After the encounter with the witches, Macbeth is promoted as Thane of Cawdor! It is at this point when he realises that the witches were right. He thinks that if they were right about his promotion, then they are obviously correct about him becoming king.
In his soliloquy in Act one Scene three, we learn about his feelings, which he can not help but to think. His thoughts include the ideas of murder and how what he is thinking is very unnatural and cannot be good. (Act one, scene three, line 130) “ This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill; cannot be good”.
After this, Macbeth writes a letter to his wife, Lady Macbeth, explaining to her what has happened and his feelings. He believes that the witches’ predictions are correct.
Lady Macbeth suggests that they murder King Duncan. She invites the king to dinner the same evening and prepares for the murder. In this scene, we learn that Lady Macbeth is a very evil woman, almost a fourth witch. We know this because she is the person who came up with the idea in the first place.
In the evening, King Duncan arrives at the castle where Lady Macbeth who plays a very traditional womanly role, in contrast to what we learn about her earlier greets him.
Macbeth leaves the dinner party and thinks about the situation. He feels guilt and he is very confused. This is the first time we see Macbeth in a state of panic as this is a complete contrast of what we learn about him at the beginning of the play. At the beginning, we learn that he is very brave and ruthless.
Shortly afterwards, he is followed by Lady Macbeth who persuades him to stop being a coward and to be brave. The language she uses here very persuasive. For example, ‘ And live a coward in thine own esteem’. (Act one, Scene seven, line 44)
She asks to be ‘unsexed’ by which she means that she wants all her womanly qualities to be taken away. She doesn’t want the fact that she is a woman to hold her back from this golden opportunity to become queen.
Her plan is to murder the king in his sleep and blame the murder on the drugged guards. She believes her plan will not fail.
After a lot of persuasion, Macbeth thinks long and hard about whether or not he should murder the king. In Act one Scene three, Macbeth says a soliloquy in which he is influenced by a vision of the supernatural. He hallucinates which is caused by his confusion. An invisible dagger appears in front of his eyes. This indicates that his state of mind is to kill the king. ‘ I have thee not and yet I see thee still’. This soliloquy creates dramatic irony where the audience knows more about the feelings of the characters than the characters themselves.
In the end, Macbeth is under immense pressure, which causes him to murder the king.
I think that after killing King Duncan, Macbeth feels a lot of guilt. This is not what we expect because Macbeth is known to be a brave hero who fights for his country and who is very strong.
On the other hand, Lady Macbeth, I think feels happiness as she is now going to become Queen of Scotland. This proves to us that she is an evil woman, almost like a witch.
The settings in this play play a very important role because they help us create images in our minds to help understand the plot better.
Overall, I think that the characters to blame for the death of the king are the witches. They represent the supernatural and they are the voice of fate and therefore caused the death of Duncan. They predicted Macbeth’s future and told him he was to be king. If they had not done so, Macbeth would not have killed Duncan.
However, Lady Macbeth has a huge role to play in the death of Duncan too. She used her persuasive language to make Macbeth carry out the murder. Without Lady Macbeth, Macbeth would not have committed the murder.
