The Usurper in Macbeth

The Usurper in Macbeth

In William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth there is an ambitious captain who takes the throne of Scotland by force. Let's examine his character in this paper.

Lily B. Campbell in her volume of criticism, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion, explores the workings of Macbeth's mind as he plots the destruction of Banquo and son :

If the witches have spoken as truly to Banquo as to him, Macbeth sees that he wears a "fruitless crown" and carries a "barren sceptre" in his hand; he has indeed given peace and immortality to make the race of Banquo kings. And he proceeds to his interview with the murderers, plotting what he dare not do openly, for the fear that comes when we are rivals for a thing and cannot both have it makes it seem to Macbeth:

That every minute of his being thrusts

Against my near'st of life;

and he will kill his fear by having Banquo and Fleance both put to death.(224)

In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack shows how Macbeth complements his wife:

Her fall is instantaneous, even eager, like Eve's in Paradise Lost; his is gradual and reluctant, like Adam's. She needs only her husband's letter about the weyard sisters' prophecy to precipitate her resolve to kill Duncan. Within an instant she is inviting murderous spirits to unsex her, fill her with cruelty, thicken her blood, convert her mother's milk to gall, and darken the world "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes" (1.5.50). Macbeth, in contrast, vacillates. The images of the deed that possess him simultaneously repel him (1.3.130, 1.7.1) When she proposes Duncan's murder, he temporizes: "We will speak further" (1.5.69). (189)

In his book, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, H. S. Wilson tells how the audience is inclined to identify with such a rogue as Macbeth:

That such a man should sacrifice all the wealth of his human spirit - his kindness, his love, his very soul - to become a victim to continual fears, a tyrant ruthlessly murdering in the vain attempt to feel safe, finally to be killed like a foul beast of prey - this is terrible, and pitiful, too. Shakespeare has here achieved for us most poignantly the ambivalence of the tragic effect Aristotle described. We