Characters in Macbeth

Macduff

Macduff is the archetype of the avenging hero, not simply out for revenge but with a good and holy purpose. Macduff is the character who has two of the most significant roles in the play: First, he is the discoverer of Duncan's body. Second, the news of the callous murder of his wife and children (Act IV, Scene 3) spurs him toward his desire to take personal revenge upon the tyrannical Macbeth. When he knocks at the gate of Macbeth's castle in Act II, Scene 3, he is being equated with the figure of Christ, who before his final ascension into Heaven, goes down to release the souls of the damned from hell (the so-called "Harrowing of Hell").

Like Macbeth, Macduff is also shown as a human being. When he hears of the death of his "pretty chickens," he has to hold back his emotions. Even when (in Act IV, Scene 3) Malcolm urges him to "Dispute it like a man," Macduff's reply "I will do so. But I must also feel it as a man" enables the audience to weigh him against Macbeth, an unfeeling man if ever there was one. In the final combat between hero and anti-hero, this humanity is recalled once more when Macduff cries out, "I have no words; my voice is in my sword." It is his very wordlessness that contrasts with Macbeth's empty rhetoric.

O, I could play the woman with mine eyes / And braggart with my tongue! But gentle heavens, / Cut short all intermission. Front to front / Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; / Within my sword's length set him; if he scape, / Heaven forgive him too. (Act 4 Scene 3)

Macduff wants to rid his country of the tyrant Macbeth and vows to help Malcolm achieve this. When he learns of the murder of his family he becomes even more determined to take revenge.He and Macbeth come face-to-face on the battlefield and Macduff is victorious

Duncan

The king of Scotland should be a figurehead of order and orderliness, and Duncan is the epitome, or supreme example, of this. His language is formal and his speeches full of grace and graciousness, whether on the battlefield in Act I, Scene 2, where his talk concerns matters of honor, or when greeting his kind hostess Lady Macbeth in Act I, Scene 6. Duncan also expresses humility-the quality of having a modest or low view of one's importance- (a feature that Macbeth lacks) when he admits his failure in spotting the previous Thane of Cawdor's treachery: "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face" (I: 4,11).

Most importantly, Duncan is the representative of God on earth, ruling by divine right (ordained by God), a feature of kingship strongly endorsed by King James I, for whom the play was performed in 1606. This "divinity" of the king is made clear on several occasions…