Inverness — the letter and the unsexing
Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter. She finishes it and starts planning the murder before he gets home.
Summary
Inverness, the Macbeths' castle. Lady Macbeth, alone, reads the letter her husband has sent ahead of him. It recounts the witches' prophecy and Ross's confirmation of the Cawdor title — "they have more in them than mortal knowledge." She finishes it. The first thing she says about Macbeth is that he is too full of the milk of human kindness to "catch the nearest way." She knows him well enough to know he wants the crown but is not ruthless enough to take it. She decides she will be ruthless for him.
A messenger arrives: Duncan will be at the castle that night. Lady Macbeth, briefly startled — "thou'rt mad to say it" — recovers within a line. The opportunity has presented itself. She delivers the soliloquy that has become the play's most disturbing moment. She calls on the spirits "that tend on mortal thoughts" to "unsex" her — strip her of any womanly softness — and fill her, top to toe, with direst cruelty. She asks them to thicken her blood, stop up her access to remorse, exchange her milk for gall. She invokes the night to come "in the dunnest smoke of hell" so that her knife will not see the wound it makes.
Macbeth enters. Their reunion is one of the most charged in Shakespeare. She does not wait for him to speak. "Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor! Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!" She is already addressing him as king. She has seen the future "in the instant," and his job is to prepare for it. He must look like the innocent flower and be the serpent under it. The king is coming tonight; the murder is hers to plan. He says only: "we will speak further." She: "leave all the rest to me." The decision has been made — and made by her.
- 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...