Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Themes in Macbeth

• Fortune and Fate

The Fall of Man • The ancient Greek notion of tragedy concerned the fall of a great

man, such as a king, from a position of superiority to a position of humility on account of his ambitious pride, or hubris. To the Greeks, such arrogance in human behaviour was punishable by terrible vengeance. The tragic hero was to be pitied in his fallen plight but not necessarily forgiven: Greek tragedy frequently has a bleak outcome. Christian drama, on the other hand, always offers a ray of hope; hence, Macbeth ends with the coronation of Malcolm, a new leader who exhibits all the correct virtues for a king.

• Macbeth exhibits elements that reflect the greatest Christian tragedy of all: the Fall of Man. In the Genesis story, it is the weakness of Adam, persuaded by his wife (who has in turn been seduced by the devil) which leads him to the proud assumption that he can "play God." But both stories offer room for hope: Christ will come to save mankind precisely because mankind has made the wrong choice through his own free will. In Christian terms, although Macbeth has acted tyrannically, criminally, and sinfully, he is not entirely beyond redemption in heaven.

Fortune, Fate, and Free Will • Fortune is another word for chance. The ancient view of human

affairs frequently referred to the "Wheel of Fortune," according to which human life was something of a lottery. One could rise to the top of the wheel and enjoy the benefits of superiority, but only for a while. With an unpredictable swing up or down, one could equally easily crash to the base of the wheel.

• Fate, on the other hand, is fixed. In a fatalistic universe, the length and outcome of one's life (destiny) is predetermined by external forces. In Macbeth, the Witches represent this influence. The play makes an important distinction: Fate may dictate what will be, but how that destiny comes about is a matter of chance (and, in a Christian world such as Macbeth's) of man's own choice or free will.

• Although Macbeth is told he will become king, he is not told how to achieve the position of king: that much is up to him. We cannot blame him for becoming king (it is his Destiny), but we can blame him for the way in which he chooses to get there (by his own free will).

Kingship and Natural Order • Macbeth is set in a society in which the notion of honour to one's

word and loyalty to one's superiors is absolute. At the top of this hierarchy is the king, God's representative on Earth. Other relationships also depend on loyalty: comradeship in warfare, hospitality of host towards guest, and the loyalty between husband and wife. In this play, all these basic societal relationships are perverted or broken. Lady Macbeth's domination over her husband, Macbeth's treacherous act of regicide, and his destruction of comradely and family bonds, all go against the natural order of things.

• The medieval and renaissance view of the world saw a relationship between order on earth, the so-called microcosm, and order on the larger scale of the universe, or macrocosm. Thus, when Lennox and the Old Man talk of the terrifying alteration in the natural order of the universe — tempests, earthquakes, darkness at noon, and so on — these are all reflections of the breakage of the natural order that Macbeth has brought about in his own microcosmic world.

Disruption of Nature • Violent disruptions in nature — tempests, earthquakes,

darkness at noon, and so on — parallel the unnatural and disruptive death of the monarch Duncan.

• The medieval and renaissance view of the world saw a relationship between order on earth, the so-called microcosm, and order on the larger scale of the universe, or macrocosm. Thus, when Lennox and the Old Man talk of the terrifying alteration in the natural order of the universe (nature), these are all reflections of the breakage of the natural order that Macbeth has brought about in his own microcosmic world (society).

• Many critics see the parallel between Duncan's death and disorder in nature as an affirmation of the divine right theory of kingship. As we witness in the play, Macbeth's murder of Duncan and his continued tyranny extends the disorder of the entire country.

Reason Versus Passion • During their debates over which course of action to take,

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth use different persuasive strategies. Their differences can easily be seen as part of a thematic study of gender roles. However, in truth, the difference in ways Macbeth and Lady Macbeth rationalize their actions is essential to understanding the subtle nuances of the play as a whole.

• Macbeth is very rational, contemplating the consequences and implications of his actions. He recognizes the political, ethical, and religious reason why he should not commit regicide. In addition to jeopardizing his afterlife, Macbeth notes that regicide is a violation of Duncan's "double trust" that stems from Macbeth's bonds as a kinsman and as a subject.

• On the other hand, Lady Macbeth has a more passionate way of examining the pros and cons of killing Duncan. She is motivated by her feelings and uses emotional arguments to persuade her husband to commit the evil act.

Imagery in Macbeth

Light and Dark

• The simplest imagery connate with the binary opposition of good v. evil.

• The very first reference is in the opening scene; the witches are meeting Macbeth ‘ere the set of sun’, i.e. a time of day when ‘good things of day begin to droop and drowse, while Night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.’

Stars

• In Romeo and Juliet, the stars are linked to Fate. In the Merchant of Venice the stars are neutral looking down ‘on a naughty world’, whereas in Macbeth they are much more benign; ‘but signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine on all deservers,’ Macbeth’s response to Malcolm being named heir to the throne is ‘Stars hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.’

• In the opening of Act II, Banquo is feeling restless and observes that ‘There’s husbandry in heaven; their candles are all out.’ He also notes that the Moon is down, important because moonlight is reflected sunlight.

Night• When Lady Macbeth hears of Duncan’s arrival, she

invokes the Night: ‘Come, thick Night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry ‘Hold, Hold’.

• When Macbeth invokes the Night prior to Banquo’s murder, the words are strangely familiar: ‘Come sealing Night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful Day, and with thy bloody and invisible hand, cancel and tear to pieces that great bond…’

• And the strange passage: ‘by th’clock ‘tis day, and yet night strangles the travelling lamp.’

Sight

• Sightless couriers are the winds, but the murthering ministers are invisible. Macbeth is afraid to look upon what he has done which Macduff says will destroy one’s sight, while the sight of Banquo’s ghost ‘would appal the devil.’ While Lady Macbeth says ‘the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures,’ like Macbeth’s fear.

Hell

• Lady Macbeth says ‘Hell is murky’ and is so afraid of the dark that she keep a candle by her.

Blood

• The word blood occurs more times in Macbeth than in any other play. It is both a symbol for life and a metaphor for death.

• Duncan’s first words ‘What bloody man is that’ in many respects sets a complex of ideas to run through the play’s ‘bloody business’: conflict; murder; guilt etc.

• Lady Macbeth’s ‘dammed spot’ is in fact her witch mark as well as the mark of her guilt.

Blood continued…

At the beginning of the Banquet scene, the murdererappears with Banquo’s blood on his face. When Macbeth names Banquo, the ghost appears, and reappears whenhis name is repeated.Blood will have blood refers to vengeance. (Cain/Abel)

James 1’st Daemonologie reports the belief that in the case of a secret murder the body will exhume blood in thepresence of the murderer (cp. Richard III)

Macbeth admits that he ‘is stepped so far in blood, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious..’The second apparition tells Macbeth to be ‘bloody, bold, and resolute.’Scotland is both ‘diseased’ and ‘bleeds’ under Macbeth’s rule

Gothic links

• Is it the ‘blood on Macbeth’s hands that makes his rule diseased, untrammelling the consequences.

• Lady Macbeth wants her blood to become ‘thick’ – it was believed at the time that woman’s blood was ‘thin’ compared to a man’s.

Number• Doubling – ‘the indefinite binarie’ – the

undoing of unity and limit,; the production of error, confusion, duplicity, darkness, devilry; aural link between double and doubt.

• The ‘two truths’ undo his ‘single state of man.’• Pairings: the hand - knife, the eye - hand• Doubleness is in equivocation, antithesis,

contradiction as well as duplicity.• Macbeth wants ‘more’, dislikes ‘enough’• The use of three (parodying the Trinity), and

its multiples – the witches, three murderers

Clothing

• The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me in borrowed robes?

• New honours come upon him, like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould but with the aid of use.

• I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people which would be won now in their newest gloss.

• Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?• Lest our old robes sit easier than the new.• He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause within the

belt of rule.• Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like

a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.

Time• The natural scheme would be to know the

present and not the future, Lady Macbeth’s reverses this when reading the letter – the witches’ prophecies are for the future – twice.

• Time gets so squeezed that it becomes a syllable. Macbeth’s thoughts about consequences (the future) is replaced of acting without thought (of the consequences); if time is compressed there can be no creation (or procreation) and hence no children. Macbeth tells Malcolm ‘the fountain of your blood is stopped.’ while Lady Macbeth has asked that ‘compunctious visitations of nature’ cease.

‘Each man may be master of his own time’

• But not his liberty, and hence not free of time, or significantly, time for choice.

• Macbeth’s actions are increasingly, as it were, automatic: a) I have lived long enough –

• b) tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow –

• c) I’gin be weary of the sun.• At the end, time and measure is re-

established.

Summing up• Shakespeare was very modern in his thinking.

He didn’t believe that our fates were marked out or that supernatural forces controlled us.

• In the end Macbeth realises that he is master of his own fate and his life, his time, is his own.

• The light (the good) and the dark (evil) lies within us all we make of our lives what we will.

• Macbeth is destroyed by his and his wife’s ambition and is consumed and destroyed by the darkness that selfish all-consuming emotion brings them.

• The witches merely give him an excuse to wreak bloody chaos in pursuit of his ambition and in doing so he looses everything.

The essay

QuestionWhat do you think the play Macbeth is really about?Discuss the themes of the play and show, by referring closely to the play, how Shakespeare puts his themes across.

The plan

Paragraph 1 Introduction• In ‘Macbeth’ by William Shakespeare the

writer tries to deal with the themes of…Paragraph 2• Brief summary and introductory pointThe play tells the story of a soldier

named……and so the idea of fate and chance is

dealt with in this play.

Plan continued

• Paragraph 3• Shakespeare is also commenting on

how bad people can be and how we are sinful by nature. A major theme is ‘The Fall of Man’. This is shown in the play by …

We are capable of being bad

• The Fall of Man is a way of talking about the way all of us are capable of being really bad, “fallen” as well as being capable of being good. We all have bad within us.

• In this play Shakespeare shows us that Mabeth starts out to be a great guy good and loyal and Banquo’s best pal but ends up evil and murderous because he is led astray by the evil witches. The repetition of “foul and Fair” at the beginning of the play gives us a hint that the playwright is going to look at this idea in his play.

Paragraph 4 ‘Fate’

• The play also looks at the idea that we are all subject to random unlucky things and we are all as likely to tricked into something as Macbeth is. Macbeth is unlucky or is tricked when …

Fate• The play is tragic in two ways; first because

Macbeth lets his ambition become so important to him that he starts killing people , even his best friend to get what he wants.

• Secondly because if things had happened differently Macbeth would have been a different man. If he hadn’t met the witches he would have been a national hero and lived a charmed life. If he hadn’t killed Banquo he might have stayed sane and become a great King. We could describe that as fate taking a hand and twisting Macbeths life to turn him into the evil tyrant he becomes.

Paragraph 5 Imagery

• Shakespeare makes his themes and the play really powerful through his effective use of imagery. Images like …

Paragraph 6 The characters

• The characters of Macbeth and his evil wife are memorable and work really well because …

Conclusion

• In conclusion the play is really about …

… and it is effective because

Shakespeare uses …

… the put his ideas across.