Macbeth Act IV | ISC Class 12 English Literature Notes

This note covers William Shakespeare’s Macbeth Act IV: where the act sits in the play, its three scenes, the apparitions and the show of kings, Macbeth’s order to attack Macduff’s castle, the murder in Fife, Malcolm’s testing of Macduff, Macduff’s grief, the characters, dramatic techniques, imagery, themes, tone, key quotations, difficult words and exam-style questions with model answers.

Where does Act IV sit in Macbeth, and what are its settings?

William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in five acts. Act IV has three scenes. It takes Macbeth back to the witches, shows the cruellest of his crimes, and then moves to England, where his enemies join forces.

How did Act III end?

At the end of Act III, Scene 4, after Banquo’s ghost has broken up his banquet, Macbeth decides to visit the Weird Sisters the next day to learn the worst by the worst means. In Scene 5, Hecate plans spirits whose illusions will draw him to his ruin, warning that security, or overconfidence, is the chief enemy of mortals.

In Scene 6, a lord tells Lennox that Macduff has gone to the English court, where Malcolm lives, to seek help from Northumberland and Siward, and that this report has so angered “the King” that he prepares for war.

Where are the three scenes set?

Scene 1 is set in a dark cave with a boiling cauldron. Scene 2 takes place in Macduff’s castle at Fife. Scene 3 is set in England, before the King’s palace. Macbeth appears only in Scene 1; after that the audience sees him through his victims and enemies, who call him a tyrant, a devil and a fiend.

Note: Editions of the play differ in small details of spelling, punctuation and wording. The quotations here follow one widely available text; a school edition may print a few words differently, for example the son’s insult to the murderer, given here as “shag-ear’d villain”.

What happens in the scene-by-scene summary of Act IV?

Scene 1: How do the witches prepare the cauldron?

Thunder sounds as the three witches enter. Their signals have come: the brinded cat has mewed three times, the hedge-pig has whined, and Harpier cries that it is time. Circling the cauldron, they throw in a toad, a fenny snake, eye of newt, a howlet’s wing and many other parts of animals and people, including the finger of a baby strangled at birth.

Hecate enters, praises their work and asks them to sing round the cauldron; after a song she leaves. The Second Witch senses, by the pricking of her thumbs, that something wicked is coming, and Macbeth enters.

Scene 1: What does Macbeth see, and what does he decide?

Macbeth demands answers, and the witches call up their masters. Three apparitions rise in turn. An armed Head warns him to beware Macduff. A bloody Child says that none of woman born shall harm him. A Child crowned, with a tree in his hand, says he will never be vanquished until Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane hill.

Macbeth then insists on knowing whether Banquo’s descendants will reign. A show of eight kings passes, the last holding a glass, with Banquo following and pointing at them as his own. The witches dance and vanish. Lennox reports that Macduff has fled to England, and Macbeth resolves at once to seize Fife and kill Macduff’s wife, children and kin.

Scene 2: What happens at Macduff’s castle?

Lady Macduff asks Ross why her husband fled, calling the flight fear and a lack of love. Ross defends Macduff, speaks darkly of cruel times and leaves. Lady Macduff tells her son his father is dead; the boy answers with quick wit and asks what a traitor is.

A Messenger warns her to flee with her children, then hurries away. Murderers enter and call her husband a traitor. Her son calls the speaker a liar and is stabbed. Dying, he begs his mother to run; she leaves crying “Murder!”, pursued.

Scene 3: How does Malcolm test Macduff?

In England, Malcolm suspects that Macduff could be Macbeth’s agent. He accuses himself of endless lust, greed and a lack of every royal virtue. Macduff excuses the first two faults but despairs at the third. Malcolm then withdraws every charge and reveals that old Siward was already setting out with ten thousand soldiers.

Scene 3: What news reaches the exiles?

A Doctor reports that the English king cures the sick by his touch. Then Ross arrives, calls Scotland a grave rather than a mother, and at first says that Macduff’s family are well. At last he reveals that Macduff’s wife, children and servants have been slaughtered. Macduff mourns, blames himself and vows to face Macbeth, and Malcolm leads him to the king, saying their army is ready.

What do the apparitions and the show of kings tell Macbeth?

How does Macbeth speak to the witches?

Macbeth greets them as “secret, black, and midnight hags”. Asked what they are doing, they reply, “A deed without a name”: their work is too evil for ordinary language.

His demand is one long sentence of repeated “Though” clauses. He will accept winds fighting the churches, ships swallowed, castles and palaces falling, and nature’s seeds tumbling together, “Even till destruction sicken”. This hyperbole shows that he values his own knowledge above the whole created world. In Act I the witches waited for him; now he seeks them out and gives orders, though the first apparition “will not be commanded”.

What do the three apparitions promise?

Each spoken promise contains a condition. The second rests on the words “of woman born”, which Macbeth takes to cover every man. The third rests on “until”, which he hears as “never”, since no one can force a forest to “Unfix his earth-bound root”. He listens for comfort, not for the limits built into the riddles.

Why does the show of kings hurt him most?

Told to “Seek to know no more”, he answers, “I will be satisfied”. The witches’ chant, “Show his eyes, and grieve his heart”, states their purpose: what he demanded will wound him. The first king’s crown “does sear mine eyeballs”, and he asks whether the line will “stretch out to th’ crack of doom”, the end of the world.

The prophecy of Act I, Scene 3, that Banquo would father kings, now passes before his eyes. Editors often link this line with the Stuart kings of Shakespeare’s day, who claimed descent from Banquo, and the kings with “twofold balls and treble sceptres” suggest rule over more than one kingdom.

Why is Macbeth’s decision to attack Fife a turning point?

What does the “firstlings” speech mean?

After the witches vanish, Macbeth damns “all those that trust them”, a curse that falls on himself. News of Macduff’s flight then makes him address Time as a rival that has outrun his plans. He concludes that “The flighty purpose never is o’ertook / Unless the deed go with it”: an intention escapes unless the act follows at once.

His new rule is that “The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand.” Firstlings are first offspring, so his first impulses will become his first actions. The phrase “be it thought and done” removes the gap between thinking and doing.

In Act I, Scene 7, he could say “We will proceed no further in this business”, and in Act II a dagger of the mind haunted him before he acted. Now he plans a killing without inner debate, sealed by the couplet “No boasting like a fool; / This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool”.

Why does the attack have no clear purpose?

Macduff is already in England, so the attack cannot stop him. Its victims are “His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line.” Coming just after he has watched Banquo’s line stretch out, the order can be read as an attack on another man’s line. His cry “But no more sights!” turns him from visions he cannot bear to violence he can command.

How does Scene 2 make the murder in Fife so disturbing?

How does Lady Macduff judge her husband’s flight?

Lady Macduff says her husband “wants the natural touch”, the natural feeling of a parent. Even the tiny wren, she says, will fight the owl to protect her young. The image makes her family small birds and the danger a bird of prey. The audience has just heard Macbeth order their deaths, so her fear is better founded than she knows.

Ross calls Macduff “noble, wise, judicious” but dares not say more. He describes cruel times in which people are called traitors without knowing why, and his hope that things “at the worst will cease” is soon proved hollow.

What does the conversation between mother and son add?

The talk is tender and witty. She calls her son a “Poor bird” who would never fear the net, lime, pit-fall or gin, all traps for birds; he replies that traps are not set for poor birds. His innocent confidence is painful to watch. When she says a traitor is “one that swears and lies”, he reasons that liars outnumber honest men, describing, without knowing it, a country where the dishonest rule.

How is the murder staged?

After the messenger’s warning, Lady Macduff reflects that in this world doing harm is often praised and doing good is “Accounted dangerous folly”. The reversal echoes the witches’ “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” in Act I, Scene 1.

Her son, defending the father she herself called a traitor, cries “Thou liest”. The murderer calls him “egg” and “Young fry of treachery”, names for creatures barely born. Duncan was killed offstage in Act II, but here the boy is stabbed in full view. His dying words, “He has kill’d me, mother: / Run away, I pray you!”, think of her safety. Her own death is not shown; Ross reports it in Scene 3.

Why does Malcolm test Macduff, and what does the test reveal?

Why is Malcolm suspicious?

Malcolm notes that Macbeth “Was once thought honest”, that Macduff loved him, and that a man might win favour by offering up “a weak, poor, innocent lamb / To appease an angry god”. He also asks why Macduff left his wife and child “Without leave-taking”, which, for the audience, echoes Lady Macduff’s complaint in Scene 2.

How does the test proceed?

1. Malcolm warns of a worse king. He says Scotland will suffer more under Macbeth’s successor, meaning himself, beside whom “black Macbeth / Will seem as pure as snow”.
2. He claims boundless lust. Macduff calls such intemperance a tyranny that has emptied thrones, but says Malcolm could satisfy it in secret.
3. He claims endless greed. Macduff calls avarice a deeper root, yet says Scotland has wealth enough and such faults are “portable” if other virtues balance them.
4. He denies every royal virtue. He would “Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell”. Macduff replies, “Fit to govern? / No, not to live.”
5. He withdraws the charges. He calls Macduff’s despair a “noble passion, / Child of integrity” and puts himself under Macduff’s direction.

What does the test reveal about both men?

Macduff will tolerate private vices in a rightful king, but not a ruler with no virtue at all. His loyalty is to Scotland rather than to one person.

Malcolm proves cautious and shrewd. Macbeth has used many “trains”, or lures, to draw him into his power, so he feigns wickedness to see whether Macduff is another. He calls the test “my first false speaking”.

The twelve king-becoming graces he names are justice, verity, temperance, stableness, bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, devotion, patience, courage and fortitude. Set beside his words for Macbeth, “bloody, / Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful”, they give the act its clearest picture of what a king should be.

How does Macduff receive the news of his family’s murder?

Why does Ross delay the news?

Macduff asks, “Stands Scotland where it did?” Ross answers that the country is “Almost afraid to know itself”, a grave where shrieks go unnoticed and good men die before the flowers in their caps wither.

Asked about Macduff’s family, Ross says they were “well at peace” when he left them, words that can also be read in a second sense, since the dead are at peace. When he speaks plainly, he says: “Your castle is surpris’d; your wife and babes / Savagely slaughter’d.” The verb echoes Macbeth’s vow, “The castle of Macduff I will surprise”, and can be read as showing that the deed has followed the thought exactly. He calls the dead “murder’d deer”, the quarry of a hunt.

How does Macduff express his grief?

Macduff at first pulls his hat over his brows in silence. Then his questions come in short bursts: “My children too?” and “My wife kill’d too?” He needs to hear the facts again before he can take them in.

His line “He has no children” is open to more than one reading. It may refer to Malcolm, who offers revenge too easily as a cure, or to Macbeth, who has no children on whom revenge could fall. He calls Macbeth a “hell-kite” who took “all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop”. A kite is a bird of prey, so the image recalls the wren and the owl of Scene 2.

How does grief turn into resolve?

Told to “Dispute it like a man”, Macduff adds that he “must also feel it as a man”, and blames himself: his family died not for their faults but for his. Malcolm urges him to make grief the whetstone of his sword. Macduff asks heaven to set “this fiend of Scotland” within his sword’s length, and Malcolm judges that this tune “goes manly”.

How do the characters appear in Act IV, and how have they changed?

Macbeth: from hesitation to instant violence

Macbeth is commanding but insecure: he orders the witches about, yet needs every promise doubled. In Act I he hid his thoughts in asides; no speech in Act IV is marked as an aside. Lady Macbeth does not appear in this act, and he decides alone, as he already began to do with Banquo’s murder in Act III.

Macduff: patriot, husband and father

Earlier, Macduff discovered Duncan’s body, chose Fife over Scone and refused Macbeth’s summons. Now his patriotism is open, and he is proud enough to take offence at being thought a traitor. The act lets two judgements of his flight stand: his wife’s charge that he lacked love, and his own confession that his family died for his faults.

Malcolm: from fugitive to leader

Malcolm was named Prince of Cumberland in Act I and fled to England in Act II. Now he tests an ally, declares his virtues and announces an army. He admits he is young, and his answer to grief, revenge as medicine, is simpler than Macduff’s feeling.

Lady Macduff and her son: the innocent household

Appearing only in Scene 2, Lady Macduff is sharp, bitter at her husband and loving towards her son, and answers the murderers with scorn. Her son is quick-witted and loyal, and dies defending his father’s name.

Ross, Lennox and the witches

Ross, cousin to both Macduffs, is gentle but guarded; in Act I he brought news of victory, and here he brings the worst news of the act. Lennox, who spoke of “the tyrant’s feast” in Act III, Scene 6, still attends Macbeth. The witches are more mocking than before, ending with a dance of welcome so that “this great king” may praise their duty.

What dramatic techniques and imagery does Act IV use?

How do the supernatural and spectacle work on stage?

Scene 1 fills the stage with the supernatural: thunder, apparitions that rise and descend, a sinking cauldron, hautboys, music, a dance and a procession of kings. The visions work on Macbeth’s senses; he would hear the second apparition with three ears if he had them. Lennox says the witches did not pass him, which may suggest that the visions are Macbeth’s alone.

Where does dramatic irony appear?

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows more than a character. The audience heard Hecate plan false security in Act III, Scene 5, so every comfort Macbeth takes is watched with knowledge he lacks. In Scene 3, Macduff is told his family are well, while the audience has seen the attack begin.

How do verse, rhyme and prose differ?

The witches and Hecate mostly speak in short rhyming couplets with four strong beats, and their refrain sounds like a spell. Most of the act is in blank verse, unrhymed lines of ten syllables. Part of the talk between Lady Macduff and her son is in prose, giving it an everyday sound before violence breaks in.

Couplets also mark decisions, such as Macbeth’s resolve in Scene 1, and Malcolm closes the act on “may” and “day”. In Scene 3, short questions and replies quicken the pace as the news arrives.

Which imagery patterns run through the act?

What themes and tone emerge from Act IV?

Tyranny and true kingship

Macbeth, “an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d”, has turned Scotland into a grave. The English king, whom Act III, Scene 6 calls “the most pious Edward”, heals the sick with a hand that heaven has blessed. Malcolm calls the disease “the evil”, and its sufferers are “All swoln and ulcerous”; editors usually identify it as scrofula, long called the King’s Evil.

This king also leaves his healing power to his successors and has “a heavenly gift of prophecy”, set against the witches’ riddles of Scene 1.

Fate, prophecy and choice

Macbeth wants to “take a bond of fate”, as if fate could be held to a contract. The attack on Macduff’s family is his own choice, not an apparition’s command.

Innocence and its destruction

Lady Macduff’s protest, “I have done no harm”, meets a world where innocence gives no protection. A child killed on stage and a baby’s finger in the cauldron show innocence used as material for evil.

Manhood, grief and revenge

In Act I, Lady Macbeth told Macbeth he was a man when he dared to act. Act IV offers a different idea: Macduff will fight, but a man must also feel. Ross tells the exiles that their presence in Scotland would “make our women fight”.

Trust, appearance and deception

No one in Scene 3 can take another at face value. Malcolm feigns vice, Ross seems to hide the truth in a double meaning, and the good must use caution where foul things “would wear the brows of grace”.

What is the tone of the act?

Scene 1 is eerie and grotesque. Scene 2 is intimate, even playful, until horror breaks in. Scene 3 is grave and sorrowful but ends on resolve: “The night is long that never finds the day.”

Which key quotations help answer questions on Act IV?

A strong answer names the speaker and scene, explains the situation, and shows what particular words reveal. The student should quote briefly and comment on word choice rather than retell the plot.

“Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.”

The witches, Scene 1: the refrain is chanted three times. The doubled words multiply trouble, and doubling returns when Macbeth decides to make “assurance double sure”.

“Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.”

The second apparition, Scene 1: the alliteration of “bloody, bold” gives the advice force. It is an instruction to violence as much as a prediction.

“Thou hast harp’d my fear aright.”

Macbeth, Scene 1: to harp is to strike a note, so the armed Head sounds a fear of Macduff that Macbeth already had.

“All is the fear, and nothing is the love;”

Lady Macduff, Scene 2: the balanced opposites, all and nothing, fear and love, make her judgement absolute. The audience may weigh it against Macduff’s later grief.

“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell:”

Malcolm, Scene 3: the brightest angel fell into evil, yet angels remain bright. Macbeth’s fall does not make every good-seeming man false.

“Bleed, bleed, poor country! / Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, / For goodness dare not check thee!”

Macduff, Scene 3: Scotland becomes a wounded body and tyranny a builder laying firm foundations. He speaks in despair when Malcolm distrusts him, believing that goodness dares not challenge the tyrant.

“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak / Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”

Malcolm, Scene 3: grief is personified as a whisperer that tells an overloaded heart to break. The rhyming couplet gives the advice the weight of a saying.

“Macbeth / Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above / Put on their instruments.”

Malcolm, Scene 3: Macbeth is fruit ready to fall from a shaken tree, and heaven an ally arming itself. Revenge becomes a cause blessed from above.

Glossary

• Brinded: Streaked or tabby-marked, describing the cat whose mewing three times is one of the witches’ signals in Scene 1.
• Harpier: The name of the Third Witch’s attendant spirit, whose cry tells the witches that it is time to begin.
• Howlet: A young owl; the wing of a howlet is one of the ingredients the Second Witch adds to the cauldron.
• Gibbet: A gallows on which an executed criminal was hung; the witches throw grease from a murderer’s gibbet into the flame.
• Hautboys: Oboes, whose sound the stage direction calls for as the cauldron sinks before the show of kings.
• Bodements: Omens or prophecies; Macbeth calls the promise about Birnam wood “Sweet bodements”.
• Impress: To force someone into military service; Macbeth asks who could conscript a forest and make its trees leave the ground.
• Firstlings: First offspring; Macbeth uses the word for the first impulses of his heart, which he will now act on at once.
• Gin: A snare for catching birds, named with the net, lime and pit-fall in Lady Macduff’s talk with her son.
• Affeer’d: Legally confirmed; Macduff says tyranny’s title is confirmed because goodness dares not challenge it.
• Portable: Bearable; Macduff says Malcolm’s claimed vices could be borne if balanced by his other graces.
• Hell-kite: A kite, or bird of prey, from hell; Macduff’s name for Macbeth after hearing that all his children have been killed.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The apparitions promise that Macbeth cannot be defeated in any circumstances. Correct: Each promise has a condition: no one “of woman born” can harm him, and he is safe only “until” Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane.
• Misconception: The witches tell Macbeth to kill Macduff’s family. Correct: No apparition mentions the family; Macbeth decides on the attack himself after Lennox reports Macduff’s flight.
• Misconception: Macbeth himself murders Lady Macduff and her son. Correct: Murderers carry out the attack in Scene 2; Macbeth appears only in Scene 1 of the act.
• Misconception: Lady Macduff’s death is shown on stage. Correct: Only the son is stabbed on stage; Lady Macduff runs off pursued, and Ross reports the slaughter in Scene 3.
• Misconception: Malcolm really is lustful, greedy and without virtue. Correct: He invents these faults to test Macduff and then withdraws them, calling them his “first false speaking”.
• Misconception: The healing English king appears in Scene 3. Correct: He never enters; the Doctor and Malcolm describe his healing touch.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Just before Macbeth enters the cave in Scene 1, the Second Witch says: “By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes.” (a) Who is the “Something wicked”, and what does the phrase show? (1 mark) (b) What is the effect of the rhyme? (1 mark) [2 marks]

1. (a) It is Macbeth, who enters next; even the witches now call him wicked, showing how far he has fallen.
2. (b) The rhyme of thumbs and comes makes the lines sound like a spell, so his arrival seems part of their ritual.

Q2. In Scene 1, the bloody Child says: “Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.” Macbeth replies: “Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee? / But yet I’ll make assurance double sure, / And take a bond of fate.” (a) What does the apparition urge? (1 mark) (b) How does Macbeth change his mind? (1 mark) (c) What does “take a bond of fate” suggest? (1 mark) [3 marks]

1. (a) It urges him to be violent and fearless and to scorn human power, since no one born of woman can harm him.
2. (b) He first decides Macduff can live, then resolves to kill him anyway to make his safety “double sure”.
3. (c) He wants to hold fate to its promise like a legal bond, which shows that he does not fully trust the prophecy.

Q3. After Lennox reports that Macduff has fled to England, Macbeth says: “The flighty purpose never is o’ertook / Unless the deed go with it. From this moment / The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand.” He then plans to kill Macduff’s wife and “babes”. In Act I, Scene 7, he had said, “We will proceed no further in this business”. (a) Explain the first two lines. (1 mark) (b) Explain the “firstlings” image. (1 mark) (c) Why can the attack not stop Macduff? (1 mark) (d) How has Macbeth changed since Act I? (1 mark) [4 marks]

1. (a) A purpose that flies away is never caught unless the deed is done at the same moment, so he must act at once.
2. (b) Firstlings are first offspring; his first impulses will now become his first actions, with no gap between feeling and doing.
3. (c) Macduff is already in England, so the attack falls only on the family left behind in Fife.
4. (d) In Act I he paused and tried to stop; now he refuses all delay and plans a killing without inner debate.

Q4. In Scene 2, Lady Macduff says of her husband: “He loves us not: / He wants the natural touch;” and adds that even the tiny wren fights the owl to protect her young. Ross replies that Macduff is “noble, wise, judicious” and that “cruel are the times, when we are traitors, / And do not know ourselves”. Explain four points this exchange shows. [4 marks]

1. Lady Macduff sees her husband’s flight as unloving, because he has left his family in the danger he escapes.
2. The wren image makes him less natural than the smallest bird, which defends its nest against a bird of prey.
3. Ross defends Macduff but will not explain his reasons, suggesting that open speech is dangerous in Macbeth’s Scotland.
4. His words about unknowing traitors describe a land where people are condemned without knowing their crime, preparing for the attack that follows.

Q5. In Scene 2, Lady Macduff tells her son that a traitor is “one that swears and lies” and that honest men must hang all traitors. He replies, in prose: “Then the liars and swearers are fools: for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.” (a) What is the son’s point? (1 mark) (b) What does it suggest about Scotland? (1 mark) (c) What is the effect of prose here? (1 mark) [3 marks]

1. (a) The word “enow” means enough: the dishonest are so many that they could defeat the honest men and hang them instead.
2. (b) Without realising it, the child describes a country where liars rule and honest people are in danger.
3. (c) Prose gives the talk an everyday, homely sound, so the murderers’ entry breaks into ordinary family life.

Q6. In Scene 3, Malcolm says Macbeth “Was once thought honest” and that Macduff might offer him up like “a weak, poor, innocent lamb / To appease an angry god”. He asks why Macduff left his wife and child “Without leave-taking”. He then accuses himself of lust, of greed for nobles’ lands, and of lacking all the “king-becoming graces”. Macduff excuses the first two faults but cries, “Fit to govern? / No, not to live.” Malcolm withdraws the charges, says Macbeth has used many “trains” to lure him, and calls his self-accusation “my first false speaking”. What does this episode reveal about Malcolm and Macduff? [6 marks]

1. Malcolm is cautious: he knows a man once thought honest became a tyrant, so he will not trust appearances.
2. He is shrewd, testing Macduff with pretended vices because Macbeth has already used lures to trap him.
3. His question about the abandoned family shows that Macduff’s flight seems suspicious, the point Lady Macduff raised in Scene 2.
4. Macduff is willing to excuse private faults in a rightful king, which shows a practical sense of politics.
5. His cry that such a man is unfit even to live proves that his loyalty is to Scotland and to goodness, not to one person.
6. Malcolm’s calling the test his first falsehood shows that he is truthful at heart, so the two men can now trust each other.

Q7. In Scene 3, Ross says Scotland “cannot / Be call’d our mother, but our grave”. Macduff calls Macbeth “an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d”. The Doctor and Malcolm describe the English king curing sick people with his touch, leaving this power to his successors and having “a heavenly gift of prophecy”. Malcolm lists the king-becoming graces, including justice, verity, mercy and patience. In Scene 1, the witches’ apparitions give Macbeth riddling promises, and he then orders the killing of Macduff’s wife and children. Discuss how Act IV contrasts tyranny with good kingship. [5 marks]

1. Ross’s image of Scotland as a grave rather than a mother shows tyranny destroying the people a country should nurture.
2. Macduff’s phrase “untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d” presents Macbeth as a ruler without rightful title whose power is marked by blood.
3. The English king heals his subjects with a holy touch, while Macbeth wounds and kills his, so the two kings are opposites.
4. The king’s “heavenly gift of prophecy” stands against the witches’ riddles, linking good kingship with heaven and tyranny with darkness.
5. The graces of justice, mercy and patience define a good king by virtues that Macbeth’s order to kill a family shows he lacks.

Q8. In Scene 1, thunder sounds as the witches circle a boiling cauldron, chanting “Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.” An armed Head, a bloody Child and a crowned Child rise and descend. Told to “Seek to know no more”, Macbeth insists, and eight kings pass, followed by Banquo, who points at them. The witches dance and vanish, and Lennox says they did not pass him. Explain five dramatic effects of the supernatural in this scene. [5 marks]

1. The thunder, the boiling cauldron and the chanted refrain create an eerie, threatening atmosphere and make the witches’ power seem real and active.
2. The rising and sinking apparitions give strong visual spectacle, holding attention as each figure appears.
3. The three figures present the future as riddling images, building suspense about what they mean for Macbeth.
4. Because he insists despite the warning, the painful show of kings comes from his own demand, revealing his character.
5. Lennox’s report that the witches did not pass him suggests that the visions are Macbeth’s private experience, isolating him at the end of the scene.

Key takeaways

• Act IV moves from the witches’ cave to Macduff’s castle in Fife and then to England, where Macbeth’s enemies unite.
• The apparitions warn Macbeth about Macduff but give him conditional promises, which he hears as a guarantee of safety.
• The show of eight kings confirms that Banquo’s descendants will reign, the knowledge Macbeth demanded and could not bear.
• Macbeth vows to act on his first impulses, and the attack on Macduff’s family shows thought turning instantly into cruelty.
• Scene 2 shows tenderness, wit and innocence destroyed, with the son stabbed in full view of the audience.
• Malcolm tests Macduff by pretending to be wicked, and Macduff’s despair at an unfit king proves his loyalty to Scotland.
• The healing English king and the list of king-becoming graces set true kingship against Macbeth’s tyranny.
• Macduff’s grief shows manhood as both fighting and feeling, and the act ends with an army ready and the hope of day.

Test yourself

What signals tell the witches that it is time to begin?

The brinded cat has mewed three times, the hedge-pig has whined, and Harpier cries that it is time.

Which apparition warns Macbeth about Macduff?

The first, an armed Head, tells him to beware Macduff, the Thane of Fife.

Why does Macbeth decide to kill Macduff after the second apparition’s promise?

He wants to make “assurance double sure”, so that he can tell fear it lies and sleep in spite of thunder.

What does the last of the eight kings carry?

A glass that shows many more kings; Banquo, his hair matted with blood, smiles and points at them as his own.

Who tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England?

Lennox, who says that two or three riders have brought the news.

What does the Messenger advise Lady Macduff to do?

He tells her not to be found there and to leave at once with her little ones.

Which three faults does Malcolm falsely claim?

Boundless lust, a greed that would make him seize nobles’ lands, and a lack of every king-becoming grace.

What help has England given to Malcolm’s cause?

The English king has lent him good Siward and ten thousand men; Malcolm says Christendom has no older or better soldier.