Macbeth Themes

Supernatural

• the witches are motivated by destruction and drive the action of the play and are associated with the chaos throughout
• represents the struggle between the material world and the mystical world
• they have power over the mortal characters from their 'strange intelligence' allowing them to see into the future
• adds to the sense of darkness in the play
• James I and VI was obsessed with witches and the spernatural, wrote a book called Daemonologie in 1597
• the Macbeths' guilt results in their supernatural visions, Macbeth's dagger soliloquy and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking speech
• the witches can predict fate, but Macbeth makes his own choice; the power of the supernatural is indefinite as the audience can't always distinguish what was the cause of each event
• Macbeth believed in fate, and so should have known he was doomed from the start with his 'fatal flaw', many people were questioning the existence of fate and predestination in the Renaissance, so was a controversial topic

Ambition

• dangerous trait, Macbeth lets his spiral out of control, as originally he questions murdering Duncan, but lets it progress to the extent that he doesn't think twice about murdering his best friend Banquo
• once it starts, Macbeth can't stop it, making him rutheless and selfish in order to secure his position as king
• Lady Macbeth sees the difference between having ambition and acting on it, and manipulates Macbeth in this way to kill Duncan
• Macbeth's fatal flaw is his ambition, which 'o'erleaps itself/ And falls' foreshadowing his downfall, following the ideas of Aristotelian tragedies, where the hero begins his tragic descent due to his harmatia
• Shakespeare shows that being over ambtious is dangerous as the Macbeths are eventually destroyed by theirs

Kingship

• Duncan is shown as a good king as he is holy, use of religious language: 'gracious' 'most sainted king' -  he…