Visions and hallucinations recur throughout the play and serve as reminders of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s joint culpability for the growing body count. When he is about to kill Duncan, Macbeth sees a dagger floating in the air. Covered with blood and pointed toward the king’s chamber, the dagger represents the bloody course on which Macbeth is about to embark. Read more...
Macbeth is a famously violent play. Interestingly, most of the killings take place offstage, but throughout the play, the characters provide the audience with gory descriptions of the carnage, from the opening scene where the captain describes Read more...
Prophecy sets Macbeth’s plot in motion—namely, the witches’ prophecy that Macbeth will become First Thane of Cawdor and then king. The weird sisters make a number of other prophecies: they tell us that Banquo’s heirs will be kings, that Macbeth should beware Macduff, that Macbeth is safe till Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Read more...