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Macbeth

Literary Character
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Tragic Shakespearean protagonist, a Scottish noble whose unchecked ambition—spurred by prophecy and his wife—leads to regicide and ruin.

Detailed Definition
Macbeth, spurred by prophecy and his wife, murders King Duncan to seize the throne, descending into paranoia and violence. In poetry, he symbolizes unchecked ambition, the corrupting nature of power, and the psychological toll of guilt.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Shakespeare’s "Macbeth," Macbeth’s soliloquies explore ambition, guilt, and nihilism; In W.H. Auden’s “The Sea and the Mirror,” Macbeth embodies corrupted power; In T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Macbeth’s “tomorrow” speech echoes modern despair; In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” Macbeth’s violence mirrors domestic tyranny; In modern political poetry, Macbeth often signifies authoritarian rise and fall; In Tracy K. Smith’s “Watershed,” Macbeth’s blood imagery informs systemic guilt.
Additional Notes
Macbeth, Shakespeare’s tragic usurper, embodies ambition, guilt, and the corrosive nature of power; poets reference his hallucinations (“dagger of the mind”), nihilistic soliloquies (“tomorrow, and tomorrow”), and the witches’ equivocations to explore fate, agency, and moral disintegration—his story warns of the self-consuming nature of tyranny.
Also Known As
Thane of Cawdor Scottish Tyrant Murderer of Kings
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