Macbeth
Prompt #23 · Macbeth
Prompt Type: Symbol/Motif
Clothing imagery recurs throughout Macbeth, with references to borrowed robes, ill-fitting garments, and disguised appearances. Analyze how Shakespeare uses this motif to develop the theme of appearance versus reality and the illegitimacy of Macbeth's power. 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 clothing metaphor directly captures the motif's central meaning: Macbeth's stolen title 'hangs loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief,' using the ill-fitting garment image to expose both the illegitimacy of his power and the gap between his appearance as king and the reality of his moral inadequacy.
Quote 2
“No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive / Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death, / And with his former title greet Macbeth.”
Act I, Scene 2
Argument
Early in the play, this quote introduces the clothing motif through the literal transfer of the Thane of Cawdor's title to Macbeth, establishing the pattern of 'borrowed robes' that will define his illegitimate ascent—he inherits a traitor's garment, foreshadowing his own treachery.
Quote 3
Act III, Scene 2
Argument
This metaphor of making 'our faces vizards to our hearts, / Disguising what they are' extends the clothing imagery to include masks and disguises, demonstrating how the motif evolves to represent the deliberate concealment required to maintain Macbeth's fraudulent appearance of legitimacy.
Quote 4
“There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face: / He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust.”
Act I, Scene 4
Argument
Duncan's observation that 'There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face' establishes the play's foundational concern with appearance versus reality, introducing the impossibility of reading true character beneath outward garments—a theme the clothing motif will repeatedly visualize through Macbeth's ill-fitting borrowed robes.
Quote 5
Act I, Scene 2
Argument
The ironic symmetry of 'What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won' reinforces the borrowed-robes pattern as Macbeth literally inherits the traitor's title, establishing early in the play how his power is always secondhand, transferred rather than earned, never truly his own garment to wear.