Themes Evil


 The witches personify evil in the play. 


Supernatural evil


They conduct evil for evil’s sake, not for personal gain.


 The witches cannot commit evil directly. 


They can only tempt individuals to commit evil deeds.


 Humanity’s capacity for evil


Macbeth and Lady Macbeth perform many evil deeds.





Macbeth is conscious that his killing of Duncan is immoral.


 Consequences of evil


Lady Macbeth expresses her guilt privately and eventually commits suicide as a result.


 Macbeth is consumed by his guilt. 


Macbeth eventually becomes world- weary and suffers a spiritual death as a result of his evil crimes.


Triumph of good over evil 


In the end, the forces of good defeat Macbeth, and Malcolm prepares for his coronation.





The spectacle of Macbeth’s decapitated head serves as a warning against the dangers of evil.


Appearance vs Reality Shakespeare’s exploration of appearance and reality is an intriguing aspect ofMacbeth. Thewitches’ paradoxical chant in the opening scene, ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ establishes an air of confusion, where nothing is what it seems. In this play Shakespeare considers how equivocation and deception can mask reality with truly evil results. The theme is furthered by the characters’ hallucinations which allow Shakespeare to communicate the protagonists’ fraying mental states. Equivocation is the use of ambiguous language to mislead or trick. Equivocators don’t lie, instead they tell half-truths to mask reality. Equivocation was a serious issue when Macbeth was written.After a failed assassination attempt onKing James I (theGunpowder Plot) one of the accused plotters, Father Garnet, equivocated at his trial in order to hide information that was given to him during confession. He was found guilty and executed but his equivocal testimony provoked huge discussion. Shakespeare intended to flatter King James I in Macbeth and as a result aligned equivocation with evil in the play. The witches use equivocal language to mislead Macbeth. In Act 1, Scene 3 they tell Macbeth


that he ‘shalt be king hereafter!’. Although this statement is true, the witches fail to warn him of the dire consequences that will result from pursuing this ambition. Macbeth recognises that the witches are ‘imperfect speakers’ but grows to trust them as they correctly predict that he will become Thane


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Macbeth


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