The Role of Fate in Macbeth

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In William Shakespeare's Macbeth the place of fate may not be clear and distinct in the mind of the reader. This essay hopes to clarify the notion of fate in the play.

L.C. Knights in the essay "Macbeth" explains the place of fate in the decline of Macbeth:

"One feels," says W.C. Curry, "that in proportion as the good in him diminishes, his liberty of free choice is determined more and more by evil inclination and that he cannot choose the better course. Hence we speak of destiny or fate, as if it were some external force or moral order, compelling him against his will to certain destruction." Most readers have felt that after the initial crime there is something compulsive in Macbeth's murders; and at the end, for all his "valiant fury," he is certainly not a free agent. He is like a bear tied to a stake, he says; but it is not only the besieging army that hems him in; he is imprisoned in the world he has made. (102)

In Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Northrop Frye stresses the connection between the witches and fate:

The successful ruler is a combination of nature and fortune, de jure and de facto power. He steers his course by the tiller of an immediate past and by the stars of an immediate future. [. . .] It is this synchronizing of nature and fortune that soothsayers study, and that the witches in Macbeth know something about. We call it fate, which over-simplifies it. (88-89)

In his book, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, H. S. Wilson explains the stand taken by Macbeth in his relationship with fate:

He pits himself no merely against the threat of hell but also against the enmity of "Fate" (as represented in the prophecies of the Weird Sisters):

come, Fate, into the list,

And champion me to th' utterance.

He brags to his wife:

But let the frame of tings disjoint, both the worlds suffer,

Ere we will eat our meal in fear [. . .]. (70-71)

In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack explains that the witches are associated with fate:

Except in one phrase (I.3.6) and in the stage directions, the play always refers to the witches as weyard - or weyward - sisters.

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