Act Five

SCENE ONE: paying the penalty

The doctor’s presence leaves no question – Lady Macbeth must be ill

‘She has light by her continually; 'tis her command’ – cf. ‘come thick night’ in 1.5

Is LMB’s sleepwalking repressed guilt escaping at night, or is she truly mad?

‘Yet here’s a spot’ – the dreamt blood correlates with her personal guilt

LMB is completely undone by guilt and is descending into madness

‘Out, damned spot!’ – cf. ‘a little water clears us of this deed’

Her sleep-talking, like the witches, is not in verse – her fragmented speech is littered with short and seemingly random lines (reflecting her emotional and mental state in a similar way to 2.2)

‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him’ – LMB remembers the murder

‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’ – cf. ‘will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’

‘Put on your nightgown’ – LMB’s attempt to act normally recalls her advice to her husband in 2.2 (‘Get on your nightgown’)

She is replaying the deaths which heighten her guilt (‘Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave’)

‘What's done cannot be undone’ – you can say that again

SCENE TWO: a plot filler

The march to battle begins and the witches’ prophecy begins to unfold (‘near Birnam wood shall we w’ell meet them’ – we get the sense that Macbeth’s end is nigh)

‘Others that lesser hate him do call it valiant fury’ – recalls ‘valour’s minion’, reminding us of his once truly-valiant ways

‘His secret murders sticking on his hands’ – The tyrant is feeling the consequences of the murders

Macbeth’s titles are compared to ‘a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief’ – he is only wearing ‘borrowed robes’ which belongs to Duncan’s heirs

SCENE THREE: brazen arrogance

Macbeth is still restless, but he seems unconcerned with the army’s approach (‘till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear’)

‘Go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear’ – cf. ‘I shame to wear a heart so white’

Macbeth’s imperatives (‘bring … take … give … put’) echoes his self-assured state of mind

‘That which should accompany old age … I must not look to have’ – a contrastingly defeated and pessimistic speech; he will never have the comforts of ‘honour, love, obedience, troops of friends’

‘Pull't off, I say’ – Macbeth remains temperamental in his lines to the attendant and the doctor

Macbeth recognises that there’s something wrong with his kingdom (‘cast the water of my land, find her disease, and purge it to a sound and pristine health’)

SCENE FOUR: purpose is lost

This scene presents the meeting of the Scottish lords with the English forces – the influx of nobles show how disliked Macbeth really is

‘That chambers will be safe’ – chambers recall both Duncan’s bedroom and the overall theme of sleeplessness

‘Let every soldier hew him down a bough … thereby shall we shadow the numbers of our host’ – Malcolm orders a move that will hide their true numbers from enemy scouts

‘It shall be done’ – Birnam will literally come to Dunsinane, and the first block of the witches’ prophecy falls into place

‘The confident tyrant keeps still’ – Macbeth still believes he is invincible

‘Put we on industrious soldiership’ – Macduff suspects the battle will take demand all their efforts

SCENE FIVE: purpose is lost

‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears’ – a scream no longer startles Macbeth

‘She should have died hereafter’ – Does he wish that Lady Macbeth died at a more convenient time, or is he saying that she simply deserved more time?

Macbeth’s almost childlike repetition of ‘tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’ reflects his impending doom

‘Out, out, brief candle!’ – he describes the impermanence and fragility of life as he says goodbye to his wife – there is also a small echo of ‘out, damned spot’

‘Life's but a walking shadow … that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more’ – all the terrible things Macbeth has done has led to this pathetic reflection on life; he concludes it to be an unsubstan---tial ‘poor player’ which ‘creeps’ along at a ‘petty pace’

The messenger’s report of how ‘the wood began to move’ leaves us in no doubt that Macbeth will soon meet his end; the 3W’s prophecies are proving correct yet again – fate cannot be stopped

‘Liar and slave!’ – perhaps he is not as fearless as he claims

Birnam approaches Macbeth in a way he couldn’t have predicted; he feels like the 3W told ‘lies like truth’

‘There is no_or flying hence nor tarrying here’ – damned if you do…

‘I gin to be aweary of the sun’ – Macbeth is sick of the world and wants to go out with a bang

‘Ring the alarum-bell!’ – a much moreadire imperative when compared to the ‘hang out our banners on the outward walls’ which opened the scene

‘At least we'll die with harness on our back’ – the life-weary king seems to almost look forward to dying

SCENE SIX: a scene of ten lines

A very quick bit of action – creates a strong sense of the imminent danger

‘Your leafy screens throw down’ – Birnam has come to Dunsinane; the prophecy is fulfilled

‘Find the tyrant's power to-night’ – Macbeth shall die after dusk, as did Duncan 

SCENE SEVEN: fate approaches

‘But, bear-like, I must fight the course’ – reference to the Elizabethan sport of bear-baiting

Macbeth is relying almost entirely on the second apparition’s prophecy (‘what’s he that was not born of woman’)

‘Thou wast born of woman’ – Macbeth is naively confident following his easy victory over Siward’s son

‘If thou beest slain, and with no stroke of mine, my wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still’ – Macduff must be the one to kill the tyrant and avenge his family

The battle has seemingly been a non-event (‘the day almost itself professes yours, and little is to do’)

SCENE EIGHT: the predestined end

Macbeth is all but finished – his wife is dead, his castle is under siege, and the prophecies are sadly ringing true

‘My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already’ – a reminder that Macbeth is still guilty; once again, Shakespeare almost regains our sympathy for him

‘Thou losest labour’ – Macduff is wasting his time, unless of course, he wasn’t born of woman…

‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped’ – the 3W’s ‘double sense’ (or ‘equivocation’ cf. start of 2.3) has fooled Macbeth again

‘We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted on a pole’ – Macbeth knows what faces him if he surrenders (‘I will not yield’)

SCENE NINE: a natural conclusion

‘Why then, god’s soldier be he!’ – Siward takes comfort in knowing that his son was stabbed ‘on the front’

‘Behold, where stands the usurper's cursed head’ – Macbeth is dead, but on some level, we are sorry to see him go

Malcolm has the last line in the play – the new ruler gives the audience a sense of closure and certainty

‘My thanes and kinsmen, henceforth be earls’ – Macbeth’s chaos is over; order is restored

‘Which would be planted newly with the time’ – the nature metaphors remind us of Duncan (‘I have begun to plant thee’) – Malcolm will be just as good a king as his father was