Drama Macbeth Characters List by William Shakespeare
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Macbeth
Because we first hear of Macbeth in the wounded captain’s account of his battlefield valor, our initial impression is of a brave and capable warrior. This perspective is complicated, however, once we see Macbeth interact with the three witches. We realize that his physical courage is joined by a consuming ambition and a tendency to self-doubt—the prediction that he will be king brings him joy, but it also creates inner turmoil. These three attributes—bravery, ambition, and self-doubt—struggle for mastery of Macbeth throughout the play. Shakespeare uses Macbeth to show the terrible effects that ambition and guilt can have on a man who lacks strength of character. We may classify Macbeth as irrevocably evil, but his weak character separates him from Shakespeare’s great villains—Iago in Othello, Richard III in Richard III, Edmund in King Lear—who are all strong enough to conquer guilt and self-doubt. Macbeth, great warrior though he is, is ill equipped for the psychic consequences of crime.
Before he kills Duncan, Macbeth is plagued by worry and almost aborts the crime. It takes Lady Macbeth’s steely sense of purpose to push him into the deed. After the murder, however, her powerful personality begins to disintegrate, leaving Macbeth increasingly alone. He fluctuates between fits of fevered action, in which he plots a series of murders to secure his throne, and moments of terrible guilt (as when Banquo’s ghost appears) and absolute pessimism (after his wife’s death, when he seems to succumb to despair). These fluctuations reflect the tragic tension within Macbeth: he is at once too ambitious to allow his conscience to stop him from murdering his way to the top and too conscientious to be happy with himself as a murderer.
As things fall apart for him at the end of the play, he seems almost relieved—with the English army at his gates, he can finally return to life as a warrior, and he displays a kind of reckless bravado as his enemies surround him and drag him down. In part, this stems from his fatal confidence in the witches’ prophecies, but it also seems to derive from the fact that he has returned to the arena where he has been most successful and where his internal turmoil need not affect him—namely, the battlefield. Unlike many of Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes, Macbeth never seems to contemplate suicide: “Why should I play the Roman fool,” he asks, “and die / On mine own sword?” (5.10.1–2). Instead, he goes down fighting, bringing the play full circle: it begins with Macbeth winning on the battlefield and ends with him dying in combat.
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters. When we first see her, she is already plotting Duncan’s murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband. She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself.
This theme of the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady Macbeth’s character: her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence. Shakespeare, however, seems to use her, and the witches, to undercut Macbeth’s idea that “undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males” (1.7.73–74). These crafty women use female methods of achieving power—that is, manipulation—to further their supposedly male ambitions. Women, the play implies, can be as ambitious and cruel as men, yet social constraints deny them the means to pursue these ambitions on their own.
Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with remarkable effectiveness, overriding all his objections; when he hesitates to murder, she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he must commit murder to prove himself. Lady Macbeth’s remarkable strength of will persists through the murder of the king—it is she who steadies her husband’s nerves immediately after the crime has been perpetrated.
Afterward, however, Lady Macbeth begins a slow slide into madness—just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly afterward. By the close of the play, she has been reduced to sleepwalking through the castle, desperately trying to wash away an invisible bloodstain. Once the sense of guilt comes home to roost, Lady Macbeth’s sensitivity becomes a weakness, and she is unable to cope. Significantly, she (apparently) kills herself, signaling her total inability to deal with the legacy of their crimes.
Throughout the play, the witches—referred to as the “weird sisters” by many of the characters—lurk like dark thoughts and unconscious temptations to evil. In part, the mischief they cause stems from their supernatural powers, but mainly it is the result of their understanding of the weaknesses of their specific interlocutors—they play upon Macbeth’s ambition like puppeteers.
The witches’ beards, bizarre potions, and rhymed speech make them seem slightly ridiculous, like caricatures of the supernatural. Shakespeare has them speak in rhyming couplets throughout (their most famous line is probably “Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn and cauldron bubble” in 4.1.10–11), which separates them from the other characters, who mostly speak in blank verse. The witches’ words seem almost comical, like malevolent nursery rhymes. Despite the absurdity of their “eye of newt and toe of frog” recipes, however, they are clearly the most dangerous characters in the play, being both tremendously powerful and utterly wicked (4.1.14).
The audience is left to ask whether the witches are independent agents toying with human lives, or agents of fate, whose prophecies are only reports of the inevitable. The witches bear a striking and obviously intentional resemblance to the Fates, female characters in both Norse and Greek mythology who weave the fabric of human lives and then cut the threads to end them. Some of their prophecies seem self-fulfilling. For example, it is doubtful that Macbeth would have murdered his king without the push given by the witches’ predictions. In other cases, though, their prophecies are just remarkably accurate readings of the future—it is hard to see Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane as being self-fulfilling in any way. The play offers no easy answers. Instead, Shakespeare keeps the witches well outside the limits of human comprehension. They embody an unreasoning, instinctive evil.
Banquo is Macbeth’s brave and noble best friend, as well as his second victim. Banquo enters the play with Macbeth after both have fought valiantly for Duncan’s side in a recent battle. Duncan acknowledges Banquo as “no less deserved” of praise than Macbeth, but from the beginning of the play Banquo is overshadowed by Macbeth’s accomplishments and ambition. However, Banquo is not entirely without ambition of his own. He asks for a prophecy from the Witches, too, and is pleased to learn that his children will rule Scotland.
Similar to Macbeth, Banquo seems unable to understand the cost of the Witches’ prophecy will be his life. In Act III, murderers kill Banquo at Macbeth’s command, and try to kill his young son, Fleance, who manages to get away. Soon after his death, Banquo appears in the form of a ghost at the banquet the Macbeths give at their castle. At play’s end, Banquo’s greatest import remains offstage: his son, Fleance, who could come back to revenge his father’s death and take the throne of Scotland, fulfilling the Witches’ prophecy that Banquo’s sons will one day be king.
Macduff stands out from a large cast of secondary characters because of the particular harm that Macbeth does to him, and the revenge Macduff takes on Macbeth in turn. At the beginning of the play, Macduff is a loyal and brave noble fighting on Duncan’s side. He immediately distrusts Macbeth’s claim that Duncan was killed by his servants, and refuses to go to Macbeth’s coronation.
Once Macbeth understands that Macduff will not be loyal to him, Macduff becomes a particular focus of Macbeth’s anger, guilt, and rabid desire to protect his power. Macbeth arranges for murderers to kill Macduff’s wife and children, after Macduff has already fled to England to seek help from the king for his cause against Macbeth.
Macduff’s decision to abandon his family is never fully explained, and seems hard to justify, given their brutal murders. But Macduff is deeply motivated by his wife and sons’ deaths, and he speaks several times in the play about how he must revenge them. Thus, his mission to place Malcolm on the throne of Scotland is one that reflects his desire to have the true monarch ruling, but also shows his desire for vengeance for his wife and son’s murder.
King Duncan stands as a symbol of stability, and as an idyllic representation of the possibility of just leadership. Boasting admirable traits indicative of a benevolent ruler, it is in fact Duncan’s level-headed, kindly nature that all but sets him up for an untimely demise. As a bastion of peace and order, his character offers a contrast to the other major players as they engage in varying degrees of threats and sabotage in an effort to seek his titleship.
In folk or fairy tales, long-standing peaceful traditions are often represented by an old or dying king. In the case of Duncan, his moral compass serves as a contrast to those who not only wish to see him usurped, but desire to have a direct hand in doing so, and his death signifies the end of that peace as well as the onset of a corrupt regime. Duncan’s decency and trust in both Cawdor and Macbeth not only pave the way for a more dramatically ironic betrayal, but also speak to the precariousness of power in a world where power corrupts. Even if the king is a just and fair one, he is all the more at risk of having his life and legacy destroyed at the hands of those craving power.
Lastly, as the representation of that which is stable and all that came before, Duncan stands as a seemingly immovable force to which all of his surroundings react. The existence of the structure that Duncan provides essentially forces the status quo to either remain as it is, or be destroyed entirely. The prophecies uttered by the three witches foreshadow these changing tides, culminating in his death at the hands of Macbeth.
Like his father, Malcolm represents stability and lawfulness. But where Duncan stands as an old guard representation of what has come before, Malcolm’s prospects speak to the future. Literalizing the family dynamic, Malcolm doesn't merely offer a possibility of future peace; he would extend Duncan’s reign directly. However, Malcolm’s character also showcases the dangers and burdens of holding such a title. When Duncan is killed, Malcolm’s very life presents a challenge to Macbeth’s reign, and he must leave Scotland for fear of being killed.
In Act IV, Malcolm and Macduff discuss leadership. Even as Malcolm initially “admits” his own shortcomings and vices to gauge Macduff’s loyalty, the pair hold common ground in regards to their loyalty and love of Scotland, a crucial thread that speaks to the purely idealistic, if naive, trap of ruling. A tyrant like Macbeth seeks power for power’s sake, and therefore lacks the loyalty of those who put the nation first, like Duncan and Edward, and Malcolm and Macduff.
The younger generation’s hope for a more idealistic and enlightened society pits the viewpoints of Malcolm against those of Macbeth, whose persistent ambitions, expertise on the battlefield, and warring neuroses make him a turbulent, violent force within the play. Malcolm is driven to destroy Macbeth, recruiting Macduff to join him after his family too is killed. Here, Malcolm decides to do what is necessary and stop the usurper. Yet Malcolm still holds onto his humanity, furthering his contrast to Macbeth, who remains a cautionary figure for Malcolm. Macduff encourages Malcolm not to lose sight over what has been lost, as grief, not merely revenge, will keep him grounded when nearly everyone around him falls further into the temptation of power.
Even though it is Macduff who ultimately kills Macbeth, the play ends with Malcolm being sworn in as king, allowing Shakespeare to explore a contrast between the proper inheritance of one’s title versus the act of stealing it. Malcolm’s duty and responsibility prompt him to do what is right for the good of the nation, contrasting with Macbeth’s bloodthirsty attempt to thwart the natural order. Malcolm is the king by divine rule; Macbeth is a usurper. By the end, the former is rewarded, while the latter meets his demise, thus reinforcing the legitimacy of the line of succession. In his speech boasting of peace and just rulership, the coronation of Malcolm offers a chance for stability, much like what King Duncan stood for. Malcolm invites everyone to his ceremony, suggesting a new cycle of equality and order and marking a distinct contrast from the conflict that previously plagued the country.
Fleance is Banquo’s son, and according to the witches’ prophecy, he may one day become the King of Scotland. Although he only appears in two brief scenes, the inclusion of his character in the play works to complicate Macbeth’s pursuit of the throne. The witches reveal in Act I that while Macbeth will become king, Banquo’s children are also destined to occupy the throne. This detail drives Macbeth to view both Banquo and Fleance as enemies, and he conspires to kill them both in order to secure his power. When the murderers attack the pair outside the palace, Fleance manages to escape his father’s fate and flees to safety. This may be the final moment in which he appears on stage, but his survival works to uphold the witches’ prophecy. For Macbeth, Fleance serves as an ongoing source of uncertainty as he tries to navigate his new status. The fact that no one knows where Fleance has escaped to further exacerbates Macbeth’s concerns about his influence as he has no way to suppress him. For both the play’s other characters and the audience, however, Fleance serves as a reminder that a future exists beyond Macbeth’s corrupt rule. This small source of optimism offers relief from the overall tragic nature of the play.
While Fleance’s escape in Act III ensures the promise of his future, Shakespeare foreshadows this key role earlier in the play. Fleance’s first appearance on stage occurs in Act II, Scene 1 when he accompanies his father in the dark halls of Inverness. While their exchange may seem simple, the ominous setting and Fleance’s actions suggest that he may have the power to free Scotland from Macbeth’s kingship. Both father and son initially comment on the eerie timelessness of the night, a detail which can function as a metaphor for the unnatural darkness falling on Scotland as a result of Macbeth’s behavior. Within this environment, however, Fleance bears a torch symbolizing the hope that he will usher in a new, more peaceful era. Fleance bears a torch in the attack scene as well, a detail which further reinforces this uplifting identity.
In order to ensure his destiny and claim the Scottish throne, Macbeth recruits a group of murderers to go after his most threatening enemies. He first meets with two murderers in Act III, Scene 1, and when they prepare to attack Banquo and Fleance, a third murderer appears. While killing Macbeth’s opponents is the murderers’ most obvious responsibility, their presence in the play also works to reflect the subtle shifts in Macbeth’s character as his power grows. King Duncan is the first character to die in the play, and Macbeth carries out the murder himself after much convincing from his wife. By Act III, the initial hesitation and guilt that he experienced seems to disappear as he not only calls for Banquo’s death himself, he also manipulates others into killing on his behalf. This shift reflects the decreasing influence of Macbeth’s conscience and his growing sense of greed, both of which the murderers exacerbate by agreeing to his demands. They support Macbeth’s assertion that Banquo has treated them poorly, for example, and they return to kill Lady Macduff and her children despite their innocence. The murderers ultimately allow Macbeth to feel in control of his fate.
While the three Murderers all act together, their dialogue reveals subtle, individual details about each of them. The first murderer has the most lines as he speaks in both Acts III and IV, and this renders him the unofficial leader of the group. He gives instructions as they prepare to attack Banquo and Fleance, delivers the news of Fleance’s escape to Macbeth, and kills Lady Macduff’s son. According to his conversation with Macbeth in Act III, Scene 1, this bold attitude stems from the frustrations and sorrows that characterize his life. The second murderer, while less prominent in terms of dialogue, appears driven by anger. He expresses an unrestrained disdain for the world around him that leads to reckless behavior. The identity of the third murderer, however, is unclear and serves as the source of much debate. Arriving unannounced in Act III, Scene 3, he appears to have more personal knowledge about Banquo than the other two murderers. This detail, in addition to his response that Macbeth sent him, has led some scholars to suggest that the third murderer is Macbeth himself in disguise. Others propose that this mysterious figure is another one of Macbeth’s political allies or a spy sent to supervise the murderers. Regardless of the third Murderer’s true identity, his appearance in the play emphasizes the high stakes that Macbeth places on the deaths of Banquo and Fleance.
Although she only appears in one scene, Lady Macduff’s strong maternal presence offers an important alternative to the corrupt behaviors of the Macbeths. She values love and loyalty, and throughout Act IV, Scene 2, she attempts to impart her moral code onto her young son. He quickly notices his mother’s anger towards his missing father, a response which stems from her belief that family comes before all else. Lady Macduff labels her husband as a traitor for leaving her and the children without warning and refuses to listen to Ross’s suggestion that he may have had a noble reason for doing so. While this perspective may appear harsh, it emphasizes her desire to protect the safe, domestic world within the Macduffs’ castle. She perceives her husband as a threat to her children as soon as she believes that he exists in the same category as “liars and swearers” and, by telling her son that he is dead, vows to keep him out of their lives. Of course, the security that Lady Macduff attempts to preserve for her children disappears when Macbeth’s murderers descend on the castle. She offers a bold retort to the murderers’ question about her husband’s whereabouts, a moment which reinforces her internal strength, but she ultimately fails to save her family from danger. The brutal deaths of Lady Macduff and her children highlight just how far the Macbeths are willing to go in order to secure their power.
Lady Macduff’s character calls attention to the nuances of Lady Macbeth’s character in particular, and although they are foils for each other, they also have some qualities in common. Both women, for example, possess strong wills and clearly articulate their points of view to the other characters around them. Macbeth cannot convince his wife to abandon the idea of murdering King Duncan in order to secure the throne, and Lady Macduff refuses to consider the possibility that her husband’s departure was justified. The fact that neither of these women come across as weak or helpless challenges more traditional depictions of femininity, suggesting that wives and mothers can still wield influence from within the domestic sphere. Where Lady Macduff and Lady Macbeth begin to differ, however, is in their motivation. Lady Macduff’s focus is on the well-being of her family while Lady Macbeth allows greed and ambition to cloud her judgment. By setting these two women up as foil characters for one another, Shakespeare is able to examine which traits are responsible for Lady Macbeth’s.
