Characters
- Macbeth - Main Character of the play
If a brave person overcomes fear and a coward gives in to it, what is Macbeth, who fears nothing but fear itself? At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is described as a brave man, but his wife manipulates him by accusing him of being a coward, and throughout the play he denies his own fears.
- Lady Macbeth – Macbeth’s wife
- Macduff - a Scottish nobleman
- Three witches They make plans to find Macbeth upon the heath, and exit chanting "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air" (1.1.11-12). When Macbeth enters, they call forth apparitions from the cauldron, and the apparitions deliver prophecies to Maceth.
- Hecate
- Banquo – generals of the King’s army
In a sense, Banquo‘s character stands as a rebuke to Macbeth, since he represents the path Macbeth chose not to take: a path in which ambition need not lead to betrayal and murder. Appropriately, then, it is Banquo’s ghost—and not Duncan’s—that haunts Macbeth. In addition to embodying Macbeth’s guilt for killing Banquo, the ghost also reminds Macbeth that he did not emulate Banquo’s reaction to the witches’ prophecy.
- Duncan - King of Scotland
- Malcolm – son of Duncan
- Donalbain – younger son of Duncan
- Ross - a Scottish nobleman
- Lennox - a Scottish nobleman