Macbeth: Power and Partnership
Explore how the Macbeths share power, withhold knowledge and lose the communication that once made them partners.
What counts as power?
Calling one Macbeth "powerful" can hide several different relationships. Lady Macbeth can direct a conversation without holding a crown; Macbeth can possess formal status while depending on her ability to improvise. A secure interpretation therefore asks what kind of power is operating at each moment.
| Kind of power | What to look for in a play | A useful question |
|---|---|---|
| Informational | letters, secrets, overhearing, withheld plans | Who knows enough to act? |
| Verbal | commands, questions, interruptions, terms of address | Who shapes the other person's choices? |
| Practical | props, movement, preparation, carrying out or concealing an act | Who can turn words into action? |
| Public and formal | titles, ceremony, seating, servants, the ability to command others | Whose authority works in front of witnesses? |
These forms can conflict. In Act 1, Lady Macbeth often controls the language of planning, but Macbeth has the military reputation, public title and access to the crown. After Duncan's murder, Macbeth gains greater formal power while the couple lose the easy exchange of information that made them effective.
A foil is a character whose meaningful similarities and differences make another character clearer. A foil is not necessarily a perfect opposite. Banquo shares Macbeth's military world and hears prophecy beside him; Macduff shares a warrior identity and also faces a conflict between public duty and family. Their different choices expose what is distinctive, and sometimes damaging, about the Macbeths' partnership.
The short checks practise individual skills; a complete coursework response combines them in a sustained argument.
Reading the play
Study all five acts of Macbeth, following the action from service and prophecy in Act 1, through regicide in Act 2 and insecure rule in Act 3, to tyranny and resistance in Act 4 and defeat in Act 5. Check act, scene and speaker when selecting whole-play evidence; line numbers can differ between editions.
A private alliance becomes pressure
Lady Macbeth enters in Act 1 Scene 5 reading a private letter. Before they share the stage, the letter has already made her Macbeth's chosen confidante about the prophecy. His address, "my dearest partner of greatness," joins affection to a future they might share. "Partner" is significant, but it does not prove modern equality: Banquo also calls Macbeth a "partner" in Act 1 Scene 3, where the word means a close companion.
Lady Macbeth immediately interprets both the message and its writer. She thinks she knows what Macbeth wants and what prevents him from pursuing it. When he arrives, her questions, predictions and commands move faster than his brief replies. A production might emphasise intimacy by having them touch or complete each other's thoughts; another might place her between Macbeth and the exit, making the same words feel controlling. The script creates the pressure, while actors decide how closeness and coercion coexist physically.
The sequence prevents one persistent mistake. Macbeth has already imagined murder in Act 1 Scene
3, before Lady Macbeth appears. She does not implant the first idea. Her power lies in
accelerating, organising and reframing a possibility that he has entertained.
That reframing is clearest in Act 1 Scene 7:
- Macbeth defines manhood as knowing the moral limit of action.
- Lady Macbeth makes murder the test of manhood: "then you were a man."
- She changes the discussion from whether Duncan should be killed to whether Macbeth can keep a
promise and carry out a workable plan. - Her questions move into the shared pronouns "you and I", turning individual desire into a
conspiracy. - Macbeth asks about failure, checks how the guards will be blamed and then commits himself to
the act.
A complete interpretation must hold both sides together. Lady Macbeth's language exerts real pressure; Macbeth still deliberates, assents and performs the murder. Persuasion explains his decision without cancelling his agency.
The historical gender context sharpens this division. Lady Macbeth seeks achievement through her husband in a political and military world whose public routes to advancement chiefly belong to men. This can explain why her agency is verbal and indirect; it does not excuse the plan or prove that every early spectator judged her in the same way. Shakespeare's acting companies also cast women's roles with boys, making gender something visibly performed from the play's earliest productions.
For this relationship, the dialogue is stronger evidence than lifting "unsex me here" out of its scene. The invocation reveals how Lady Macbeth imagines cruelty and gender, but the exchange with Macbeth shows her power working on another person. Evidence is discriminating when it resolves the precise relationship being discussed.
Read the passages
Text
Macbeth — Act 1, Scene 5
By William Shakespeare
[1] Enter Lady Macbeth, reading
[2] a letter.
[3] LADY MACBETH.
[4] “They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the
[5] perfect’st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I
[6] burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which
[7] they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the
[8] King, who all-hailed me, ‘Thane of Cawdor’; by which title, before,
[9] these Weird Sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with
[10] ‘Hail, king that shalt be!’ This have I thought good to deliver
[11] thee (my dearest partner of greatness) that thou might’st not lose the
[12] dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promis’d thee.
[13] Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.”
[14] Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
[15] What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature;
[16] It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
[17] To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;
[18] Art not without ambition, but without
[19] The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,
[20] That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
[21] And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou’dst have, great Glamis,
[22] That which cries, “Thus thou must do,” if thou have it;
[23] And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
[24] Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,
[25] That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
[26] And chastise with the valour of my tongue
[27] All that impedes thee from the golden round,
[28] Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
[29] To have thee crown’d withal.
Notes
Numbers identify lines of this supplied extract, not universal verse numbers.
Text
Macbeth — Act 1, Scene 7
By William Shakespeare
[1] MACBETH.
[2] We will proceed no further in this business:
[3] He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought
[4] Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
[5] Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
[6] Not cast aside so soon.
[7] LADY MACBETH.
[8] Was the hope drunk
[9] Wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since?
[10] And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
[11] At what it did so freely? From this time
[12] Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
[13] To be the same in thine own act and valour
[14] As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
[15] Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,
[16] And live a coward in thine own esteem,
[17] Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”
[18] Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?
[19] MACBETH.
[20] Pr’ythee, peace!
[21] I dare do all that may become a man;
[22] Who dares do more is none.
[23] LADY MACBETH.
[24] What beast was’t, then,
[25] That made you break this enterprise to me?
[26] When you durst do it, then you were a man;
[27] And, to be more than what you were, you would
[28] Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
[29] Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
[30] They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
[31] Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
[32] How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
[33] I would, while it was smiling in my face,
[34] Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums
[35] And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
[36] Have done to this.
[37] MACBETH.
[38] If we should fail?
[39] LADY MACBETH.
[40] We fail?
[41] But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
[42] And we’ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep
[43] (Whereto the rather shall his day’s hard journey
[44] Soundly invite him), his two chamberlains
[45] Will I with wine and wassail so convince
[46] That memory, the warder of the brain,
[47] Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
[48] A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep
[49] Their drenched natures lie as in a death,
[50] What cannot you and I perform upon
[51] Th’ unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
[52] His spongy officers; who shall bear the guilt
[53] Of our great quell?
[54] MACBETH.
[55] Bring forth men-children only;
[56] For thy undaunted mettle should compose
[57] Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv’d,
[58] When we have mark’d with blood those sleepy two
[59] Of his own chamber, and us’d their very daggers,
[60] That they have done’t?
[61] LADY MACBETH.
[62] Who dares receive it other,
[63] As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar
[64] Upon his death?
[65] MACBETH.
[66] I am settled, and bend up
[67] Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
[68] Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
[69] False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
[70] [Exeunt.]
Notes
Numbers identify lines of this supplied extract, not universal verse numbers.
Crisis teamwork after Duncan's murder
Act 2 Scene 2 tests the plan in performance. Duncan is killed offstage; the audience watches the Macbeths manage sounds, props and each other. Macbeth has done the central violent act, but he returns carrying the daggers that were meant to remain with the guards.
Their exchange breaks into short questions and answers:
Macbeth asks about noises and speakers; Lady Macbeth answers, corrects and redirects him.
The pattern can be played quickly, as two conspirators urgently checking the same danger. It can also expose failed connection: Macbeth becomes absorbed in what he has heard, while Lady Macbeth tries to force attention back onto concealment. Either performance must remain grounded in the turn-taking and the practical problem onstage.
The daggers divide power more precisely than a verdict such as "Lady Macbeth is in charge":
- Macbeth kills Duncan and brings the bloody evidence back with him.
- He refuses to return to Duncan's room.
- Lady Macbeth takes the daggers, leaves, smears the guards and returns.
- She directs washing, clothing and retreat to "our chamber."
Macbeth has violent agency; Lady Macbeth has crisis-management power. Each depends on the other. Her practical confidence also has limits. Before Macbeth enters, she admits that Duncan resembled her father as he slept. Her inability to kill him herself need not mean simple weakness, but it does prevent her from being read as an emotionless controller.
The shared blood on their hands gives an actor-visible sign of partnership. Their interpretations already diverge, however. Lady Macbeth claims that "A little water clears us"; Macbeth imagines that no amount of water can cleanse him. In Act 5 Scene 1, her repeated washing will reverse her earlier confidence. Shakespeare plants the later separation inside the moment when the pair seem most practically united.
A full evidence-to-analysis chain might run like this: Macbeth's return with the daggers makes his failed concealment visible; Lady Macbeth physically takes over the unfinished task; the prop therefore shows that she can manage the immediate crisis but only after Macbeth performs the act she cannot perform. Staging divides power between them instead of awarding it wholly to one spouse.
Read the passages
Text
Macbeth — Act 2, Scene 2
By William Shakespeare
[1] Enter Macbeth.
[2] MACBETH.
[3] I have done the deed.—Didst thou not hear a noise?
[4] LADY MACBETH.
[5] I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
[6] Did not you speak?
[7] MACBETH.
[8] When?
[9] LADY MACBETH.
[10] Now.
[11] MACBETH.
[12] As I descended?
[13] LADY MACBETH.
[14] Ay.
[15] MACBETH.
[16] Hark!—Who lies i’ th’ second chamber?
[17] LADY MACBETH.
[18] Donalbain.
[19] MACBETH.
[20] This is a sorry sight.
[21] [Looking on his hands.]
[22] LADY MACBETH.
[23] A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
[24] MACBETH.
[25] There’s one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried,
[26] “Murder!”
[27] That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them.
[28] But they did say their prayers, and address’d them
[29] Again to sleep.
[30] LADY MACBETH.
[31] There are two lodg’d together.
[32] MACBETH.
[33] One cried, “God bless us!” and, “Amen,” the other,
[34] As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.
[35] List’ning their fear, I could not say “Amen,”
[36] When they did say, “God bless us.”
[37] LADY MACBETH.
[38] Consider it not so deeply.
[39] MACBETH.
[40] But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”?
[41] I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”
[42] Stuck in my throat.
[43] LADY MACBETH.
[44] These deeds must not be thought
[45] After these ways; so, it will make us mad.
[46] MACBETH.
[47] Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
[48] Macbeth does murder sleep,”—the innocent sleep;
[49] Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
[50] The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
[51] Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
[52] Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
[53] LADY MACBETH.
[54] What do you mean?
[55] MACBETH.
[56] Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house:
[57] “Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
[58] Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more!”
Notes
Numbers identify lines of this supplied extract, not universal verse numbers.
Text
Macbeth — Act 2, Scene 2
By William Shakespeare
[1] LADY MACBETH.
[2] Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
[3] You do unbend your noble strength to think
[4] So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
[5] And wash this filthy witness from your hand.—
[6] Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
[7] They must lie there: go carry them, and smear
[8] The sleepy grooms with blood.
[9] MACBETH.
[10] I’ll go no more:
[11] I am afraid to think what I have done;
[12] Look on’t again I dare not.
[13] LADY MACBETH.
[14] Infirm of purpose!
[15] Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
[16] Are but as pictures. ’Tis the eye of childhood
[17] That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
[18] I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
[19] For it must seem their guilt.
[20] [Exit. Knocking within.]
[21] MACBETH.
[22] Whence is that knocking?
[23] How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?
[24] What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes!
[25] Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
[26] Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
[27] The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
[28] Making the green one red.
[29] Enter Lady Macbeth.
[30] LADY MACBETH.
[31] My hands are of your color, but I shame
[32] To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] I hear knocking
[33] At the south entry:—retire we to our chamber.
[34] A little water clears us of this deed:
[35] How easy is it then! Your constancy
[36] Hath left you unattended.—[Knocking within.] Hark, more knocking.
[37] Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us
[38] And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
[39] So poorly in your thoughts.
[40] MACBETH.
[41] To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself. [Knocking within.]
[42] Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!
[43] [Exeunt.]
Notes
Numbers identify lines of this supplied extract, not universal verse numbers.
The crown breaks the circuit
The relationship does not undergo a tidy personality swap. Shakespeare changes the
circulation of knowledge. In the early scenes, prophecy travels through Macbeth's letter,
plans are argued aloud and concealment is shared. Once Macbeth is king, he increasingly turns
private fear into actions Lady Macbeth learns about too late.
| Scene | What happens between them | Why the dramatic structure matters |
|---|---|---|
| 3.2 | Lady Macbeth asks for access; Macbeth hints at violence but tells her to "Be innocent of the knowledge." | The former co-planner becomes an intended spectator who will "applaud" afterwards. |
| 3.4 | They perform king and hostess at a public banquet; Macbeth's concealed murder returns through Banquo's Ghost. | Lady Macbeth can explain and dismiss, but cannot restore the ceremony or control what Macbeth reveals. |
| 5.1 | Lady Macbeth sleepwalks before the Doctor and Gentlewoman, repeating fragments from Duncan's murder, the banquet and later violence. | Dialogue has become unreturned command and memory: Macbeth is absent while others watch her reconstruct their past. |
In 3.2, "innocent" is unsettlingly flexible. Macbeth may be trying to protect Lady Macbeth from knowledge, patronising her, or preserving the pleasure of a successful surprise. The endearment in the same line leaves tenderness possible, but the grammar still gives him control: he decides what she knows and when she will know it.
The banquet makes private separation publicly dangerous. Macbeth begins by saying that he will "play the humble host" while Lady Macbeth occupies the formal position of hostess. A Murderer draws Macbeth away to receive information she does not share. Banquo's Ghost then occupies Macbeth's place at the table. Whether a production presents the Ghost as a supernatural visitor or Macbeth's embodied fear, Lady Macbeth cannot see what Macbeth addresses within the scene.
Her old tactic returns in "Are you a man?", but it no longer secures a joint course of action. At Inverness, the challenge helped move Macbeth towards the plan; at the banquet, it cannot make him perform stable kingship. She finally dismisses the guests without ceremony. Public and formal power have increased, but the couple's collaborative power has failed.
Act 5 Scene 1 completes the separation without making Lady Macbeth a simple copy of her husband. Her fragmented prose repeats commands about hands, clothing, fear and bed, but the husband once addressed by those commands is not there. The Doctor records; the Gentlewoman guards what she has heard; Lady Macbeth's private knowledge has escaped into witnessed speech. The earlier claim that water could clear the deed has become compulsive washing.
This is stronger than saying only that "Macbeth becomes dominant." Shakespeare turns reciprocal speech into withheld information, then turns shared experience into solitary repetition. The change is communicative as well as political.
A production can express continuing intimacy or growing distance through touch, pauses and physical spacing. Those choices should be justified by the dialogue; a shared bereavement remains an invented backstory, not an established event in the script.
Read the passages
Text
Macbeth — Act 3, Scene 2
By William Shakespeare
[1] MACBETH.
[2] O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
[3] Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.
[4] LADY MACBETH.
[5] But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.
[6] MACBETH.
[7] There’s comfort yet; they are assailable.
[8] Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown
[9] His cloister’d flight, ere to black Hecate’s summons
[10] The shard-born beetle, with his drowsy hums,
[11] Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
[12] A deed of dreadful note.
[13] LADY MACBETH.
[14] What’s to be done?
[15] MACBETH.
[16] Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
[17] Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,
[18] Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
[19] And with thy bloody and invisible hand
[20] Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
[21] Which keeps me pale!—Light thickens; and the crow
[22] Makes wing to th’ rooky wood.
[23] Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
[24] Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
[25] Thou marvell’st at my words: but hold thee still;
[26] Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
[27] So, pr’ythee, go with me.
[28] [Exeunt.]
Notes
Numbers identify lines of this supplied extract, not universal verse numbers.
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