Examples Of Sympathy In Macbeth

Sympathy for the Devil

For Shakespeare’s Macbeth to work as a tragedy, Shakespeare had to maintain sympathy for a character whose actions become increasingly alike to “those of a butcher.”Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a famous play which takes place in Renaissance Scotland. In the play, Macbeth is a high-ranking, successful, Scottish general who is told by three witches that he will one day be the king of Scotland. At first, Macbeth does not regard the prophecies as the truth, but he begins to slowly lose his sanity, thus, Macbeth starts to believe in the prophecies, and more. Eventually, Macbeth’s deteriorating state of mind affects him severely as he begins seeing the “ghost” of Banquo, a man that he had killed, at the banquet. Lady Macbeth tries to play the whole thing off as though it

While the reader knows that Macbeth is mad, terrible, and everything in between, they still sympathize with Macbeth because he is still the protagonist and the readers want him to succeed in his goals no matter how twisted they are. Shakespeare also manages to take the heat off of Macbeth by making his enemies the more powerful ones because there are more of them. Not to mention the prophecy told by the witches about the trees moving. This almost gives an eerie feeling because we have no idea what the prophecy could mean, kind of like a secret weapon. Many readers tend to lose a large amount of sympathy for Macbeth after his wife dies since he has become so cold towards the end and basically saying “why did you have to die now?” to his wife’s corpse. Macbeth saying something so cruel to his wife, almost causes one to want Macbeth’s adversaries to win. Which is really perfect timing for Shakespeare since this is the perfect eye-opening scene to show readers how messed up Macbeth is and why said readers why Macbeth should be repulsive to them for his cruel, and insane tendencies, mixed with his complete and utter lack of