Summary: Act 5: Scene 1
At night, in the king’s palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth’s
strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a
trance with a candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Lady Macduff
and Banquo,
she seems to see blood on her hands and claims that nothing will ever
wash it off. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her
descent into madness.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 1
Summary: Act 5: Scene 2
Outside the castle, a group of Scottish lords discusses the military
situation: the English army approaches, led by Malcolm, and the Scottish
army will meet them near Birnam Wood, apparently to join forces with
them. The “tyrant,” as Lennox and the other lords call Macbeth, has fortified Dunsinane Castle and is making his military preparations in a mad rage.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 2
Summary: Act 5: Scene 3
Macbeth strides into the hall of Dunsinane with the doctor and his
attendants, boasting proudly that he has nothing to fear from the
English army or from Malcolm, since “none of woman born” can harm him
(4.1.96) and since he will rule securely “[t]ill Birnam Wood remove to
Dunsinane” (5.3.2). He calls his servant Seyton, who confirms that an
army of ten thousand Englishmen approaches the castle. Macbeth insists
upon wearing his armor, though the battle is still some time off. The
doctor tells the king that Lady Macbeth is kept from rest by
“thick-coming fancies,” and Macbeth orders him to cure her of her
delusions (5.3.40).
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 3
Summary: Act 5: Scene 4
In the country near Birnam Wood, Malcolm talks with the English lord
Siward and his officers about Macbeth’s plan to defend the fortified
castle. They decide that each soldier should cut down a bough of the
forest and carry it in front of him as they march to the castle, thereby
disguising their numbers.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 4
Summary: Act 5: Scene 5
Within the castle, Macbeth blusteringly orders that banners be hung
and boasts that his castle will repel the enemy. A woman’s cry is
heard, and Seyton appears to tell Macbeth that the queen is dead.
Shocked, Macbeth speaks numbly about the passage of time and declares
famously that life is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, / Signifying nothing” (5.5.25–27). A messenger enters with
astonishing news: the trees of Birnam Wood are advancing toward
Dunsinane. Enraged and terrified, Macbeth recalls the prophecy that said
he could not die till Birnam Wood moved to Dunsinane. Resignedly, he
declares that he is tired of the sun and that at least he will die
fighting.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 5
Summary: Act 5: Scene 6
Outside the castle, the battle commences. Malcolm orders the English soldiers to throw down their boughs and draw their swords.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 6
Summary: Act 5: Scene 7
On the battlefield, Macbeth strikes those around him vigorously,
insolent because no man born of woman can harm him. He slays Lord
Siward’s son and disappears in the fray.
Macduff emerges and searches the chaos frantically for Macbeth, whom he longs to cut down personally. He dives again into the battle.
Malcolm and Siward emerge and enter the castle.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 7
Summary: Act 5: Scene 8
Elsewhere on the battlefield, Macbeth at last encounters Macduff.
They fight, and when Macbeth insists that he is invincible because of the witches’
prophecy, Macduff tells Macbeth that he was not of woman born, but
rather “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (5.8.15–16). Macbeth
suddenly fears for his life, but he declares that he will not surrender
“[t]o kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, / And to be baited
with the rabble’s curse” (5.8.28–29). They exit fighting.
Malcolm and Siward walk together in the castle, which they have now
effectively captured. Ross tells Siward that his son is dead. Macduff
emerges with Macbeth’s head in his hand and proclaims Malcolm King of
Scotland. Malcolm declares that all his thanes will be made earls,
according to the English system of peerage. They will be the first such
lords in Scottish history. Cursing Macbeth and his “fiend-like” queen,
Malcolm calls all those around him his friends and invites them all to
see him crowned at Scone (5.8.35).
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 8
Analysis: Act 5: Scenes 1–8
The rapid tempo of the play’s development accelerates into a
breakneck frenzy in Act 5, as the relatively long scenes of previous
acts are replaced by a flurry of short takes, each of which furthers the
action toward its violent conclusion on the battlefield outside
Dunsinane Castle. We see the army’s and Malcolm’s preparation for
battle, the fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies, and the demises of
both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, her icy nerves shattered by
the weight of guilt and paranoia, gives way to sleepwalking and a
delusional belief that her hands are stained with blood. “Out, damned
spot,” she cries in one of the play’s most famous lines, and adds,
“[W]ho would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
(5.1.30, 33–34). Her belief that nothing can wash away the blood is, of
course, an ironic and painful reversal of her earlier claim to Macbeth
that “[a] little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65). Macbeth, too,
is unable to sleep. His and Lady Macbeth’s sleeplessness was
foreshadowed by Macbeth’s hallucination at the moment of the murder,
when he believed that a voice cried out “Macbeth does murder sleep”
(2.2.34).
Read important quotes about guilt.
Like Duncan’s death and Macbeth’s ascension to the kingship, Lady
Macbeth’s suicide does not take place onstage; it is merely reported.
Macbeth seems numb in response to the news of his wife’s death, which
seems surprising, especially given the great love he appears to have
borne for his wife. Yet, his indifferent response reflects the despair
that has seized him as he realizes that what has come to seem the game
of life is almost up. Indeed, Macbeth’s speech following his wife’s
death is one of the most famous expressions of despair in all of
literature:
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (5.5.18–27)
These words reflect Macbeth’s feeling of hopelessness, of course,
but they have a self-justifying streak as well—for if life is “full of
sound and fury, / Signifying nothing,” then Macbeth’s crimes, too, are
meaningless rather than evil.
Read an analysis of Macbeth’s speech following the death of Lady
Macbeth.
Additionally, the speech’s insistence that “[l]ife’s . . . a poor
player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage” can be read as a
dark and somewhat subversive commentary on the relationship between the
audience and the play. After all, Macbeth is just a
player on an English stage, and his statement undercuts the suspension
of disbelief that the audience must maintain in order to enter the
action of the play. If we take Macbeth’s statement as expressing
Shakespeare’s own perspective on the theater, then the entire play can
be seen as being “full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”
Admittedly, it seems unlikely that the playwright would have put his own
perspective on the stage in the mouth of a despairing, desperate
murderer. Still, Macbeth’s words remind us of the essential
theatricality of the action—that the lengthy soliloquies, offstage
deaths, and poetic speeches are not meant to capture reality but to
reinterpret it in order to evoke a certain emotional response from the
audience.
Read more about metaphors and similes in Macbeth.
Despite the pure nihilism of this speech, Macbeth seems to fluctuate
between despair and ridiculous bravado, making his own dissolution
rougher and more complex than that of his wife. Lured into a false sense
of security by the final prophecies of the witches, he gives way to
boastfulness and a kind of self-destructive arrogance. When the battle
begins, Macbeth clings, against all apparent evidence, to the notion
that he will not be harmed because he is protected by the
prophecy—although whether he really believes it at this stage, or is
merely hanging on to the last thread of hope he has left, is debatable.
Read more about the shifting style of speech in Macbeth.
Macbeth ceased to be a sympathetic hero once he made the decision to
kill Duncan, but by the end of the play he has become so morally
repulsive that his death comes as a powerful relief. Ambition and
bloodlust must be checked by virtue for order and form to be restored to
the sound and fury of human existence. Only with Malcolm’s victory and
assumption of the crown can Scotland, and the play itself, be saved from
the chaos engendered by Macbeth.
Read more about what the ending means.