Another part of the field — the duel and the head
"Despair thy charm." Macduff finds Macbeth, names the impossibility, and kills him.
Summary
Another part of the field. Macduff has been searching for Macbeth across the battlefield. He finds him. Macbeth, still trusting the witches' second prophecy, would rather not engage. "Of all men else I have avoided thee. But get thee back; my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already." One of the play's clearest moments of moral self-knowledge: Macbeth knows what he did to Macduff's family and does not want to add the man himself to the count.
Macduff has no patience for it. "I have no words; my voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out." They fight. Macbeth presses what he believes is his unbeatable advantage. "Thou losest labour: as easy mayst thou the intrenchant air with thy keen sword impress as make me bleed. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born." Macduff stops and delivers the line that ends the play. "Despair thy charm; and let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped."
Macbeth understands at once. "Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, for it hath cowed my better part of man, and be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope." He refuses, briefly, to fight. Macduff offers surrender as a public spectacle. Macbeth refuses. "Yet I will try the last." They fight off the stage. Macduff returns with Macbeth's head. "Hail, King of Scotland!" the army cries. Malcolm calls his thanes earls and invites everyone to his coronation at Scone. The play that began with three witches in the dark ends with a head on a pole.
- Scene 1Thunder, lightning, an open desolate place. Three witches meet to plan their next encounter. They will meet again on the heath...
- Scene 2Duncan and his lords at a camp near Forres receive reports from the battle. A wounded captain describes how Macbeth carved his way...
- Scene 3Macbeth and Banquo, riding home from the battle, meet the witches on the heath. The witches hail Macbeth three times: Thane of...
- Scene 4At Forres. Duncan asks whether Cawdor has been executed; Malcolm reports the old traitor "very frankly" begged the king's pardon....
- Scene 5Inverness. Lady Macbeth, alone, reads Macbeth's letter recounting the prophecy. She fears he is too "full o' the milk of human...
- Scene 6Outside Inverness. Duncan and his retinue arrive at the castle. Duncan, looking up at the walls, says "this castle hath a pleasant...
- Scene 7During the banquet for Duncan. Macbeth steps out alone and delivers the play's clearest argument against the act he is about to...
- Scene 8Past midnight in the courtyard at Inverness. Banquo and Fleance walk through with a torch — Banquo cannot sleep, troubled by the...
- Scene 9Lady Macbeth waits in the antechamber, slightly drunk on the wine she has used to drug the grooms. Macbeth returns from Duncan's...
- Scene 10The knocking continues. The porter, hung over, drags himself to the gate while pretending to be hell's gatekeeper, admitting an...
- Scene 11Outside the castle the next morning. An old man tells Ross what the night was like — the sun has not risen, a falcon was killed by...
- Scene 12Forres. Macbeth is now king. Banquo, alone, speaks the suspicion the audience has been waiting for — Macbeth has played most...
- Scene 13Lady Macbeth, alone, finds the crown empty: "naught's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content." It is the play's...
- Scene 14A park near the palace, near sunset. Three murderers — Macbeth has sent a third the others did not know about — wait by the road....
- Scene 15The royal banquet. The first murderer appears at a side door with blood on his face: Banquo is dead, Fleance has escaped. Macbeth...
- Scene 16A short scene on the heath. Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft and queen of the witches, meets the three Weird Sisters and scolds...
- Scene 17A private room in the palace. Lennox and another lord, alone, talk politics in a way no one would dare in front of the king....
- Scene 18A dark cave. The witches at their cauldron — "double, double, toil and trouble" — conjure three apparitions for Macbeth: beware...
- Scene 19Macduff's castle in Fife. Lady Macduff is angry that her husband has fled to England, leaving her and the children unprotected....
- Scene 20England. Macduff has come to ask Malcolm to lead an army into Scotland. Malcolm, cautious, tests him with a long speech pretending...
- Scene 21Dunsinane Castle, late at night. A doctor and a gentlewoman watch Lady Macbeth walk through her own castle in her sleep, candle in...
- Scene 22Open country near Dunsinane. The Scottish lords are on the move with their forces, going to meet Malcolm and Siward and the...
- Scene 23Inside Dunsinane. Macbeth refuses to be afraid. The witches told him no man of woman born could harm him; they told him he was...
- Scene 24Open country in front of Birnam Wood. The combined English and Scottish army has arrived. Malcolm gives an order with both a...
- Scene 25Inside Dunsinane. Macbeth, in armour, paces. A cry of women is heard within the castle. Seyton brings the news: "the queen, my...
- Scene 26A plain in front of Dunsinane. The army has arrived at the walls carrying the boughs they cut at Birnam. Malcolm gives the order...
- Scene 27Another part of the plain, in the heat of the battle. Macbeth, still believing no man of woman born can harm him, is fighting...
- Scene 28Macduff finds Macbeth at last. Macbeth, still trusting the prophecy, would rather not fight him — "my soul is too much charged...