Explore the way the character of Macbeth changes througout the play
Act 1, Scene 1:
"For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name —
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel, which
smoked with bloody execution, like valour's minion
carved out his passage, till he faced the slave."
Ross is saying that Macbeth is brave and killed Macdonwald and Sweno in the war.
2. Act 1, Scene 3:
"If chance will have me king, why,
chance may crown me, without
my stir."
Macbeth is ambitious to become king but feels if
chance can get him crowned he doesn't have to put in
any effort to become king.
"So foul and fair a day I have not seen."
This is almost exactly what the witches
said in Act 1, Scene 1. This suggests the
witches are already having an effect on
Macbeth.
Act 2, Scene 1:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee
not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a
dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as
palpable as this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an
instrument I was to use."
Macbeth sees a hallucination that convinces him he should kill king Duncun.
Metaphor.
Act 5, Scene 5: Macbeth has killed many people and has given up on life.
"Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor
player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And
then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Macbeth is saying that all the trouble he went through was basically for
nothing, as Malcom is to be king, he is about to die and his wife has commited
suicide.