Study notes for BEGC-133 Block 1 Unit 2. Covers Act I: the battlefield victory at Norway, "Fair is foul" and the witches' three-part prophecy on the heath (Glamis/Cawdor/King), Lady Macbeth's letter and the "unsex me here" soliloquy with diagram, the "innocent flower but be the serpent" plan, Macbeth's "If it were done" soliloquy on double trust and vaulting ambition with line-by-line analysis; Act II: the "Is this a dagger" soliloquy, the murder of Duncan, "Sleep no more," the Porter scene as equivocation and comic relief (De Quincey's analysis), nature turns unnatural — owl kills falcon and horses eat each other, with diagrams mapping Court vs Heath and the conflict of ambition, and all 5 unit-end questions with full answers. Free PDF download.
Now the play itself begins. In this unit we read Acts I and II — from the witches' strange greeting, to Lady Macbeth's bold plan, to the night Duncan is killed. Watch how Macbeth slowly moves from a loyal hero to a murderer.
Quick note: A soliloquy is when a character is alone on stage and speaks his thoughts aloud to the audience. An aside is a short remark to the audience that other characters do not hear.
The play is set in Scotland, but remember Shakespeare was English — the Scottish fight for the crown was meant to make English audiences think about their own kings. The play opens with thunder and lightning and the three witches in an open place. Right from the start, the mood is dark and strange. The witches chant the play's key line:
In Scene 2, King Duncan hears about a battle. Scotland was attacked from two sides — a rebel inside the country (Macdonwald) and the Norwegians from outside. A wounded captain reports that Macbeth fought bravely and crushed the enemy. Notice something important: Macbeth is praised as a hero for killing. Violence is celebrated here because it defends the king. Duncan rewards Macbeth by making him the new Thane of Cawdor (the old Thane was a traitor).
In Scene 3, on the heath, Macbeth and Banquo meet the witches. The witches greet Macbeth three times:
Banquo reacts calmly and wisely. He warns that evil powers often tell us small truths just to trap us in bigger evils. But Macbeth is shaken, because part of the prophecy comes true at once — he is told he is now Thane of Cawdor. These are the "two truths". His mind starts racing:
Then comes a setback. Duncan announces that his son Malcolm will be the next king (the "Prince of Cumberland"). In an aside, Macbeth shows his dark turn:
In Scene 5, Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband about the prophecy. She knows him well — she fears he is too full of "the milk of human kindness" to do what it takes. So she decides to push him herself. She calls on dark spirits in one of the most famous speeches in the play:
She also gives Macbeth the play's most cunning advice — to hide his evil behind a friendly face:
In Scene 7, Macbeth, alone, weighs the murder. This soliloquy shows a man almost talked out of it:
But Lady Macbeth attacks his manhood, calls him a coward, and says she would even kill her own baby if she had sworn to do it. Her fierce will wins. Macbeth admires her and decides to go ahead — he tells her to give birth only to "male-children", because she is so bold.
As the murder gets close, Macbeth hallucinates. He sees a dagger floating in the air, pointing the way:
Lady Macbeth has drugged the guards and laid out their daggers. But at the last moment she cannot do the killing herself: "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done 't." So it is Macbeth who murders Duncan. Straight after, he is broken with guilt. He cannot say "Amen", and he hears a voice cry:
Act 2, Scene 3 is the famous Porter scene. A drunken porter pretends to be the keeper of hell-gate, joking about who is "knocking" to get in — a farmer, an equivocator (a person who lies with double-meaning words), and a tailor. This scene does several jobs at once:
When Macduff finds the body, he cries that murder has broken into "the Lord's anointed temple" — meaning the killing of a God-given king is a holy crime, a horror. Macbeth pretends to be loyal and says he killed the guards in his anger. Duncan's sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, sense danger and flee (Malcolm to England, Donalbain to Ireland).
The act ends with strange, frightening signs in nature. Because a God-given king has been murdered, the natural order itself seems broken:
These "unnatural" events show that murdering the king has disturbed the whole world. The act closes with Macbeth crowned king at Scone. The witches' prophecy has come true — but at a terrible cost.
| Word | Simple meaning |
|---|---|
| Soliloquy | A speech by a character alone on stage, sharing his thoughts directly with the audience. |
| Aside | A short remark to the audience that the other characters on stage cannot hear. |
| Equivocation | Speaking with a double or tricky meaning so the truth is hidden — a key theme in the play. |
| Divine right of kingship | The belief that a king is chosen by God, so harming him is like sinning against God. |
| Nobility | The group of upper-class people who hold high rank by birth. |
| Feudal | A land-based society where the king holds power and everyone owes him loyalty. |
| Subject | An ordinary person ruled by the king and nobility. |
| Familiars | Animals (like cats and toads) believed to be the witches' helpers. |
| Gunpowder Plot | The failed Catholic plan against King James I in 1605. |
| Vaulting ambition | Ambition that reaches too high and ends up causing a fall. |
All the questions from this unit, answered in clear and simple language for your exam.
Let us take the famous "Is this a dagger which I see before me" soliloquy (Act 2, Scene 1), spoken just before Macbeth kills Duncan. It is one of the finest examples of Shakespeare showing a troubled mind.
At the start, Macbeth sees a dagger floating in the air, its handle turned toward his hand, as if inviting him to grab it and go. He is not sure if it is real or "a dagger of the mind, a false creation" coming from his "heat-oppressed brain". This shows how his guilt and fear have already begun to disturb his senses — even before the murder. As the speech goes on, the dagger seems to drip blood, and Macbeth's imagination fills with images of witchcraft, wolves, and stealthy murder.
By the end, the floating dagger has done its work: it has led him toward the deed. A bell rings (the signal from Lady Macbeth), and Macbeth makes his final, chilling decision — "I go, and it is done… Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell / That summons thee to Heaven, or to Hell." The soliloquy therefore traces Macbeth's movement from doubt to action, and reveals a man whose conscience is already breaking down. It mixes the real world with hallucination, showing the psychological cost of his ambition.
Lady Macbeth is one of the most debated characters in the play, and critics read her in different ways:
So Lady Macbeth can be read as supernatural, psychological, feminist, or tragic — which is why she remains so fascinating.
Macbeth first meets the witches on the heath in Act 1, Scene 3, returning from battle with Banquo. The witches greet Macbeth with three "hails" — as Thane of Glamis (which he already is), Thane of Cawdor, and finally "king hereafter". They also tell Banquo that his descendants will be kings.
Macbeth's reaction is very different from Banquo's. Banquo stays calm and warns that evil powers tell small truths to trap us in greater harm. Macbeth, however, is deeply shaken — especially when the prophecy starts coming true and he is made Thane of Cawdor. The witches' words touch a secret ambition already inside him, and from this moment his mind turns toward murder.
The interaction is important because the witches do not force Macbeth to do anything — they only suggest. The choice and the action remain his. They represent the chaotic, tempting "other world" that pulls Macbeth away from his duty. Their speech is full of equivocation (double meanings), which later traps Macbeth when he trusts their promises too easily.
The Porter scene (Act 2, Scene 3) comes right after Duncan's murder. A drunken porter imagines he is the keeper of hell-gate and jokes about letting in sinners — a farmer who hoarded grain, an equivocator, and a tailor. The scene has several important purposes:
So although it looks like a comic break, the scene is deeply connected to the play's main ideas.
In Shakespeare's time, the king was believed to be chosen by God (the "divine right of kingship"). The whole order of society — and even of nature — was thought to depend on this. So murdering the king was not just a crime; it was an attack on the natural and holy order of the world. That is why the murder is called "unnatural".
The "unnaturalness" is shown in three ways:
All these signs show that killing a God-given king has thrown the entire natural world out of order.
End of Unit 2 · Continue with Unit 3: Macbeth — Part II (Acts III, IV & V)
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