Macbeth
Prompt #21 · Macbeth
Prompt Type: Symbol/Motif
The crown represents both the object of Macbeth's ambition and the burden of illegitimate power throughout the play. Analyze how Shakespeare uses the crown as a symbol to explore the difference between rightful authority and tyrannical rule. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands; / Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach; / Those he commands move only in command, / Nothing in love: now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.”
Act V, Scene 2
Argument
This quote directly mentions the crown as 'title' that 'Hang[s] loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief,' using simile to demonstrate how illegitimate power fails to fit Macbeth—the crown becomes a burden that exposes rather than legitimizes his tyrannical rule.
Quote 2
“Upon my head they plac’d a fruitless crown, / And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, / Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal hand, / No son of mine succeeding.”
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This quote explicitly references the crown as 'fruitless' and the scepter as 'barren,' using metaphor to reveal how Macbeth's illegitimate seizure of power transforms the symbol of authority into a hollow, sterile object that brings no dynastic security or rightful succession.
Quote 3
Act V, Scene 8
Argument
This quote directly contrasts the 'usurper's cursed head' with Malcolm's rightful kingship ('Hail, King'), demonstrating how the crown's meaning shifts from the burden of tyranny under Macbeth to the restoration of legitimate authority when rightful succession is restored.
Quote 4
“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty!”
Act I, Scene 5
Argument
This quote directly mentions the crown ('from the crown to the toe') in Lady Macbeth's invocation of dark spirits, revealing how the symbol of royal authority becomes associated with 'direst cruelty' even before Macbeth seizes it—foreshadowing how illegitimate ambition corrupts the crown's meaning from rightful sovereignty to tyrannical violence.
Quote 5
Act III, Scene 1
Argument
This quote explicitly references the crown ('To be thus') and reveals Macbeth's recognition that merely possessing the symbol is meaningless ('is nothing') without the security of rightful authority ('But to be safely thus'), demonstrating how illegitimate power transforms the crown from a symbol of stable rule into a source of perpetual anxiety and insecurity.