Similarities Between Macbeth And The Crucible

Explore the downfall of the protagonist in Macbeth by William Shakespeare with comparative reference to The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

Macbeth and The Crucible both include protagonists whose fatal flaw causes their downfall.

Before the audience actually meets Macbeth, they have an idea of what he is like through the words of King Duncan, ‘brave Macbeth’/’worthy gentleman’/’noble Macbeth’ the adjectives describing Macbeth reflect that he is a respected man and spoken very highly of by a man in authority who presents him to the audience as a warrior. Equally in The crucible John Proctor is introduced in the stage directions as a positive man and ‘He was a kind man- powerful of body, even tempered and not easily led…’ The tricolon of adjectives

Lady Macbeth contributes to Macbeths downfall by accusing him of being a coward, ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man.’ She is questioning Macbeth’s manhood and commanding him that he is only a man if he follows through with her plot to kill the king. Also Lady Macbeth is power hungry and she forces this idea of kingship and power onto him. Similarly in The crucible John Proctor’s wife is the epitome of goodness but instead there is tension between him and his wife by having an affair with Abigail. This results in Goody Proctor being accused of being a witch by Abigail. ‘John Proctor is the Devil’s man’ When John attempts to expose Abigail, she skilfully manages to turn the whole thing around on him causing in him being hung for witchcraft. The proper noun ‘Devil’ connotes the seriousness of the horror of the devil as the contemporary audience were religious and feared the evilness of the

The metaphorical simple declarative, ‘I bear a charmed life’ in the Trevor Nunn stage play, Macbeth (Ian Mckellen) is holding a witches doll and says these words to MacDuff before he dies which infers that his life is protected by a spell and the witches' prediction that he can’t be killed by any ‘man of woman born.’ Macbeth dies disgracefully and with a realization the witches were equivocators. In the end of the crucible John Proctor dies with a pure heart, something he had been struggling with since his affair with Abigail, ‘I will cut off my hand before I reach for you again’ he uses bloody imagery in his figurative language to show that he regrets his affair and the impact it had on his religious beliefs and his family. Elizabeth recognises the good in her husband even though he can’t see it ‘he have his goodness now’ even though John Proctor is going to die, he wife knows that he is dying with integrity in his head intact which is presented in the abstract noun ‘goodness’ as he has confessed to everything and that was his