Macbeth Act 4 MCQs

Act 4 comprises three scenes, moving from Macbeth's final consultation with the witches, through the slaughter of Macduff's household, to Malcolm's test of Macduff at the English court.

Although Shakespeare gives no explicit stage direction, editorial tradition places this scene in a cavern, a dark subterranean setting fitting for the witches' supernatural rites.

The slaughter of Lady Macduff and her son takes place at Macduff's castle in Fife, following Macbeth's resolve to eliminate Macduff's entire household after learning of his flight.

The final scene of Act 4 is set at the English court before King Edward's palace, where Malcolm cautiously tests Macduff before Ross arrives with news of the killings at Fife.

The cauldron scene and the ambiguous prophecies delivered by the apparitions foreground equivocation, as Macbeth receives answers that are technically true yet dangerously misleading, reflecting the play's recurring concern with fate and free will.

The witches assemble a boiling cauldron filled with a grotesque combination of animal and human parts, one of the most iconic images of witchcraft in English literature.

This recurring refrain, delivered between sequences of ingredients, produces a chant-like effect appropriate to a ritual, distinguishing the witches' speech from the blank verse used by the human characters.

The cauldron's ingredients include grotesque animal parts such as eye of newt, toe of frog, and scale of dragon, but no floral ingredient such as a rose petal appears among them.

The sequence progresses from animal parts such as toad and snake to disturbing human parts such as the liver of a blaspheming Jew and the finger of a birth-strangled babe, concluding with baboon's blood as the final ingredient that seals the charm.

The witches state that cooling the mixture with baboon's blood renders the charm firm and good, marking it as the final and completing ingredient in the ritual.

The witches' chants are composed in trochaic tetrameter, a driving, sing-song rhythm that reinforces their otherworldly, ritualistic quality in contrast to the blank verse of the main characters.

Hecate enters, praises the witches' efforts, and directs them to sing and dance around the cauldron, a scene often attributed by scholars to a later interpolation rather than to Shakespeare's original text.

This line, spoken as Macbeth approaches, signals that even the witches sense a profound darkness in him, marking his complete transformation from noble warrior to tyrant.

Macbeth's insulting address shows that he no longer holds the witches in awe as he once did, yet his subsequent demand for answers reveals that he remains dependent on their supernatural knowledge.

By declaring he would accept widespread destruction so long as his questions are answered, Macbeth reveals the depth of his desperate need for reassurance about his own fate.

The first apparition appears as an armed head, warning Macbeth to beware Macduff, and is generally interpreted as symbolising either Macduff himself or Macbeth's own severed head.

The armed head explicitly warns Macbeth to beware Macduff, confirming a fear Macbeth admits he already held, though he does not act on the warning until much later.

Macbeth's remark acknowledges that the apparition has accurately named a fear he already harboured regarding Macduff, even before receiving supernatural confirmation.

The bloody child assures Macbeth that none of woman born shall harm him, a prophecy that Macbeth interprets as guaranteeing his invincibility.

Macduff later reveals that he was 'from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd,' meaning he was delivered by Caesarean section, technically fulfilling the loophole in the prophecy that ultimately destroys Macbeth's false confidence.

This apparition represents Malcolm, the rightful heir, whose soldiers will later cut branches from Birnam Wood to disguise their numbers as they advance on Macbeth's stronghold.

The apparition declares that Macbeth will remain unconquered until Birnam Wood advances against Dunsinane, a condition Macbeth dismisses as impossible but which is later fulfilled through camouflage rather than literal movement of the forest.

Macbeth takes the prophecy at face value, assuming a forest cannot physically move, and this overconfident literal interpretation contributes directly to his eventual downfall.

The mirror-bearing eighth king is widely interpreted as a topical compliment to King James I, who claimed descent from Banquo, reinforcing the association between Banquo's line and the theatre's royal audience.

Macbeth's despairing question conveys his horror that Banquo's descendants will apparently rule without end, confirming that his crimes have failed to secure the succession for his own line.

Lennox reports that Macduff has fled to England, prompting Macbeth's furious resolve to attack Macduff's castle and destroy his family in retaliation.

Macbeth vows to surprise Macduff's castle at Fife and put his wife, children, and all connected to his line to the sword, marking the point at which his tyranny becomes indiscriminately cruel toward the innocent.

This line signals that Macbeth now acts on impulse rather than calculated deliberation, contrasting with his earlier, more careful planning of Duncan's and Banquo's murders.

Lady Macduff is angry and confused by her husband's departure, questioning what wrong he committed to justify abandoning his family and calling his flight an act of madness.

Lady Macduff observes that even the wren, the smallest of birds, will fight to defend its young against the owl, implicitly criticising Macduff for failing to show the same protective instinct.

The owl, traditionally linked with night, death, and ill omen throughout the play, here represents the predatory threat posed by Macbeth to Lady Macduff and her children.

Ross's imagery of a violent, directionless sea captures the atmosphere of dread and uncertainty that has spread through Scotland under Macbeth's tyranny, where loyalty and treason have become difficult to distinguish.

The messenger urges Lady Macduff to flee at once, warning her that danger is imminent, though his warning arrives too late to prevent the murders that follow.

Macduff's young son is killed in full view of the audience, while Lady Macduff's death occurs offstage after she flees the murderers, a detail that intensifies the horror through suggestion rather than direct spectacle.

Before his death, Macduff's son converses wittily and courageously with his mother, making his subsequent murder by Macbeth's agents all the more shocking as an act of senseless cruelty.

Unlike the earlier, politically motivated killings of Duncan and Banquo, the slaughter of Macduff's wife and children extends Macbeth's violence into the domestic sphere, confirming the completeness of his moral collapse.

Lady Macduff's loving, undefended household stands in pointed contrast to the ambitious, childless partnership of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, highlighting through opposition the destructive consequences of unchecked ambition.

Having witnessed how his father Duncan was betrayed by a trusted nobleman, Malcolm proceeds cautiously with Macduff, testing his loyalty before committing to an alliance against Macbeth.

Macduff rejects Malcolm's suggestion of retreat into sorrow, urging instead that they take up arms to defend their fallen homeland, revealing his impatience for decisive action.

Malcolm first accuses himself of boundless lustful intemperance that would threaten the wives, daughters, and maidens of Scotland, testing whether Macduff will still support his claim to the throne.

Malcolm next claims to harbour a stanchless avarice that would lead him, as king, to seize the lands and possessions of his nobles, further testing Macduff's reaction.

Macduff's comparison suggests that while lust is a passing, 'summer-seeming' failing, avarice takes deeper root and poses a graver threat to just rule, showing his careful moral judgement even under duress.

Malcolm's extreme self-accusations are a deliberate strategy designed to gauge Macduff's honesty and loyalty, since a true patriot should reject rather than endorse a ruler entirely lacking in virtue.

Malcolm's catalogue of absent virtues includes justice, verity, temperance, mercy, and related qualities of character, but does not specifically list military strategy among the graces he claims to lack.

The English court, ruled by the pious King Edward, functions as a place of political refuge and potential military support for those opposing Macbeth's tyrannical rule in Scotland.

Ross's revelation to Macduff of the murder of his wife and children occurs in the third scene at the English court; the murder itself takes place in Scene 2, and the apparitions appear in Scene 1.

Malcolm's testing of Macduff occurs in the third scene at the English court, not in the second scene, which instead depicts the murder of Lady Macduff's household at Fife.

All three statements accurately describe the warnings delivered by the three apparitions, each of which Macbeth misinterprets as a guarantee of safety rather than as an equivocal condition later fulfilled against him.

The act proceeds from Macbeth's consultation with the witches and the apparitions' prophecies, to the murder of Macduff's family at Fife, followed by Malcolm's cautious testing of Macduff at the English court, culminating in Ross's revelation of the killings.

Act 4 traces Macbeth's descent into a false sense of invincibility gained through equivocal prophecies, his subsequent order for the massacre of Macduff's innocent family, and the corresponding strengthening of the alliance between Malcolm and Macduff that will ultimately oppose him.