Macbeth: Supporting Characters

Banquo is a general who fights beside Macbeth and hears the same witches' prophecy, which makes him Macbeth's foil (a character whose contrasting qualities highlight the other's). The witches greet Banquo with a riddle: he will be "lesser than Macbeth, and greater", "not so happy, yet much happier", and will "get kings" though he "be none". His children, not Banquo himself, will inherit the throne.

Where Macbeth is seduced by the prophecy, Banquo treats it with suspicion. He warns that "instruments of darkness" often "tell us truths" only to "betray's in deepest consequence", showing an awareness of temptation that Macbeth lacks. Yet Banquo is not perfectly pure: he says nothing about his suspicions after Duncan's murder, and admits Macbeth "play'dst most foully" for the crown while still hoping his own sons will benefit.

Banquo shows the path Macbeth could have taken. His restraint makes Macbeth's choice to murder look like exactly that: a choice, not fate.

Because the witches promise Banquo a royal line, Macbeth sees him as a threat and has him murdered. Banquo's son Fleance escapes, keeping the prophecy alive and Macbeth's fear burning.

Banquo returns as a ghost at the banquet in Act 3, visible only to Macbeth. His silent, bloodied appearance ("never shake / Thy gory locks at me") shatters Macbeth's composure in front of his guests and exposes his guilt to the audience.

The ghost works on several levels for the exam:

Reading of the ghost	What it suggests
A real supernatural presence	The world of the play punishes murder; the dead return
A projection of Macbeth's conscience	Guilt is now uncontrollable and visible in his behaviour
A dramatic device	Shakespeare stages Macbeth's psychological collapse for the audience

King James I, who ruled when the play was written around 1606, was believed to descend from the historical Banquo. Shakespeare presents Banquo as noble and his line as royal partly to flatter the king, which is why the witches show Macbeth a line of eight kings stretching "to th' crack of doom". This is a strong AO3 (context) point: the presentation of a character can be shaped by who was watching.

Macduff is the nobleman who becomes Macbeth's nemesis. He is defined by loyalty to Scotland over personal safety. Suspicious of Macbeth from the start, he refuses to attend the coronation and flees to England to join Malcolm, choosing his country over his own household.

That choice has a terrible cost. Macbeth orders the slaughter of Macduff's "wife, his babes, / And all unfortunate souls". When Macduff hears, he responds with raw grief before turning it into resolve: "He has no children... I must also feel it as a man". Shakespeare uses this to present a model of masculinity opposite to Macbeth's: Macduff feels deeply and acts, rather than proving manhood only through violence.

Macduff's power in the final act comes from a piece of equivocation (misleading truth) in the witches' prophecy. Macbeth is told "none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth", but Macduff was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripped" (born by caesarean section). Because he was not delivered by natural birth, he fulfils the loophole and kills the tyrant, restoring the rightful line.

Macduff embodies AO1 ideas of justice and order and AO2 ideas of dramatic structure: the avenger the audience has been waiting for delivers the ending the play's moral world demands.

Duncan is the rightful King of Scotland and the standard against which every ruler in the play is measured. Shakespeare presents him as gracious, generous and trusting. He rewards loyalty ("More is thy due than more than all can pay"), and Macbeth himself admits Duncan "hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been / So clear in his great office" that his virtues will "plead like angels" against his murder.

That goodness is a deliberate choice. The more virtuous Duncan is, the more monstrous the crime of killing him becomes.

Detail	Effect on the audience
Duncan is old, meek and trusting	The murder feels like a betrayal of hospitality and duty
He calls Macbeth's castle "pleasant"	Dramatic irony: the audience knows he is walking into a trap
His blood is "golden" and his body a "temple"	Regicide is framed as sacrilege, a crime against God

To a Jacobean audience (the reign of James I), killing an anointed king broke the Divine Right of Kings, the belief that a monarch was chosen by God. Duncan's murder is therefore not just political but a wound to the natural and divine order, which the play shows through storms, darkness and unnatural events on the night he dies.

The three Witches, or "weird sisters", open the play and set its events in motion. "Weird" comes from the Old English wyrd, meaning fate, so their name links them directly to destiny. They speak in rhyming, chanting trochaic rhythm ("Double, double toil and trouble") that sets them apart from other characters and marks their language as unnatural.

Their key technique is equivocation: they tell partial truths designed to mislead. Every prophecy comes true, but never as Macbeth expects. "None of woman born" and "till Birnam Wood... come to Dunsinane" both sound like guarantees of safety and both destroy him.

A central exam debate is whether the witches control Macbeth or merely tempt him:

• They predict he will be king but never tell him to murder Duncan.
• Macbeth chooses to act; Banquo hears the same words and does not.
• Yet their timing and the "supernatural soliciting" clearly stir his ambition.

The safest exam line is that the witches raise the question of fate versus free will rather than settle it. Shakespeare leaves responsibility hovering between prophecy and choice.

For a Jacobean audience this was not fantasy. James I wrote a book on witchcraft (Daemonologie, 1597) and witch trials were real. The witches would have been genuinely frightening figures of evil, not comic ones.

Malcolm is Duncan's elder son and the rightful heir, named Prince of Cumberland early in the play, which Macbeth sees as a "step" he must "o'erleap". After his father's murder, Malcolm flees to England, a decision that looks like cowardice but is really survival and strategy.

In England, Shakespeare gives Malcolm a testing scene. He pretends to Macduff that he is full of vices ("black Macbeth" would seem "pure" beside him) to check whether Macduff loves Scotland or merely wants power. When Macduff despairs, Malcolm reveals his true, honourable self. This scene presents Malcolm as cautious, self-controlled and fit to rule, everything the tyrant Macbeth is not.

Malcolm leads the army that overthrows Macbeth and speaks the play's final lines, inviting the thanes to see him "crown'd at Scone" and promising to reward loyalty and repair the country. His restoration provides structural closure: the natural order broken by regicide is mended, and Macbeth's reign is framed as a temporary disruption. Minor figures such as Lennox and Ross track this shift, drifting away from Macbeth as his tyranny grows and lining up behind Malcolm at the end.

Examiners reward answers that treat every character as a deliberate authorial construction, not a real person. Avoid these common mistakes.

1. Describing the character instead of analysing Shakespeare's choices

Do not just retell what Banquo or Macduff does. Explain why Shakespeare presents them that way and the effect it creates. Phrase points as "Shakespeare presents Banquo as..." to keep the writer in view, which targets AO2.

2. Forgetting the foil relationship

Banquo, Macduff and Duncan all exist partly to reflect on Macbeth. The strongest answers link a supporting character back to the protagonist rather than analysing them in isolation.

3. Treating the witches as simply "evil" with no debate

State the fate-versus-free-will question. Noting that Banquo hears the same prophecy but does not murder is a quick, high-value point about Macbeth's responsibility.

4. Missing the context each character carries

Duncan connects to the Divine Right of Kings; Banquo connects to King James I; the witches connect to Jacobean fears of witchcraft. Weaving in one relevant contextual point per character targets AO3.

5. Using vague, unembedded quotations

"From his mother's womb untimely ripped" is far more useful embedded in a sentence about equivocation than dropped in on its own. Keep quotations short and analyse the specific word or technique.