Macbeth is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare and published around 1605-1606. It’s made by five acts and it is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. The plot is simple, but complex from a psychological point of view.
Summary
Three Witches foretell Macbeth's rise to King of Scotland and that future kings will descend from Banquo. Pushed by his ambitious wife, he murders King Duncan, becomes king, and sends murderers to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. Despite his attempts to defy the prophecy, he fails; Macduff kills Macbeth, and Duncan's son Malcolm becomes king.
Main themes
Macbeth’s tragedy talks about ambition, power, deceit and murderer, some of the typical flaws of tragedies. The story shows the bloody rise to power of the warrior Macbeth and his tragic downfall. Ambition is the driving force of the tragedy because it moves every character. Moreover, this play explains that men’s conscious decisions to descend into evil and tyranny in the name of personal ambition can lead to massive disorder. In addition to that, good can triumph over evil because the madness of tyranny will eventually be its downfall.
Regicide
One of the principal themes is regicide: an act against nature, bringing about chaos, catastrophe and terrible weather conditions. The terms “blood”, “bloody”, “to bleed” are the most frequently used words in the play, repeated more than a hundred times. In Macbeth, at the beginning of the play, when King Duncan is still alive, there is harmony between microcosm and macrocosm. In Medieval times, the natural order of society consisted in the respect of some fixed rules. For example, the death of the lord represents the destruction of the entire society, that starts living in a complete disorder. This is the main theme of Edward ballad, where Edward’s father death ends up with the break-up of the entire society.
Fate and free will
Time is another main theme and it is related to the dichotomy between fate and free will. The three witches are also called “The Weird Sisters” – the world “weird” meaning “fate” or “destiny”. The fundamental question is whether the future is preordained or inevitable. Is it fixed or only the result of the individual activity? Macbeth became King because he killed Duncan, but what if he didn’t do that? Would still the prophecy be true? Would Macbeth become King one day? The prophecy was true because Macbeth realised it or it would happen independently from his actions? We will never find a solution to this question and this is the proof that Shakespeare always deals with universal themes.
During the Renaissance people preferred believing in free will (Quisque faber fortunae suae). This theme is associated with a chain of images concerned with growth: babies, seeds, plants, trees that the three witches introduce when they meet Macbeth for the second time.
Appearance and reality
In Macbeth, there are lots of contrasts between good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, health and sickness, castle and nature. The three witches say: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”. It represents the darkest, most dangerous aspect of “equivocation”. Shakespeare wants to analyse reality from all her aspects because nothing is just black or white, but there are a lot of shades of grey. The opposites collide, they mix and become part of each other. In this way, the author investigates reality and tries to understand how it works. He goes beyond what we can see, he goes deep inside. Shakespeare explores the difference between what is true and what only seems to be true: appearance and reality. An example is Lady Macbeth, who is a double agent and suggests her husband to “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t”.
Role of women
Macbeth is a timeless tragedy also because talks about the role of women in society and the fall of man. We can compare Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to Edward and his mother or Adam and Eve. In fact, in Edward ballad, the protagonist kills his father because his mother told him to do that. In Original Sin, Eve is responsible for man’s fall, because not only she was too weak to resist temptation, but she also caused the downfall of Adam. In Macbeth, Shakespeare cleverly portrays Lady Macbeth as an Eve who leads Macbeth into damnation.
Analysis of the main characters
Macbeth
Macbeth is the protagonist of the play. He is the “tragic hero” of the tragedy, because, after coming close to success and showing courage, he experiences destruction. At first, he is presented as a hero, but, blinded by ambition, becomes evil. He starts to have the mind of a criminal and experiences moral decay. In the beginning, Lady Macbeth pushes him to kill Duncan, and for this reason, his ambition is in conflict with the sense of right and wrong and with his loyalty to the king. But then, he becomes ambitious enough to make someone kill his own best friend and not only. Due to his evil actions, he lives with a big inner torment until he dies. No villain is standing against Macbeth. He is the villain of the tragedy which must expiate his guilt through death. He is the hero who starts the play as a brave, heroic character and ends up as a murderous tyrant as a result of his ambition and thirst for power.
The Weird Sisters
The Weird Sisters are part of the main characters of the play. The Three Witches represent evil, darkness, chaos, and conflict. During Shakespeare's days, witches were seen as worse than rebels, they were the most notorious traitor and rebel that can be. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to create confusion between reality and the supernatural and to question reality from a moral point of view, too. They are the representation of evil forces that live in human mind. Though the witches do not deliberately tell Macbeth to kill King Duncan, they use a form of temptation. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his destruction. Macbeth indulges the temptation, while Banquo rejects it.
Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is the powerful presence in the tragedy. She imposes her own will on her husband and controls his passions with great ability. Since she is a woman, she knows how to make her way between a world dominated by men. She's able to manipulate Macbeth and carry on her cruel plan. However, she begins a slow slide into madness. Her sleepwalking scene in the 5th act is a turning point in the play. Her inner strength can't handle her sense of guilt. By the end of the play, she has been reduced to sleepwalking, desperately trying to wash away an invisible spot of blood. Lady Macbeth pays her sins with madness and commits suicide. At the same time, she loses her power and respect because her death is not even considered important by Macbeth.
Extract: Act 1, Scene 5
Lady Macbeth receives a letter from her husband that explains what the three witches told him and that he became Thane of Cawdor. She first arrives on stage alone and proceeds to give a soliloquy. In an apostrophe to Macbeth regarding his foretold ascent to the crown, she declares “Yet do I fear thy nature, it is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.” This statement implies that Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to attain the crown immediately, and to seize it by unscrupulous means.
Then, she tells her husband: “Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valor of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round…” The image of Lady Macbeth pouring her spirits into Macbeth’s ear can be compared to the scene of the snake whispering in Eve’s ear. The word “tongue” emphasizes the image of a snake flicking its tongue into Macbeth’s ear. Besides, Shakespeare represents Lady Macbeth as both the snake and Eve.
When Lady Macbeth asks Macbeth when King Duncan will leave their castle, he replies “Tomorrow, as he purposes.” She assures him: “O, never shall sun that morrow see.” From this interchange, Macbeth did not plan to murder Duncan, at least not that very night. Instead, Lady Macbeth is the one who passionately insists upon it. She even requests Macbeth to “put this night’s great business into my dispatch,” accepting complete responsibility for the deed; and she entreats him to “look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” Using this simile, Shakespeare again alludes to the biblical snake. Although Lady Macbeth directs this advice to Macbeth, she ironically describes herself.
Lately, in Act 1, Scene 7, during Lady Macbeth’s manipulative speech, Macbeth responds with comparatively few words. Shakespeare’s decision to give Lady Macbeth more lines reinforces Lady Macbeth’s role as the instigator and Macbeth’s role as a passive participant. Her words overcome him and he finally succumbs to his wife and evil.
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