I really hope this helps.
Act V, scene i: Lady Mac's Train Sails
A Doctor of Physic and a Gentlewoman (maid, really) are discussing, in hushed tones, what has been going on at Castle Mac of late: turns out that Lady Mac has succumbed to guilt and is experiencing extreme somnambulism. She is walking at night, with a taper constantly at her side, reliving the horrors of her deepest imagination. As the doctor (actually, an alchemist or astrologist, most likely) demands information from the beleaguered maidservant, LM enters with her candle, and begins performing pantomimed ablutions while intoning the famous "Out, damned spot!" line. In short order, she confesses to knowledge of Duncan's murder ("Who would've thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"), the massacre at Fife Castle ("The Thane of Fife had a wife/Where is she now?") and the death of Banquo ("Banquo cannot come out of's grave") to the horror of her witnesses. Clearly out of her mind, she relives the knocking at the gate, and the interpolation between her and her spouse is made wretchedly clear--this scene is a neat reversal of Act II, scene ii in which Macbeth laments the soiling of his hands, and she coldly tells him to go wash up. The doctor orders the maid to follow her and "remove her from all means of annoyance," which we instinctively know is foreshadowing for the annoyance that LM will discover to end her own life.
This scene is often played dramatically by actors, but I've always read it sorrowfully. "To bed, to bed, to bed. . ." she intones, and off she goes--alone.
Act V, scene ii: Marching Off to War.
A consortium of English and Scottish soldiers march on, and we find out that Donalbain is still hanging out in Ireland, presumably opening up a bed-and-breakfast with the likes of Fleance (I am kidding, so please don't write that in a focus paper) and that many of the ten thousand soldiers are like eleven years old or so. The thanes discuss Macbeth, and reveal that he is so mad with power that no one loves him anymore and everyone thinks he dresses funny. Or something to that effect.
Act V, scene iii: Inside Forres, with the hilariously named Seyton.
Every adaptation I've seen, save the Orson Welles production, pronounces this character's name as "Satan," which is apt considering the company Macbeth is now keeping. The only people working for him are mercenaries or low-level employees too cowed by his rage to fight against him.
This scene, although largely expository, reveals a tremendous fragility within our titular anti-hero. After he wantonly abuses a servant, calling the boy a "cream-faced loon" and "whey-face" and (my favorite) "lily-livered boy," he discovers that Malcolm is on the move with 10,000 soldiers. He asks the doctor "how does your patient" and then launches into a fairly accurate description of psychoanalysis, years before Freud. The doctor replies that the patient has to want to get better, and we know (again) that LM is doomed. Macbeth realizes that everything is a wreck--his thanes are abandoning him, his wife is a lunatic, his kingdom a crumbling pile of poo that resembles Pride Rock after Scar let the hyenas come play.
He asks the doctor to "cast the water of his land" to find out its infirmity, utterly failing to recognize--or in deep denial about--that he is the disease, and he is about to be inoculated right out of existence by the Anglo-Scottish forces.
Then, he claims he's ready to fight, having doffed and donned and doffed and donned his armor several times. But in the castle he remains, fortified, insane, and alone.
Act V, scene iv: Outside near Birnam Wood: Holy Crap!
In this brief but mighty scene, Malcolm proves his stones as he leads the English army with Siward's able assistance. He orders the men to "hew down a bough" from Birnam Wood to disguise their numbers. This totally reminds me of the Battle of Helms Deep when the Orcs shuffle towards the gate hiding under shields. Of course, Macbeth, standing atop the turret of Castle Forres, would look down and it would seem that the woods are moving. The witches weren't lying; they were lying "like truth" amid the "equivocation of the fiend." Malcolm is a clever lad--perhaps clever enough to rule Scotland.
Act V, scene v: The Best Scene Ever in Any Play Ever (IMHO)
Macbeth taunts the enemy, threatens empty walls with his bravado, until he hears the cry of women from within. He sends Seyton out to discover the source of the noise, and while his loyal (?) servant is gone on the mission, he laments that years ago, he would have had his hair stand on end to hear such a cry, and now, nothing. He has "supp'd full of horrors" and nothing can frighten him now; he is no longer human.
Seyton returns and says, "The Queen, my lord, is dead."
Macbeth responds with the most blindingly awesome speech in all of speechitudinousness, in which he semi-mourns the death of his wife and truly mourns his own, all while engaging in the Ultimate Existential Declaration. Check it out for yourself:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Yes, you've heard this before, and seen it in this blogspace before, too, but now let's analyze it. The first line has always upset me, but I think there is more than one way to interpret it. "Ah, she would have died anyway" is pretty cold, but perhaps he meant, "Her death was inevitable." And then he goes on to say that no matter what we do, we are going to die--and then he goes in for the kill, so to speak, with the analogy of life as a bad actor on a bad stage (not to mention with a bad script--in this case, written by Macbeth for himself, with the help of the women in his life.) Life is full of rage and discordance, and then it's over, and it meant nothing. Sartre himself could not have evoked a more compelling sense of existential woe.
A messenger rushes in to tell Macbeth that within three miles he sees a moving grove; once more, Macbeth threatens the poor man with death, but then says he deserves the same. Now he feels the witches snare draw tighter around his neck and he finally leaves his fortified castle to descend to the battlefield. Only one prophecy remains to protect him--if it will.
Act V, scene vi: Just outside the castle walls.
Malcolm tells the soldiers to throw down their branches and fight. They do.
Act V, scene vii: On the battlefield, once more.
After establishing a strong bear-baiting analogy, Macbeth is confronted by the fourteen-year-old-ish Young Siward, who is eager to make his mark as a soldier. Macbeth, far older and stronger, has no need to kill the lad, except that he's a psychopath who does stuff like that for fun. Not only does he kill the boy, but then he taunts the corpse: "Thou wast of woman born! Booyah!" and goes scampering off. Just as he leaps offstage, MacDuff hurries on, looking for him, and declaring in true heroic fashion, that he only wants to kill Macbeth and not any of the mercenaries. "They're just working for a living," he reasonably asserts, and he dashes through the writhing crowd in search of the one man who destroyed his family and now must pay--blood will have blood.
Malcolm and the English forces take the castle. It's over, except for the revengy-ness.
Act V, scene viii (in some editions, vii continues): Death Comes to the Tyrant
There is a lot of long-haired, plaid-kilted, running-about behavior, until MacDuff gets the butt-kickingly cool line of "Turn, hell-hound, turn!" The mano y mano conflict hits its zenith when Macbeth gets all taunty and declares that he leads a charmed life that will not yield to one of woman born. MacDuff, grinning genuinely for the first time in probably forever, says, "Despair thy charm. . .MacDuff was from his mother/Untimely ripp'd." Which is a really gross way of saying that he wasn't born, per se, but was yanked, and not of woman, per se, but of dead woman. Women did not survive C-sections in those days, nor for long afterwards. This is what we call a neat technicality, and one Shakespeare would not have seen as a cheap trick. The audience is supposed to gasp in shock and awe at such a thing. And it does make for pretty good drama, no lie.
Macbeth can't yield, though: bullies never can. He has to go out fighting, so on they fight, with MacDuff suggesting evilly that Macbeth surrender and become "th' gaze and show of the time"--in other words, a freakish sideshow. Not for our messed-up King, oh noes. They go offstage, fighting. They come back onstage, still fighting, and Macbeth is slain in full view of the audience--because the audience, or at least Shakespeare's audience, needed that visceral satisfaction. Then MacDuff drags the body off, and the others gather to establish new Scottish rule.
Ross tells Siward that his son has died, and, puzzlingly, Siward is cool with it, so long as the kid "had his hurts before." If Young Siward did not run from his oppressor, but stood up to fight, then Siward is proud of him. Never mind that this is not Father of the Year behavior; it does reveal the impact militaristic codes had on some of these families. MacDuff comes back in with Macbeth's head ("Look what I almost stepped in!") and shows everyone, to great applause. Malcolm, now the highest-ranking individual on stage, has the final speech, as is the tradition in all of Shakespeare's plays, and he promises to replant all that had been torn up, resod the Garden of Scotland, and transform it from a rough, tribal country with Thanes to a rocking good subdivision of England complete with earls. And there was much rejoicing.
::whew::
