Macbeth: Characters (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

It is vital that you understand the way Shakespeare uses his two main characters in the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. However, understanding less prominent characters and, crucially, how they compare to the main characters, will lead to the very best responses. Below you will find character profiles of:

• Macbeth
• Lady Macbeth
• Banquo
• Macduff
• The minor characters of the Three Witches and Malcolm

• The play’s tragic hero. This means:
• He displays heroic characteristics
• He has a fatal character flaw (hamartia): his ambition
• Despite his hamartia, the audience does feel some sympathy for him
• He is doomed to die at the end of the play
• At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is presented as:
• Brave: he is shown to be a fearless warrior (an “eagle” and a “lion” in battle)
• Noble: it is reported that he has killed a traitor in battle, showing his loyalty to King Duncan and Scotland in general
• Ambitious: unlike his comrade Banquo, he is easily seduced by the witches’ dangerous prophecies
• Conscientious: he questions the morality of committing regicide, which leads Lady Macbeth to challenge his courage and manliness 
• For Macbeth, there is a tension between the heroic and loyal aspect of his character and the ambition. This results in him questioning his actions repeatedly, but ultimately succumbing to his darker desires
• As the play progresses, Macbeth becomes a less sympathetic character. He is shown to be:
• Cruel: he murders his best friend, Banquo, and the wife and children of Macduff
• Paranoid: he begins to suspect even innocent people are threats to his power, and even stops sharing things with Lady Macbeth (“full of scorpions is my mind”)
• Guilty: his hallucinations represent his increasing feelings of guilt for the regicide and murder of Banquo
• Masculine: he becomes the cruel, violent man that Lady Macbeth accuses him of not being, and becomes the dominant force in their relationship
• Nihilistic: ultimately, he questions the pointlessness of life. For a Christian, Jacobean audience, this would be seen as disturbing
• Despite his hamartia, and the barbaric villain Macbeth becomes, there are still reasons for an audience to feel sympathy for him:
• He is tempted by evil witches
• He is encouraged by a thoroughly unnatural woman, Lady Macbeth
• He is thoroughly human: he is not pure evil, but a mixture of positive and negative character traits
• His emotional reaction to his wife’s death and questioning of his own actions as a result (Act V, Scene V)
• Even at the end of the play, he dies a warrior’s death, which could be seen by a Jacobean audience as heroic

• At the play’s outset, Lady Macbeth is presented as:
  • Ambitious: she has a thirst for power unmatched even by Macbeth. She even calls on evil spirits to help her achieve it
  • Ruthless: she will do anything to gain this power. She lacks the conscience to question committing the mortal sin of regicide. She even says she would have “dashed out the brains” of her own baby if she had sworn to do so
  • Duplicitous: when welcoming Duncan to Dunsinane, she has no hesitation greeting him warmly, knowing full well he would be murdered that evening
  • Controlling: she plans to commit regicide, and she dominates her husband Macbeth when he questions it
• She is also shown to be thoroughly untypical of a woman in the Jacobean era
• Shakespeare presents her as a character who subverts the typical attributes of women of that time:
  • She is not dutiful: she does not do what her husband tells her and is not loyal to her king
  • She is not compassionate: she wants to stop herself from feeling remorse for evil acts
  • She is not nurturing: she wants to replace the mother’s milk in her breasts with “gall”: courage, or in its other meaning, poison
• In many ways, Lady Macbeth is a less complex character than Macbeth. She does not have the same feelings of doubt or pangs of conscience that Macbeth does
• As the play progresses, Lady Macbeth loses control:
  • of her resolve: in Act V, she finally realises the true extent of her crime and its eternal consequences
  • of her relationship: Macbeth does not share his plans with her after Act II and becomes the dominant force in their relationship
  • of her mind: 
    • she begins hallucinating blood (a symbol of her responsibility and guilt for the murder of Duncan)
    • she cannot stop walking and talking in her sleep (sleep is a symbol of peace, so she is now never at peace) 
    • she is so tormented by guilt that she can no longer live with it and commits suicide
• Shakespeare presents a role reversal in the traditional husband and wife relationship:
• However, as the play progresses, Macbeth assumes the traditional, dominant role in their relationship
• Shakespeare could be suggesting that because she is a woman, Lady Macbeth is less capable of handling the power that comes with being a king or queen
• Shakespeare could also be comparing Lady Macbeth – as a woman – to the evil influence of the witches
• She is ‘unnatural’, just like the witches are, because of her untypical attributes and her dominance over Macbeth

For more on the key character of Lady Macbeth, including an exemplar question paper and model paragraph, click here.

• Banquo acts as a contrast to the character of Macbeth. In literature, this is known as being a foil:
• A foil (Banquo) is used to contrast with the characteristics of a protagonist (Macbeth)
• A foil, therefore, highlights character traits that are very particular to the protagonist, that an author wants to explore
• Banquo represents the typical behaviours and attitudes of the Jacobean era, the societal norms: 
• Unlike Macbeth, he is very suspicious of the witches. After they give their first prophecies, Banquo appeals to “reason”
• Unlike Macbeth, he is honest: he tells Macbeth that he had been dreaming about the witches. In response, Macbeth lies and tells Banquo he hadn’t given them any more thought
• Unlike Macbeth, he is loyal: after Duncan’s murdered body is discovered, he vows to fight “treasonous malice”
• Unlike Macbeth, he is devoutly Christian: he compares the witches to the Devil; after the regicide, he says “in the great hand of God I stand”
• Because Banquo represents the societal norms, Shakespeare makes him rightly suspicious of Macbeth’s behaviour:
• Immediately after meeting the witches, he thinks Macbeth is strange “rapt”, or spellbound
• After Macbeth becomes king, he says that he believes Macbeth “play’dst most foully for it”: he thinks Macbeth got the crown by evil means

• In the play, Macduff acts as an avenging agent who stands in contrast to the villainous Macbeth
• Like Banquo, he also represents the attributes a Jacobean audience would expect in a Scottish thane: 
• He is noble: when told the news of the murder of his wife and children, he gives a moving speech stating that there is more to manhood than violence and ambition. Men must also have compassion and feel grief: “I must also feel it as a man”
• He is loyal: his loyalty is tested by Malcolm and he passes the test: “I am not treacherous”. He also repeatedly calls Macbeth a “tyrant”, i.e. not a true ruler, but one who rules cruelly
• He is brave: he has no hesitation facing Macbeth – himself a fearsome warrior – in one-to-one combat, and he defeats him
• The audience would feel sympathy for Macduff because of the cruel murder of his innocent family
• He also acts as a symbol of the status quo: the actions of Macduff return order to the Kingdom of Scotland and return the rightful, God-chosen king to the throne

The Witches

• One way of seeing the witches is as a symbol of external evil: they are the representatives of the Devil on earth, and so do the devil’s work
• They are also presented by Shakespeare as:
• Grotesque: they are described as having bearded faces, which heightens the sense that they are supernatural, or unnatural, and not part of God’s natural order
• Duplicitous: Their prophecies are deliberately misleading, leading to characters misunderstanding them
• Malevolent: before delivering their first three prophecies (Act I, Scene III) they are seen plotting evil acts of torture against ordinary people. This may lead the audience to suspect they have evil ideas for Macbeth, too
• Disruptive: they are constantly seen to disrupt nature (with storms and spells) and, ultimately, seek to disrupt the Great Chain of Being and God’s authority over the world
• They can be seen as agents of fate, only predicting the inevitable consequences of characters’ actions
• Shakespeare may also be suggesting that the witches are only manifestations of the characters’ psychological realities: they only encourage characters to be true to their own – evil – selves

Malcolm

• Shakespeare uses Malcolm more as a symbol than a fully fleshed-out character
• He represents order or the status quo: he is the true heir to Duncan and the rightful king, as appointed by God according to the Divine Right of Kings
• This stands in contrast to Macbeth, who represents chaos
• Shakespeare uses Malcolm to explore the idea of what makes a good, rightful king:
• In contrast to Macbeth, he unites the Scottish thanes to battle against Macbeth
• In contrast to Macbeth, he is not presented as a tyrant
• In Act IV, Scene III, Malcolm discusses with Macduff what makes a tyrant, and then assures Macduff he is no such thing
• With the rightful king (Malcolm) not on the throne, the world is thrown into disorder: the Great Chain of Being has been disrupted
• Shakespeare returns Malcolm to the throne in the last scene of the play and, therefore, the order is restored to the kingdom