supernatural theme in macbeth essay

Supernatural in “Macbeth” Play by Shakespeare Essay

In William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth , the supernatural plays a crucial part in inspiring Macbeth’s actions. Supernatural elements create dramatic tension, with the witches’ predictions in Scene 3 of Act 1 as a critical instigating incident. Macbeth’s desire to replace Duncan as Scotland’s monarch is driven by otherworldly forces. The presence of the supernatural encourages the protagonists to feel superior and arrogant. The supernaturally manufactured predictions lure Macbeth and Banquo with the idea of power, leading Macbeth to plot the cruel murder of Duncan. Macbeth believes that by murdering his close friend Banquo, he will finally be able to live up to the prophecy that he will become king. At an earlier gathering that night, he had a supernatural encounter with the ghost of a recently departed friend. The prophecies of the three witches inspire Macbeth’s desire to murder Banquo, but he digs himself into a deeper hole in the process. The play’s sense of mystery is enhanced by Macbeth’s use of the bizarre (Hibbs and Hibbs 275). The play’s supernatural aspects drive the plot and elevate its tragic elements by leading the protagonist further away from the passage of the typical hero.

Any supernatural effect on his choices, particularly those involving murder, is purely voluntary. It is only fair that he takes some responsibility for the many failures and catastrophes he is brought on by depending on them. On the other hand, without the supernatural, it is unlikely that Macbeth would even have the courage to consider such notions, much alone act on them. Macbeth begins his journey of murder when he tells Lady Macbeth about the witches. He recalled how “these Weird Sisters hailed me and pointed to the advent of time with ‘Hail, the king that shalt be,’” as he put it (Shakespeare). The influence of the supernatural on his wife, Lady Macbeth, drove him to murder King Duncan; had he not informed her about his vision, events could have turned out differently. Once he reveals to Lady Macbeth the divine prophesy he got, he loses all chance of returning to his former noble life. The supernatural plays a significant role in Macbeth’s universe.

In Scene 1 of Act IV, Macbeth returns to the Weird Sisters and demands to see visions of his future. Macbeth is warned of Macduff’s vengeance by a severed warrior’s head. In the second scene, a little boy, covered in blood, promises Macbeth that no man “of woman born” can kill him. Macbeth will not be beaten in battle, the young king swears, as long as Birnam wood is physically transported to Dunsinane. Upon learning of these impossibilities, Macbeth exclaims, “reign in this kingdom?” (Schojbert 1). The witches have Banquo leading a ghostly parade of imaginary kings. This only infuriates Macbeth more, and he goes so far as to admit to the audience that he wants to murder the whole Macduff family because of his pride.

In this play, the supernatural aspect is genuine or verifiable. Since both Macbeth and Banquo see the witches, their presence is confirmed. The supernatural aspect adds to the drama by validating and concretizing the hero’s internal struggles. Therefore, Macbeth’s witches represent the guilt deep within his psyche. However, the supernatural aspect does not exert an overbearing force, and the hero is never made helpless or absolved of responsibility for his actions. Although it is only suggestive, the hero is under no obligation to act upon it. The supernatural plays a vital role in accelerating the hero’s demise and elevating the tragedy within the play but ultimately teaches the weight of responsibility for personal actions.

Works Cited

Schojbert, Haley. The Supernatural, the Demonic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern English plays: Macbeth, the Witch, the Witch of Edmonton, and Doctor Faustus . 2020. The State University of New York at New Paltz, MA thesis.

Hibbs, Thomas, and Stacey Hibbs. “ Virtue, Natural Law, and Supernatural Solicitation: A Thomistic Reading of Shakespeare’s Macbeth .” Religion and the Arts, vol 5, no 3, 2001, pp. 273- 296, Web.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Wordsworth Classics, 1992.

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The supernatural in Macbeth: 3 key ideas (with quotes, analysis & video)

(This post contains a detailed video on the topic.)

In my post on the 3 ‘culprits’ behind Macbeth’s fall , I argue that the supernatural in Macbeth is largely a dramatic device for Shakespeare to magnify his protagonist’s hamartia (fatal flaw).

Macbeth needs confirmation of kingship and reassurance of power, so he seeks out the Three Witches, whose ‘concocted vision’ only drives him faster towards his tragic end.

But the supernatural in this play isn’t limited to the Witches (despite their prominence in the cultural consciousness) – Banquo’s ghost also plays a critical role in helping us understand Macbeth’s psyche.

In this post, then, I’d like to analyse how Shakespeare presents the supernatural in this ‘Scottish play’, and perhaps inspire you all with some ideas on this popular theme. 

Historical context: The role of James I and his obsession with witches

In my other post on Macbeth’s ambition , I mention that James I was a key influence over Shakespeare’s conception and production of this play.

James I was himself fascinated and terrified by witchcraft, and had written a treatise titled Daemonologie, which is about black magic and the handling of witches.

While still James VI of Scotland, he had instigated a sweeping succession of witch hunts and trials in the 1590s, and just one year after ascending to the English throne in 1603, he passed what was at that point the harshest legislative act against witchcraft.

Nowadays, the phrase ‘witch hunt’ is only ever used figuratively, meaning a public, often humiliating, investigation of a famous figure.

Back in Renaissance England, however, the targets for these witchcraft trials were usually poor, cranky, old women, whom people would blame if they had contracted illnesses or ran into misfortunes – all without much scientific basis, of course.

As the patron of Shakespeare’s ‘King’s Men’, James I would most certainly have had a view on the dramatic portrayal of Hecate and the ‘Weird Sisters’ in this play, and the Bard would in turn have given much calculated thought into how he should stage such a controversial trope, and what emotions he would want to incite from his audience as a result.

But Shakespeare’s tightrope-walking manoeuvre went beyond his knack for royal flattery, and even with a clear awareness of James I’s touchiness about subjects like witchcraft and necromancy, the Bard did not shy away from engaging with these topics, nor did he simply condemn supernatural agents a la James I.

As Stephen Greenblatt , one of the most respected Shakespearean scholars today, writes in his biography of Shakespeare, Will in the World – 

“[While writing Macbeth ], Shakespeare was burrowing deep into the fantasies that swirled about in the king’s brain. [And] if James had been fascinated by a command performance of diabolical music, the King’s Men would give him that and more. [But] Shakespeare was a professional risk-taker. He wrote under pressure – judging from its unusual brevity, Macbeth was composed in a very short time – and he went where his imagination took him. If the cheerful sibyls of St John’s became the weird sisters dancing around a cauldron bubbling with hideous contents, then Shakespeare was obliged to pursue the course. The alternative was to write the kind of play that would put James to sleep and send the thrill-seeking crowds to rival theaters.” 

And what about the ghost?

Speaking of thrill-seeking crowds, the Renaissance playgoers would have liked to see ghosts on stage as well.

The ghost was a well-known dramatic device in Shakespeare’s time, harking back to Senecan tragedies where the ghost figure would sometimes appear to call for revenge.

Given the popularity of Senecan plays in the Renaissance period, this association of ghosts with vengeance was likely affixed in the audience’s mind.

Interestingly, while Shakespeare does exploit this motif in Hamlet and Julius Caesar, in which King Hamlet and Caesar’s ghosts express their desires for revenge, Banquo’s ghost neither speaks nor expresses such a wish.

Instead, Banquo’s ghost does more to show us Macbeth’s personhood than it draws attention to its ghostly nature. 

It’s also worth considering why Shakespeare had chosen to ‘resurrect’ Banquo but not Duncan, which would seem to make more dramatic sense and grant a greater degree of theatrical satisfaction (after all, it’d be poetic justice for a murdered King to return and confront his betrayer).

But perhaps it would have been unwise to stage the ghost of a King in front of a living King, and despite the ghosts in Hamlet and Julius Caesar both being once-kings, those are Elizabethan plays (i.e. produced before James I’s ascension).

To an extent, this should also highlight the impact that the shift from Elizabethan to Jacobean rule had on Shakespeare’s creative direction post-1603. 

Notwithstanding the visual spectacle and political considerations that would have motivated Shakespeare to include supernatural elements in Macbeth, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the Bard as, above all, a humanist playwright.

This means that the core of his works are firmly centered on the individual, and his interest is always on how the self responds to external and internal forces.

As such, the witches, ghosts and apparitions are in the play insofar as they challenge and complicate our view of the human characters, which is why any discussion about the supernatural in the play is also de facto a discussion about Macbeth. 

3 key ideas of the supernatural in Macbeth

So in this post, I’ve summarised 3 major ways through which we can make sense of the supernatural in this play: 

• The supernatural as a mirror of our ‘natural’ selves 
• The supernatural as a reminder of mortal limits 
• The supernatural as a caution against the need for absolute certitude

The key moments I’ll reference include: 

• Act 1 Scene 1 : The Witches converse among themselves and agree to meet Macbeth on the heath
• Act 1 Scene 3 : The Witches deliver the prophecy of thanedom and kingship to Macbeth and Banquo  
• Act 3 Scene 4 : Banquo’s ghost appears at the hall of Macbeth’s feast  
• Act 4 Scene 1 : Macbeth is shown the three apparitions about Macduff, Birnam Wood/Dunsinane Hill and the eight kings with Banquo at the end 

…with video!

Key idea 1: The supernatural as a mirror of our ‘natural’ selves

One of the most famous lines in this play comes at the end of Act 1 Scene 1, when the Witches chant in unison – 

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air. 

In addition to being a paradox , the line “fair is foul, and foul is fair” is an example of antimetabole , which shows up as a syntactical ‘mirror’.

The Witches are saying that good is evil and vice versa, but the inverted syntax also suggests what’s good on the surface could in fact be rotten within, and likewise, what’s bad on the outside can often lead to some sort of good. 

It’s easy to apply noble Macbeth and his eventual murder of Duncan to the ‘fair is foul’ reading, but who’s ‘foul’ that’s also ‘fair’? 

Could it be the Witches? 

Yet, what ‘good’ could they possibly bring, being such abhorrent creatures? 

To Macbeth, these mischief-making sisters are definitely more foul than fair, but to the audience (or reader), the Witches are probably a dramatic ‘boon’, because it is through their interactions with Macbeth that we are given a deeper insight into his deepest and darkest instincts. 

In that sense, what enables us to “Hover through the fog and filthy air” of the play is the presence of the Witches, their ‘trickery’, but most importantly, their function as a mirror for Macbeth’s private self.

We first get a glimpse of the Witches’ illuminating role in Act 1 Scene 3, when the First Witch complains to her posse about the sailor’s wife, who refused to share her chestnuts with the Witch and called the latter a hag.

While the three conspire to “thither [the] sail” of the sailor’s ship, the First Witch goes further with her vindictive schemes – 

I will drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid:  Weary se’nnights nine times nine Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:  Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. 

She’ll terrorise the sailor’s ship with storms and rob him of sleep for eighty-one weeks (“weary sen’nnights nine times nine”), she vows.

This, of course, forebodes what will eventually happen to Macbeth, who will be so besieged by the mental ‘storms’ of his guilt that he too will suffer endless sleepless nights, as he says that he has “murder[ed] sleep, the innocent sleep” after killing Duncan in Act 2 Scene 2.

Macbeth is also aware of the role witchcraft plays in disturbing the peace of sleep, which we know from his ‘dagger hallucination’ speech in Act 2 Scene 1 – 

…Now o’er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings…

As a related side note, this reference to a “tempest-tost” ship may be an allusion to the 1590 North Berwick Witch Trials in Scotland. 

After James VI’s marriage to Anne of Denmark (before he became James I of England), the newly married couple were sailing home when their ship ran into violent storms and were diverted off-course for several weeks. The Scottish King was convinced that their misfortune was a result of witchcraft, and this led to a series of witch hunts in Denmark, which in turn inspired James VI to establish his own witchcraft tribunal courts in Scotland. 

While it’s possible to think that Shakespeare was alluding to this event as a backstage ‘wink’ to his patron, this reference is also symbolic of the chaos that malicious forces could pose on human relationships, which is precisely what we see as the play unfolds.

Most people focus on Macbeth’s response to the Witches when they first meet on the heath in Act 1 Scene 3, but it’s equally important to examine how Banquo reacts, because this (counterintuitively) gives us more clues into Macbeth’s character. 

The first thing to notice about Macbeth is his natural affinity to the Witches. In fact, before he’s even seen them, he echoes their lexis in his statement – 

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

On the contrary, Banquo stands at a stark remove from the Witches, as his first instinct is to challenge the Witches’ very state of being, and not to engage them in a conversation. He comments that they “look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth”, and asks them –

Live you? 

Macbeth, however, assumes even before the Witches have spoken to him that they possess human faculties, which we can infer from his commands for them to “speak” and his addressing them as “imperfect speakers”. 

While Banquo draws an analogy between “bubbles on earth” and the Witches’ appearance, implying that these figures are no more than figments of one’s mind that one should dismiss, Macbeth’s simile – “what seem’d corporal melted/As breath into the wind” – presupposes that these supernatural beings are more human than creatures, and as such, we see him subconsciously establishing a link between himself and the Witches.

 So, while Banquo sees a clear distinction between the supernatural and the human (and the need for the latter to fend itself against the former), Macbeth pursues – even embraces – a conflation of the two spheres – he wants the knowledge of the Witches, hence his constant asking of ‘why’ and ‘how’ in his interactions with them throughout the play. 

Indeed, this difference between Banquo and Macbeth is perhaps best borne out by the questions they each ask upon the Witches’ disappearance, with Banquo enquiring “Whither are they vanish’d?”, and Macbeth responding with “Would they had stay’d!” Banquo’s emphasis is on them gone; Macbeth’s wish is to have them remain. 

It’s probably ironic, then, that Banquo should ultimately return to haunt Macbeth in the supernatural form of a ghost in Act 3 Scene 4.

Key idea 2: The supernatural as a reminder of man’s mortal limits

One of the greatest ironies in this play is Macbeth’s powerlessness upon gaining power. 

Early on in the play, we already see Macbeth at the mercy of forces he can’t control or command. 

For example, in Act 1 Scene 3, the Witches vanish despite his order for them to divulge more about their prophecy (“Speak, I charge you”), and in Act 4 Scene 1, he is told that the visions “will not be commanded”, and that he should “Listen, but speak not to’t”. 

MACBETH … Say from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you. Witches vanish (1.3)  MACBETH Tell me, thou unknown power,– FIRST WITCH He knows thy thought: Hear his speech, but say thou nought. […] MACBETH …What is this That rises like the issue of a king, And wears upon his baby-brow the round And top of sovereignty? ALL Listen, but speak not to’t. (4.1) 

In the words of another Shakespearean play – Othello, Macbeth is ‘led by the nose as asses are’ ( allusion ) through the hocus-pocus shenanigans of Hecate and her sisters, who first bait him with the possibility of kingship, then mock “this great king” while he grovels in the anguish of guilt and unknowing.

A more striking instance where we see Macbeth’s inability to control the supernatural is when he sees Banquo’s ghost in Act 3 Scene 4 – 

Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?  Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.  If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments  Shall be the maws of kites. 

Interestingly, he also tells Banquo’s ghost to “speak”, which, like the Witches and apparitions, flout his order.

The personification of “charnel-houses and our graves” as agents who can decide to “send/Those that we bury back” exposes the uselessness of his murders, and undermines Macbeth’s only source of power – his murderous tyranny.

Whatever he orchestrates on a mortal level, the spiritual realm seems to conjure up a ‘response’ that comes back to haunt him, and having exhausted his arsenal of mortal weaponry – daggers and assassins – there is nothing else Macbeth can do to chase away the bloody spectre of Banquo’s “gory locks”. 

Macbeth’s impotence is especially apparent after the second entrance of Banquo’s ghost – 

MACBETH Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!  Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes  Which thou dost glare with! 

Ironically , the description he attributes to Banquo’s ghost could also apply to his own murderous persona, albeit figuratively.

Having betrayed the King, he is “marrowless” in his deceit; having ordered the murder of Duncan, Banquo, Fleance (and later, Macduff’s family), he is “cold-blooded” in his brutality; and having fallen into the grasp of an illegitimate and doomed station, he is shown to have “no speculation”, where “speculation” here means not just the ability to see, but the faculty of intelligence and the prudence of foresight.

It seems, then, that he sees his worst self reflected in Banquo’s ghost, and by crying out for “earth [to] hide thee”, he’s really asking to escape from the terror of himself.

As Lady Macbeth chastises her husband for losing it, Macbeth attempts to reassert his manhood by claiming that “What man dare, I dare”.

The only issue, though, is that he’s being confronted with a force that most men wouldn’t dare, and so the implication of his claim isn’t so much the firmness of his courage, but rather, its crippling limitations – 

MACBETH:  What man dare, I dare: Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble: or be alive again,  And dare me to the desert with thy sword; If trembling I inhabit then, protest me The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!  Unreal mockery, hence! 

Macbeth invokes hyperbole and superlatives to remind all of his valiance, but buried within these references to “rugged Russian bears,/ The arm’d rhinoceros” and “the Hyrcan tiger” is the crucial, but telling, plea – “take any shape but that”.

Turn into the fiercest beast, or become human again and challenge me to the harshest duel, Macbeth cries, just please don’t show up as a ghost, because that’s beyond the scope of his understanding and the domain of his power.

The euphemism of “horrible shadow” echoes the interpretation of Macbeth seeing himself reflected in Banquo’s ghostly visage, as “shadow” could mean either “spirit and phantom”, or “reflection and semblance”.

At the same time, though, the ghost is also an “unreal mockery”, as Banquo’s ‘return’ may remind us of the Witches’ other prophecy – that Banquo’s sons will eventually become king, and this is a worry which hovers over Macbeth’s mind like a spectre throughout the play.

What this scene also exposes is the limits of free will, since the more Macbeth seemingly takes into his hands the course of his fate by murdering those around him, the more he realises just how helpless he is, because his actions are ultimately not the evidence of individual agency, but the product of inexplicable, yet much more powerful, forces that are beyond human comprehension.

One interesting counterpoint to examine is Trevor Nunn’s 1979 RSC production of the play , in which Banquo’s ghost isn’t shown on stage, and so the audience is forced to consider Macbeth’s reaction not as a response to paranormality, but as a psychological projection of his own fears, of the “strange things I have in head” (3.4). 

But ghost or no ghost, we know from the Witches’ cranky curse of “thither[ing the] sail” of the sailor’s ship in Act 1 Scene 3 that Macbeth is, in a way, just another “tempest-tost” ship in the grand scheme of fate, subject to forces that he can’t ever fathom or control.

Here, it is perhaps useful to quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, the 20th century Austrian-British philosopher, on his idea of determinism – 

You sometimes see in a wind a piece of paper blowing about anyhow. Suppose the piece of paper could make the decision: ‘Now I want to go this way.’ I say: ‘Queer, this paper always decides where it is to go, and all the time it is the wind that blows it. I know it is the wind that blows it.’ That same force which moves it also in a different way moves its decisions.

In a way, then, Macbeth is just like that piece of paper, and the wind are those supernatural forces that bandy him about.

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Key idea 3: The supernatural as a caution against the need for certitude

“Seek to know no more”: For all the villainy that the Witches seem to represent, they’ve given Macbeth what’s probably the best advice he needs – curb your curiosity, and stop with your “whys” and “hows” already.

While it’s possible to see the supernatural as a trigger for Macbeth’s doomed descent, it’s equally fair to say that Macbeth’s own insatiable need to know is what’s dug him his grave.

We see this when he first encounters the Witches on the heath, where he confronts them with a barrage of questions: 

Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more: By Sinel’s death I know I am thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? Say from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way With such prophetic greeting?

Again, if we contrast Macbeth’s questions against Banquo’s, we’ll realise that Macbeth asks epistemological questions (and as such, tacitly accepts the Witches’ existence), whereas his companion is much more concerned with the ontological status of these Witches (i.e. he is skeptical about the very notion of the Witches’ existence).

It’s also significant that the knowledge Macbeth seeks confounds human logic – “from whence/You owe this strange intelligence?” – and this motif of transgressive curiosity as a dangerous, punishable desire would not be alien to Renaissance audiences (think Adam and Eve in The Book of Genesis, or Doctor Faustus ).

After the appearance of Banquo’s ghost, Macbeth goes looking for the Witches, and asks what his “heart/Throbs to know” – 

Shall Banquo’s issue ever Reign in this kingdom? 

The answer he receives is the “horrible sight” of the eight kings with Banquo following behind, holding a glass, which confuses his eyes and unsettles his mind: 

ALL Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; Come like shadows, so depart! A show of Eight Kings, the last with a glass in his hand; GHOST OF BANQUO following MACBETH Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down! Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. And thy hair, Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. A third is like the former. Filthy hags! Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes! What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? Another yet! A seventh! I’ll see no more: And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass Which shows me many more; and some I see That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry: Horrible sight! Now, I see, ’tis true; For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me, And points at them for his. Apparitions vanish What, is this so?

Note that the iambic pentameter Macbeth characteristically speaks in is disrupted at several points in this speech.

The rhetorical question “What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?” and its following exclamations “Another yet! A seventh! I’ll see no more:” are both hypercatalectic (and so, a syntactical ‘stretching out of the line’), as each ends with one extra syllable to emphasise the neverending nature of this kingly procession, from which Macbeth is excluded.

In agony, he cries that he wants to “see no more”, but he continues to “see/That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry”, that “horrible sight! Now, I see, tis true”.

The terrifying pageantry of the moment may haunt him, but not enough to extinguish his burning need for certitude.

And so his desire to know how his fate will unfold compels him to keep fixing his eyes on this supernatural spectacle, which of course, only muddles his own vision and judgment of what is “fair” and what is “foul”.

By the end of witnessing these ‘prophetic’ sights, Macbeth is still left none the wiser – “What, is this so?”, he asks, and it is this growing state of bewilderment which drives him to make one irrational decision after another, ultimately concluding in his tragic demise. 

Notice, then, that while Macbeth’s decisions to act on each supernatural encounter form the main catalyst points of the plot, they are largely motivated by his uncertainty of what these occurrences mean for him, and in turn, his need to ‘certify’ them through action – 

• Hears the Witches’ prophecy for the first time, but can’t quite make sense of it → tells Lady Macbeth about it and together they plot Duncan’s murder 
• Recalls the Witches’ prophecy about Banquo’s sons being king, but isn’t sure if that means Banquo’s sons will come seizing his crown → orders Banquo and Fleance’s killing 
• Sees Banquo’s ghost, can’t fathom how such “strangeness” has come about → freaks out and goes to the Witches for more ‘answers’ 
• Sees the apparitions, doesn’t really get satisfactory answers → orders the attack on Macduff’s castle and the seizing of Fife, sets off the revenge of Macduff and Malcolm with the English troops 

So perhaps Shakespeare is suggesting that the wisest way to deal with spooky encounters and kooky visitations is to simply ignore them.

After all, trying to make sense of “supernatural solicitings”, it seems, can often bring more ill than good. 

For a detailed analysis on some of Shakespeare’s other plays, check out my posts below: 

• Ambition in Macbeth : 4 key ideas (with quotes, analysis & video)
• What does  Romeo & Juliet  show us about love? 
• Why is  Hamlet  such a fascinating character?
• What does  King Lear  show us about blindness?
• What does The Merchant of Venice  tell us about racism and prejudice?
• What does Shakespeare show us about self-conscious men? Reading  Othello and  Cymbeline  to find out

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6 thoughts on “ The supernatural in Macbeth: 3 key ideas (with quotes, analysis & video) ”

Wow there is so much knowledge in your posts — I hope it gets made into the the coolest eng lit study book in the world v soon 🤓

PS like your use of gender neutral language too for Macbeth’s ‘personhood’

Like Liked by 1 person

Thanks for your encouraging words, Nikki – I really appreciate it! If you know anyone who’s studying Shakespeare at school and need some extra ideas, please share this with them 🙂

You’re welcome and I do already 👍🤓 Keep up the good work!

Thank you Nikki! 😀

How do I quote this for my essay??

Hi Maria, are you asking for quotations from ‘Macbeth’ to include in your essay? Or do you mean you want to cite this blog post for your essay…? If the former, there’s plenty of examples included in this post for reference; if the latter, then perhaps you can embed a link to the post? Otherwise/if you’re doing pen and paper, then see if you can digest the ideas (be sure not to copy verbatim as that’d be plagiarism!) to include in your own argument. Hope this helps, and thanks for reading!

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Theme: The Supernatural

The Supernatural plays a significant role in ‘Macbeth’ by William Shakespeare. It is depicted in various forms influencing the actions of several main characters, stimulating the plot and reinforcing the dominant themes of the play.

Manifestation

• Witches : The play opens with the three witches ; an embodiment of the supernatural. They offer prophesies that ignite Macbeth’s ambition and entice him along a dangerous path.
• Ghost and Apparitions : The appearance of Banquo’s ghost and the apparitions shown by the witches further illustrate the theme of the supernatural.

Role and Influence

• Prophesies : The witches’ prophesies function as stepping stones to Macbeth’s ambition, enticing him towards the throne and ultimately, his downfall.
• Guilt & Fear : The supernatural enhances characters’ guilt and fear. The appearance of the dagger spectral vision and Banquo’s ghost intensify Macbeth’s guilt and fear, driving his murderous actions.

Psychoanalysis of Macbeth

• Supernatural vs Reality : Macbeth’s interaction with the supernatural can reflect his mental instability. The spectacle of the dagger and Banquo’s ghost can be seen as delusional episodes indicating Macbeth’s psychological deterioration .

The Supernatural and the Themes of the Play

• Fate and Free Will : The witches’ prophesies question the balance between fate and free will . Although they predict Macbeth’s future, it is his free will that drives his actions.
• Moral Corruption and Ambition : The supernatural often presents itself after acts of moral corruption, suggesting its role as a reminder and symbol of Macbeth’s overwhelming ambition and moral downfall.
• Witches : The witches represent dark and destructive forces in nature. They symbolise the evil that can stem from unchecked ambitions.
• Apparitions : The three apparitions that the witches conjure act as symbols of deception , misleading Macbeth into a false sense of security.

Relation to Setting

• Nature vs Unnatural : The theme of the supernatural disrupts the established natural world in the play. This contrast illustrates the unnaturalness of Macbeth’s regicidal act.
• Darkness and Night : Darkness and night, traditionally suggestive of evil and the supernatural, act as the backdrop of the majority of the play. This setting enhances the foreboding atmosphere and the uncanny events that take place.

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Macbeth — Supernatural Powers In The Play “Macbeth” By William Shakespear

Supernatural Powers in The Play "Macbeth" by William Shakespear

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Published: Jan 21, 2020

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Macbeth: Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Macbeth is, along with the character of Iago in Othello and his earlier portrayal of Richard III, William Shakespeare’s most powerful exploration and analysis of evil.

Although we can find precursors to Macbeth in the murderer-turned-conscience-stricken-men of Shakespeare’s earlier plays – notably the conspirator Brutus in Julius Caesar and Claudius in Hamlet – Macbeth provides us with a closer and more complex examination of how a brave man with everything going for him might be corrupted by ambition and goading into committing an act of murder.

It’s worth examining how Shakespeare creates such a powerful depiction of one man persuaded to do evil and then wracked by his conscience for doing so. What follows is a short analysis, but one which attempts to address some of the key – not to mention the most interesting – aspects of Macbeth . You can read our summary of  Macbeth  here .

The sources for Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Macbeth was a real Scottish king, although he was somewhat different from the ambitious, murderous creation of William Shakespeare. His wife was real too, but Lady Macbeth’s real name was Gruoch and Macbeth’s real name was Mac Bethad mac Findlaích.

The real Macbeth killed Duncan in battle in 1040 and Macbeth (or Mac Bethad) actually went on to rule for 17 years, until he was killed and Macbeth’s stepson, known as Lulach the Idiot, became king (though he only ruled for less than a year – then Malcolm, as Malcolm III, took the crown). Where did Shakespeare get the story from, then, and what did he change?

The plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a combination of two stories: the story of Macbeth and the story of the murder of King Duffe by Donwald and his wife, which Shakespeare read about in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles . The Three Witches appear in Holinshed, but as ‘nymphs or fairies’, suggesting beautiful young women rather than old, ugly hags.

Holinshed’s King Duncan is a weak and feeble ruler, who has unfairly named his own son Prince of Cumberland (and thus heir to the throne), thwarting Macbeth’s own (just) claim to the throne, through his wife’s previous marriage and her son by her first husband.

In Holinshed, then, Macbeth has every reason to have a grievance against Duncan, rather than being motivated solely by ‘vaulting ambition’. When Duncan proclaims Malcolm his heir and Prince of Cumberland, Macbeth does not see it as a slight on him and his claim to the throne – for he appears to have no genuine claim. Instead, he sees it as the turning point: if he is to become King then he must take the crown by force.

What’s more, in Holinshed’s chronicle, Banquo actually helps Macbeth to murder Duncan. Shakespeare altered the character of Banquo because his King, James I of England (James VI of Scotland, of course) claimed descent from Banquo. This explains the scene in Macbeth with the mirrors displaying Banquo’s descendants – eventually culminating in King James himself. Banquo will certainly ‘get’ (i.e. beget) kings, all right.’

This is what led the critic William Empson to regard Shakespeare’s version of Macbeth as a ‘Just-So Story’, like ‘How the Elephant Got Its Trunk’: it explains how James came to be King, over half a millennium after the events of Macbeth .

The other story from Holinshed, detailing the murder of King Duffe, is much closer to the plot of Shakespeare’s play. In the tenth century, a century before the real Macbeth lived, Donwald, egged on by his wife, murders King Duffe (although in this version Donwald gets the servants to commit the murder rather than bearing the knife himself). Donwald and his wife get Duffe’s personal attendants drunk, and then to divert suspicion Donwalde blames them for their master’s murder, killing them in pretend rage.

Themes of Macbeth

Macbeth is a play that begins with the Weird Sisters discussing their future meeting, and ends with Macduff and the other survivors preparing to go and see Malcolm crowned King.

Even the soliloquies in Macbeth seem unusually focused on not just the contemplation of a future course of action (for that’s a common feature of many soliloquies in many other plays) but on the displacement of time that the play is preoccupied with: ‘If it were done, when ’tis done’, begins one of Macbeth’s most famous speeches, while he greets the news of Lady Macbeth with his celebrated meditation on ‘tomorrow’:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.

The first words Lady Macbeth speaks to her husband in the play show how her ambitions for her and her husband are already making her mind leap from the present into the future:

Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant.

But the glue that keeps all of these future meditations in place, and acts as the main device in Macbeth linking present to future, is the role of prophecy.

It’s worth stopping to consider and analyse the role of prophecy in Macbeth . It’s true that the Witches are clearly meant to be supernatural, and their prophecies are supposedly founded on – well, on their witchcraft. One of the reasons Shakespeare may have been drawn to the story of Macbeth is that, as well as speaking to King James I’s Scottish blood, it also played to his interest in witchcraft, black magic, and the supernatural.

Indeed, the King even wrote a book about it, Daemonologie , which had been published in 1597, six years before he came to the English throne. But the clever thing about the prophecies is that we are left to decide how much what happens in the play was foretold in the Witches’ prophecy and how much was a result of the course of action Macbeth decided on, once he had knowledge of the prophecy.

We talk of ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’, and Macbeth as a piece of drama leaves us in some doubt as to the relationship between Fate and free agency. If Macbeth had never been told by the Witches that he would be Thane of Cawdor, he would still have been made Thane of Cawdor. But would he still have become King?

For Macbeth to become King, he needed to know that it was ordained that he would one day sit on the throne, so he could then murderously take it from the current incumbent. If Macbeth had not acted upon the prophecy, it may not have come true.

A similar ambiguity surrounding the role of fate and the role of individual agency governs the plot of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex ; although Shakespeare’s tragic model was more Senecan than ancient Greek, Macbeth is perhaps the play in his oeuvre which comes the closest to following the model for a good tragedy set out in Aristotle’s Poetics .

Similarly, Banquo starts to take his prophecy seriously once he sees Macbeth’s coming true. Nevertheless, the idea that no man of woman born being able to harm Macbeth isn’t ever tested to the full: Macbeth may simply be unusually lucky in combat, and Macduff, regardless of his caesarean section, may just have proved lucky; at the same time, believing that having been ‘from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped’ made him invincible against the tyrannical Macbeth may have given him the self-belief that he could bring the usurper down. The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, and our destinies, shape what we do.

Ambition – or ‘vaulting ambition’ as Macbeth himself puts it – is another central theme of the play. Hearing the prophecy from the Witches convinces Macbeth that he could be King. Indeed, more than that, the prophecy suggests that he is meant to be King. Although Duncan has ‘honour’d [him] of late’, and Macbeth knows that to kill the king who had raised him to the title of Thane of Cawdor would be, among other things, an act of supreme ingratitude, Macbeth is driven to commit murder so he can seize the crown.

Everything that happens afterwards – his dispatching of the hired killers to murder Banquo, the attempted murder of Fleance, the killing of Macduff’s wife and children, and the final battle at Dunsinane – is a result of this one act, an act that was inspired by both Macbeth’s private ambition and his wife’s lust for power.

It’s worth remembering that Macbeth was almost certainly written shortly after the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605. (There are a number of local allusions to this recent attempt at politically and religiously motivated terrorism: the numerous instances of the word ‘equivocation’ in the play refer to the Jesuit Father Garnet, who knew of the Plot and consorted with the conspirators.)

The ‘moral’ of Macbeth , if we can run the risk of reducing the play to an ethical message in this way, is that to usurp the ruler of a kingdom is usually a Bad Idea, at least if the ruler is generally thought to be a good one and your motivation for wanting to kill and replace them is your own grasping ambition to be monarch yourself. Which brings us to the last major theme of Macbeth worth mentioning in this short analysis (before the analysis becomes somewhat less than short)…

It would be inaccurate to say Macbeth feels remorse for the murder of Duncan. Even Claudius, the ‘smiling villain’ of Hamlet who killed a king so he could take the throne for himself, expresses something approaching a pricking of conscience for murdering his own brother, acknowledging that he cannot very well appear penitent before God if he doesn’t relinquish everything he’s gained by his murderous deed.

But Macbeth’s guilt over the murders of Banquo and Duncan is less remorse than it is fear of being discovered, and one bad deed gives birth to another, each of which has to be carried out to make Macbeth and his wife ‘safe’, to use the word that recurs throughout the play (a dozen times, including ‘safely’, ‘safety’, and other variants).

Even when Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth at the banquet, and appears to him alone, suggesting it is a manifestation of his own guilty conscience, he is terrified that the ghost’s presence will betray his secret, rather than wracked with remorse for killing his friend. Angus’ wonderfully vivid image of Macbeth’s guilt (‘Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands’) reminds us that ‘hands’ and ‘eyes’ and other body parts are often somewhat disembodied in this play, as numerous critics have acknowledged.

From Macbeth’s bloody hand (‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?’) to Lady Macbeth’s feverish somnambulistic hand-washing, to Macbeth’s early words in an aside, signalling his deadly ambition (‘The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see’), eyes and hands are at odds in this play, as if the eye countenances the evil carried out by the hand, with the wielder of the dagger turning a blind eye.

But as Angus’ words and Lady Macbeth’s night-time mimed ablutions demonstrate, one cannot so easily remove one’s mind from the hand that does a terrible deed.

One final piece of Macbeth trivia…

Macbeth is supposed to be cursed. The idea of the ‘curse’ of  Macbeth  has a complicated origin, though it was certainly given a leg up in 1898 when the novelist and wit Max Beerbohm put about the idea that the play was unlucky.

That said, it has had its fair share of tragedies and disasters: in a 1942 production starring John Gielgud, four people involved in the production died, including two of the Witches and the man playing Duncan. If you say ‘Macbeth’ in a theatre, you are meant to walk three times in a circle anti-clockwise, then either spit or say a rude word.

In 1849,  Macbeth even   caused a riot in New York . The Astor Place Riot was caused by two rival actors arguing about whose portrayal of Macbeth  was better. American actor Edwin Forrest and English thespian William Charles Macready were both playing the role of Macbeth in different productions at different theatres on the same night, and a longstanding rivalry erupted.

Another notable nineteenth-century production of the play (featuring acting rivalry) involves the so-called ‘worst poet in the English language’, who once played Macbeth on stage – and refused to die at the end.

As we revealed in our selection of  interesting facts about Scottish poet William McGonagall , when McGonagall – who has a reputation for being the worst poet in English – played the role of Macbeth in a stage production, he was so annoyed at being upstaged by his co-star, who was playing Macduff, that when Macduff went to kill Macbeth at the end of the play, he found his foe mysteriously unvanquishable.

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6 thoughts on “Macbeth: Analysis and Themes”

Eqivocation: Shakespeare (whose father was a friend of William Catesby, the father of Robert Catesby, one of the leaders in the alleged Gunpowder Plot) may well have been drawing attention to his own loyalist credentials when he shows the Porter admitting ‘an equivator’ to Hell. On the other hand he may have been doing a bit of equivocating himself. It depends how you say the line “who committed treason enough for God’s sake” it can simply be an exclamation “for God’s sake!” or mean “he committed treason enough for God’s sake…” he was one of ‘God’s traitors’ as John Shakespeare almost certainly, and William very probably were.

To create a breach of time hundreds of years in each direction: The Scotland that the historical Macbeth occupied was a tough, violent place demanding that a monarch be capable of meeting all challenges. If a monarch could be bested, deposed, all the better for the kingdom. Duncan’s nobility, a soft virtue, requires Bellona’s bridegroom succeed on the battlefield, and he doesn’t realize how dangerous such a warrior can be, especially with an ambitious woman goading him on. Now rocket forward hundreds of years to see the philosophical realization predicted in the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech Macbeth ruminates upon hearing of Lady Macbeth’s death. (N.B. She dies off stage like most of the deaths in the play which conform to Aristotle’s Poetics which holds that violence on stage “but teaches bloody instruction.”) What does life signify? Nothing. Macbeth’s speech anticipates the 20th C. philosophy of existentialism. We come from nothing and we go to nothing. Any performance of the Scottish play in which the Three Sisters are performed exceedingly well enters the dreamscape of all the audience. The play is bloody, yes, and eerie too, as it travels in time.

I will refrain from the kind of lofty comments already given on here and just say your last story made me snort out loud :D

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