praise, never suspecting him. Arriving at Macbeth’s castle, he admires its “pleasant seat.” He is murdered there that night. His goodness is what makes the crime so terrible, and so unnatural that, according to the Old Man and Ross, even his horses turned wild.
Malcolm
Duncan’s elder son, whom Duncan names as his heir. After the murder, he flees to England, which makes him look guilty. There he tests Macduff’s loyalty by pretending to be more wicked than Macbeth, a cautious move from a young man who has learned how easily a face can lie. He returns with an English army and is hailed as king at the end.
Donalbain
Duncan’s younger son, who flees to Ireland after his father’s murder. He speaks one of the play’s sharpest lines as he goes: “There’s daggers in men’s smiles.”
Macbeth’s Rivals
The friend Macbeth kills, and the enemy who kills him.
Banquo
Macbeth’s fellow general, who meets the witches at the same moment. He is promised something too, that his descendants will be kings, and he is tempted. He admits to dreaming of the witches and prays, “Merciful powers, / Restrain in me the cursèd thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose.” But he does not act. He is the living proof that Macbeth had a choice.
After the murder, Banquo suspects the truth: “Thou hast it now, king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,” he says, alone, “and I fear / Thou played’st most foully for ’t.” Yet he keeps silent. Macbeth, afraid of him and of the prophecy about his children, has him murdered on the road. His last words are for his son: “Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!” That night, his bloody ghost appears at Macbeth’s banquet, seen by no one else.
Fleance
Banquo’s young son, who escapes the murderers in the dark. He never returns in the play, but his escape keeps the witches’ prophecy alive, and it shatters Macbeth’s hopes of security: “I had else been perfect,” Macbeth says, “But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined.”
Macduff
The Thane of Fife, a Scottish nobleman who discovers Duncan’s body, crying “O horror, horror, horror!” He refuses to attend Macbeth’s coronation and goes home instead, the first sign that he suspects the truth. He then flees to England to join Malcolm, leaving his wife and children behind, and Macbeth has them all killed.
Macduff’s response to the news is one of the play’s most moving moments. When Malcolm urges him to “Dispute it like a man,” he answers, “I shall do so, / But I must also feel it as a man.” He turns his grief into purpose and leads the attack. In the final battle, he reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped,” the one man the witches’ promise does not cover, and he kills Macbeth.
Lady Macduff
Macduff’s wife, who appears in a single scene, angry that her husband has fled and left his family unprotected: “He loves us not; / He wants the natural touch.” She jokes tenderly with her young son until Macbeth’s murderers break in and kill them both. Her death is the play’s clearest picture of innocent people destroyed by Macbeth’s fear.
Minor Characters
Smaller roles that still leave their mark.
The Porter
The drunken gatekeeper who answers the knocking just after Duncan’s murder, pretending to be the porter of hell’s gate. His comic scene breaks the tension, and his jokes about an “equivocator,” someone who lies in double meanings, point straight at the witches.
Ross and Lennox
Two Scottish noblemen. Ross is the play’s messenger, bringing Macbeth his new title and Macduff the news of his family’s murder. Lennox serves Macbeth but grows sarcastic about the official story of Duncan’s death. Ross ends up on Malcolm’s side.
The Doctor and the Gentlewoman
The two witnesses of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking. The Doctor concludes that her sickness is beyond medicine and that she needs spiritual, not medical, help.
Siward and Young Siward
The English commander who leads Malcolm’s army, and his son, whom Macbeth kills in the final battle.
The Murderers
The men Macbeth hires to kill Banquo and Fleance. A mysterious third murderer joins them at the last minute, sent by Macbeth, and his identity is never revealed.
The Thane of Cawdor
The traitor whose title passes to Macbeth. He never appears, but Malcolm reports that he died well, confessing and repenting: “Nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it.” He is the first man in the play to betray Duncan’s trust, and Macbeth becomes the second.
A Closer Reading: What It Means to Be a Man
The characters of Macbeth keep arguing about what makes someone “a man,” and the play’s answer comes not from Macbeth or his wife but from Macduff.
Lady Macbeth’s definition is simple: a man dares. When Macbeth hesitates, she tells him, “When you durst do it, then you were a man.” Macbeth’s own reply shows that he knows better: “I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none.” There is a limit, and crossing it makes you less than human. He crosses it anyway, and from then on the word keeps coming back, emptier each time. He tells the murderers he hires that they are men only in the way that dogs are all dogs, sorted by what they can be used for. At the banquet, as he shrinks from Banquo’s ghost, his wife asks him, “Are you a man?” He answers, “What man dare, I dare,” and when the ghost vanishes, “I am a man again.”
Macduff offers a different answer. Told that his wife and children have been slaughtered, he is urged by Malcolm to “Dispute it like a man.” He replies, “I shall do so, / But I must also feel it as a man.” For Macduff, being a man includes grief, love, and pity, the very things Lady Macbeth prayed to have taken out of her and Macbeth trained himself to stop feeling. The man who can still feel is the one who defeats the man who has made himself numb.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about the characters in Macbeth, answered briefly.
Who Is More to Blame, Macbeth or Lady Macbeth?
Lady Macbeth pushes him into the first murder, but Macbeth thought of it first, and every murder after Duncan’s is his idea alone. He even hides his plan to kill Banquo from her. Most readers see her as the spark and him as the one responsible.
Are the Witches Evil?
They are clearly sinister, and they seem to enjoy Macbeth’s downfall. But they never make him act. They tell him what will happen, and the choices about how to make it happen are his.
Why Does Banquo’s Ghost Appear?
It appears at the banquet on the night of his murder, sitting in Macbeth’s place, and only Macbeth can see it. Whether it is a real ghost or a vision of Macbeth’s guilt, like the dagger before Duncan’s murder, is left open.
Who Is the Third Murderer?
The play never says. He appears only in the scene of Banquo’s murder, telling the other two that Macbeth sent him. Readers and productions have offered many guesses, but there is no answer in the text.
Who Survives at the End of Macbeth?
Malcolm, who becomes king, Macduff, and the noblemen who join them, including Ross. Fleance and Donalbain are still alive offstage. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are both dead, along with Duncan, Banquo, Lady Macduff and her son, and Young Siward.
Related Reading
Three pages that take the characters of Macbeth further.