Macbeth - The Definitive GCSE Revision Guide

1Act 1 - The Prophecy

The play opens amid thunder and lightning with three witches planning to meet Macbeth after a battle ("When the hurlyburly's done, / When the battle's lost and won"). Their chant "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" establishes the theme of moral inversion that pervades the entire play. Meanwhile, a wounded Captain reports to King Duncan that Macbeth has fought with extraordinary bravery against the rebels and the Norwegian invaders, earning the titles "brave Macbeth" and "Bellona's bridegroom." Duncan orders the execution of the traitorous Thane of Cawdor and awards Cawdor's title to Macbeth.

On a "blasted heath," Macbeth and Banquo encounter the Weird Sisters, who prophesy that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and then King, while Banquo will be "lesser than Macbeth, and greater" and father to a line of kings. Almost immediately, Ross arrives to confirm Macbeth has indeed been made Thane of Cawdor. This partial fulfilment ignites Macbeth's ambition; in an aside, he imagines the murder ("whose horrid image doth unfix my hair") but also considers that "chance may crown me / Without my stir." Duncan names his eldest son Malcolm as Prince of Cumberland (heir), prompting Macbeth's aside: "Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires."

Macbeth writes to Lady Macbeth, who reads the letter and immediately resolves that Duncan must die. In her "unsex me here" soliloquy, she invokes evil spirits to strip her of feminine compassion. When Duncan arrives at their castle as an honoured guest, Lady Macbeth counsels Macbeth to "look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't." In his "If it were done" soliloquy (1.7), Macbeth lists every reason not to kill Duncan but acknowledges he has only "vaulting ambition" to drive him. He decides not to proceed - but Lady Macbeth attacks his manhood and outlines a practical plan (drug the guards, use their daggers), persuading him to commit the murder.

2Act 2 - The Murder of Duncan

Banquo, unable to sleep, tells Macbeth he has dreamed of the Weird Sisters. Macbeth lies, claiming he does not think of them. Left alone, Macbeth hallucinates a dagger leading him towards Duncan's chamber ("Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?"). He murders Duncan offstage while his guards sleep, drugged by Lady Macbeth. Immediately wracked with guilt, he returns carrying the bloody daggers. He is horrified: he could not say "Amen" when the guards mumbled a prayer, and he believes he heard a voice cry "Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep." He declares that "all great Neptune's ocean" cannot wash the blood from his hands.

Lady Macbeth, composed and practical, takes the daggers back and smears the sleeping guards with Duncan's blood to frame them, dismissing Macbeth's terror with "A little water clears us of this deed." The porter provides brief comic relief, stumbling drunkenly to answer the gate and joking about being the porter of hell-gate - a scene loaded with dramatic irony, as the castle has indeed become a kind of hell. Macduff and Lennox arrive. Macduff discovers Duncan's body and raises the alarm ("O horror, horror, horror! / Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!"). Macbeth kills the guards, claiming it was done in fury at their apparent crime. Malcolm and Donalbain, fearing for their own lives, flee to England and Ireland respectively, inadvertently casting suspicion on themselves. Macbeth travels to Scone to be crowned King of Scotland. An Old Man and Ross discuss the unnatural events that accompanied the murder: an owl killed a falcon, Duncan's horses turned wild and ate each other, and darkness has blotted out the day.

3Act 3 - Banquo's Murder and the Banquet

Now king, Macbeth is consumed by insecurity. In a soliloquy, he reveals that "To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus" - being king is worthless without security. He fears the witches' prophecy that Banquo's descendants will be kings, meaning he has "filed [defiled] my mind" and "mine eternal jewel / Given to the common enemy of man" (sold his soul) for Banquo's children's benefit. Crucially, he no longer consults Lady Macbeth but hires murderers independently, manipulating them by questioning their manhood - mirroring Lady Macbeth's earlier tactic.

Lady Macbeth, excluded from his plans, reveals her own growing despair: "Nought's had, all's spent, / Where our desire is got without content." Macbeth tells her his mind is "full of scorpions" but hints at a coming deed without sharing details ("Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck"). The murderers kill Banquo but Fleance escapes - a critical failure, as the prophecy about Banquo's royal line remains unfulfilled. At a grand state banquet, Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost sitting in his chair. He reacts with visible terror, nearly revealing his guilt to the assembled lords. Lady Macbeth desperately tries to control the situation, telling the thanes it is a familiar affliction and privately accusing Macbeth of cowardice. The ghost returns a second time before vanishing. Macbeth resolves to visit the witches again. Lennox and a lord discuss the state of Scotland, revealing that Macduff has gone to the English court to seek Malcolm's help in raising an army against Macbeth's tyranny.

4Act 4 - The Apparitions and Macduff's Family

Macbeth visits the witches and demands answers. They conjure three apparitions: an armed head warns "Beware Macduff"; a bloody child proclaims "none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth"; and a crowned child holding a tree declares he will not be vanquished "until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him." Macbeth feels invincible, dismissing the seemingly impossible conditions. But when he asks about Banquo's line, the witches show a procession of eight kings followed by Banquo's ghost - confirming that Banquo's descendants will rule. Significantly, the second witch remarks "By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes" when Macbeth arrives - even the witches now consider him wicked.

When Macbeth learns Macduff has fled to England, he orders the murder of Lady Macduff and her children - an act of pure, purposeless cruelty with no strategic value. Scene 4.2 shows Lady Macduff's distress at her husband's departure, her witty and tender conversation with her son, and then the brutal murder of both. This is the play's most shocking moment and marks Macbeth's complete moral descent from reluctant murderer to conscienceless tyrant.

In England (4.3), Malcolm tests Macduff's loyalty by pretending to be unfit to rule, claiming he is lustful, greedy, and possesses none of the "king-becoming graces." When Macduff despairs for Scotland ("Bleed, bleed, poor country!"), Malcolm reveals it was a test and confirms his virtue. Ross arrives with the devastating news of the Macduff family's slaughter. Macduff's raw grief ("All my pretty ones? / Did you say all?") is one of the play's most emotionally powerful moments. When Malcolm tells him to "dispute it like a man," Macduff replies, "I shall do so; / But I must also feel it as a man" - redefining masculinity as encompassing emotional depth. His grief is channelled into resolve: "Front to front / Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself."

5Act 5 - Downfall and Death

Lady Macbeth, consumed by guilt, sleepwalks through the castle, watched by a gentlewoman and a doctor. She obsessively tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands: "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" She speaks in fragmented prose (a stark shift from her earlier controlled verse), reliving the murders: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" and "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." The doctor declares "More needs she the divine than the physician" - her sickness is spiritual, not physical.

Meanwhile, the Scottish lords Angus, Lennox, Menteith, and Caithness join Malcolm's forces. They describe Macbeth's rule as diseased: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause / Within the belt of rule." Macbeth, fortified at Dunsinane, oscillates between defiance and despair. Malcolm orders his soldiers to cut branches from Birnam Wood as camouflage, unwittingly fulfilling the third apparition's prophecy.

Macbeth receives news of Lady Macbeth's death (almost certainly suicide) and delivers his most famous nihilistic soliloquy: "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, / To the last syllable of recorded time." Life is now "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing." When a messenger reports that Birnam Wood appears to be moving, Macbeth's confidence cracks. In the final battle, Macbeth kills Young Siward but encounters Macduff. He boasts that no man born of woman can harm him, but Macduff reveals he was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" - born by Caesarean section, not naturally "of woman born." Macbeth, realising the equivocating prophecies have betrayed him, briefly considers surrender but chooses to fight and die. Macduff kills him and presents his head to Malcolm, who is hailed as the new King of Scotland. Malcolm's final speech restores order: he promotes the thanes to earls and invites all to his coronation at Scone.