Betrayal in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar

"Et tu – Brute?" “Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard,Some do it with a bitter look,Some with a flattering word,The coward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword,” by Oscar Wilde. In the tragedies of Shakespeare we encounter betrayal upon his plays and how it leads to catastrophic consequences. In this case Macbeth, hamlet and Julius Caesar are no exceptions. In the Shakespearean tragedies Macbeth Hamlet, and Julius Caesar betrayal will lead to the downfall of a tragic hero.

To illustrate, macbeth makes some drastic decisions that jeopardizes the whole play. At the start of the play he is a loyal and a honorable man. This character of his leads victory to the battle against the norwegians and scotland triumphs from his bravery. He is praised from his act of duty and is shown when the kings asks how the battle was won the captain reports to him , “For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name-/Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, /Which smoked with bloody execution.”(I.ii.16-18). Therefore without his loyalty and braveness to his country he would of lost the battle against the norwegians. Ross the scottish nobleman agrees

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold.

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The Thane Cawdor; began a dismal conflict

Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof, Confronted him with self-comparisons

Point against pint, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm

Curbing his lavish spirit and to conclude,

The victory fell on us. (I.iii.49-58)

Moving on, Hamlet is a whole different world from macbeth. Hamlet is feeling a little under the weather. From the start of the play his father had recently died and apparently his mother marries jus...

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...The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,

…

That which cries, “Thus thou must do,” if thou have it,

And that which rather thou dost fear to do,

Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear.(I.v.)

now from this lady macbeth will give more possibilities for macbeth to become king and betray the fellow king he serves too. He tests him as a man when she says “What beast was ’t, then/That made you break this enterprise to me?/When you durst do it, then you were a man/And to be more than what you were/ you would Be so much more the man.(I.vii.49-51)

hamlet in the other hand sees betrayal from all his surroundings.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. "The Death and Life of Julius Caesar." www.shakespeare.mit.edu. N.P., n.d. Web. 22 Feb 2016. ;.