In Macbeth, Shakespeare portrays many themes; themes that revolve around idealistic views of power, desire, and climbing the social ladder. However, Shakespeare does not display these themes in Macbeth alone. For that reason, it would puncture the story to ignore the author and his other works. Shakespeare’s plays tell stories, not of Macbeth or Hamlet, but stories about ourselves. Macbeth’s thoughts and reactions do not stray far from the regular human psyche, symbolically connecting the reader and Macbeth. His ambition, greed, and “black and deep desires” (I. iv. 58) relate within us as well as him; including the guilt and pain he suffers from in consequence. A developed theme for Macbeth argues that power ensures ruin to whoever dare enter
During the scene of Duncan’s murder, Shakespeare epitomizes the contradiction between a “valiant” (I. ii. 26) war hero’s personality and Macbeth’s personality. So Macbeth hides behind a shield then, one that makes him seemingly ambitious and honorable while he does not actually have these traits. In most cases, his actions derive from outward motivation. The Witches and Lady Macbeth both offer inspiration to act; and while the Witches do so subtly and efficiently, Lady Macbeth tends to motivate by insulting or humiliating him, indicating again at incompetence not only in ambition, but in his
He instead claimed, by the throne, multiple attributes such as his confidence as King. However, he does not use it to better the lives of the people, but to ensure his reign last as long as possible. But, to reiterate, just because one withholds power, does not mean he or she will end like Macbeth. The difference between possessing power and abusing it does not splice by a fine line, but more of a great wall, and Macbeth stands on the wrong side. Today, Macbeth would claim the name of a serial killer, responsible for murdering an admirable king and a close friend (and an attempted murder of the friend’s son), along with an innocent mother and her child. He also abandons his wife in a time of dire need, resulting in her suicide. He does so with the assurance that a man should do whatever it takes to protect his name, to sustain his kingship, and to evade the inevitable. Also, through Shakespeare’s philosophy, “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (I. i. 12), Macbeth justifies his actions. However, this theme does not aim only to Macbeth, but rather, to the common man. Man tends to inhibit the desire to do what will best befit him: a modern version of “Fair is foul and foul is fair”. The general rule of life says to be unfair, for life is unfair; devised from Shakespeare, there remains no innocence in man putting themselves before others; but before doing so, ensuring that every person knows this.
In the play of “Macbeth”, Shakespeare gradually and effectively deepens our understanding of the themes and most importantly the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The main theme of Macbeth is ambition, and how it compels the main characters to pursue it. The antagonists of the play are the three witches, who symbolise the theme appearance and reality. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relation is an irony throughout the play, as most of their relation is based on greed and power. This is different from most of Shakespeare’s other plays, which are mostly based on romance and trust. There is also guilt that leads Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to the final consequences of the play. As the progresses, the constant changes in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are exposed.
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy in which the main characters are obsessed by the desire for power. Macbeth’s aspiration for power blinds him to the ethical implications of his dreadful acts. The more that Shakespeare’s Macbeth represses his murderous feelings, the more he is haunted by them. By analyzing his hallucinations it is possible to trace his deteriorating mental state and the trajectory of his ultimate fall. Throughout the play Macbeth is never satisfied with himself. He feels the need to keep committing crime in order to keep what he wants most: his kingship. The harder Macbeth tries to change his fate the more he tends to run into his fate. His ambition and struggle for power was Macbeth’s tragic flaw in the play. Macbeth’s rise to the throne was brought about by the same external forces that ensure his downfall.
In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is described as being “valiant”. He is a skilled warrior, who is loyal to his king and his country. Almost single-handedly, he wins the war for Scotland. He defeats many of the enemy soldiers, including a traitor, all in the name of his king. But, when three witches encounter Macbeth and his friend Banquo, Macbeth’s ambition begins to grow. They tell Macbeth that he will be Thane of Cawdor and King. Soon after, Macbeth meets with King Duncan. He informs Macbeth that he is the new Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth is astonished, and from then on he is obsessed with being king. His ambition begins to become ruthless when Duncan proclaims that his son Malcolm is the Prince of Cumberland, and therefore, the heir to the throne: “The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step/On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, /For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;/Let not light see my black and deep desires:/The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be/Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” (I,iv,48-53) At this moment, Macbeth, realizing that they stand in the way of the witches’ prophecies, decides that both Duncan and Malcolm need to die for him to be king. As soon as Macbeth kills Duncan, he enters into a world of evil. Later in the play, Macbeth’s ambition becomes increasingly ruthless. He kills his best friend Banquo, and almost kills Banquo’s son, Fleance, because he believes they would stand in the way of his reign. The witches told Banquo “Thou shall get kings, though thou be none.” (I,iii,67) This means that Banquo himself would not be a king, but that his successors would be. Macbeth tries to prevent this by killing Banquo and his son Fleance.
Before the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth was a brave, noble warrior. “For brave Macbeth well he deserves that name… Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chop and fixed his head upon our battlements” (Act I, Scene 2, lines 2). He was one of the last people anyone would expect to kill King Duncan. Shakespeare chooses a noble character such as Macbeth, to emphasize how greed and power can alter a person’s good morals. In Act one we start to see Macbeth’s desire for more power rise. “Stars, hide your fires; Let no light see my black and deep desires. The eye wink at the hond yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done to see” (Act I, Scene 4, lines 52- 55). His desire for power is at war with his good morals. He wants to become king but does not want to kill Duncan.
William Shakespeare's play Macbeth is a five-act drama that shows a clear example of how pride, greed, and power can alter a man's actions and personality. The taste of power blinds the story's main character, Macbeth. Sparked by Lady Macbeth, he becomes heartless and cruel as he kills anyone who is a threat to his power due to his paranoia of losing the throne. This fear ironically leads to his downfall and loss of the throne. The theme of the story is deceit and evil and how they affect a man's decisions. Critics pose interesting views concerning the identity and significance of the mysterious third murderer.
Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is one of the most influential dramas of the 16th century. Macbeth is about a Scottish guard, Macbeth, who rose to kingship after hearing a prophecy by three witches. Macbeth was centered on King Macbeth of Scotland (reigned 1040-1057), although King Macbeth was the structure of Shakespeare’s drama, Shakespeare wrote in his own situations to deepen the storyline and make a better plot. Overcome with ambition, Macbeth kills the king, Duncan, and his best friend, Banquo, and anyone else who threatens or stands in the way of him becoming king. Fate is another major theme in the drama, considering Macbeth is influenced to crave the king’s position, even more than he already did, by the Weird Sisters revealing
Perhaps the most fundamental theme of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is the inherent corruptibility of even a seemingly good man when ambition turns to greed, and Macbeth himself exemplifies this concept throughout the play. While at the outset he is seen to be loyal to his king, generally considered trustworthy, and displaying numerous other laudable qualities, Macbeth ultimately succumbs to the influence of those around him and becomes unequivocally evil, setting aside all his previously held morals and coming to be driven only by his lust for power. This transition is brought about by a wide variety of factors and plays an integral role in the development of the plot. In his tragedy Macbeth, William Shakespeare employs
In the play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare has a strong theme of power. Macbeth is a king who is given three predictions from three witches, one of which is that he will become king. The one problem is he doesn’t know what he has to do in order to become king. His wife then decides that in order for him to become king, he must kill the current king. This one murder then leads to others in order to cover the original murder up. Once Macbeth becomes king, he doesn’t want anything to change, he wants to stay king until he dies. He then begins to kill again, but instead of killing to cover something, he is killing anyone who stands in his way of staying king. Macbeth’s fate is affected by the personality trait of bravery, his ability to be manipulated, and his determination.
Among the greatest gifts that the renaissance produced was the eloquent and incredible Shakespearean plays. Written mostly in the 1590s these plays have been performed and admired countless times; entertaining mass audiences by providing interesting tales that explore the depth of human insights and the different universal themes. Among the many Shakespearean plays Macbeth, written in 1606, stands out with its short composition but multiple themes. This tragedy narrates the tale of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s quest to grasp ultimate power by ignoring their morals and succumbing to their dark desires, which ultimately leads to their downfall. This tragic play portrays the desires, needs, and temptations that accompany ambition in men and women. However the ambition in Macbeth is blind, it does not abide to the morals, but it allows space for dark actions as means necessary for accomplishment. Blind ambition serves as the main driving force that drives Macbeth to subdue to his dark desires, defy his noble behavior, and ultimately his downfall.
Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” explores a fundamental struggle of the human conscience. The reader is transported into the journey of a man who recognizes and acknowledges evil but still succumbs to its destructive powers. The character of Macbeth is shrouded in ambiguity that scholars have claimed as both being a tyrant and tragic hero. Macbeth’s inner turmoil and anxieties that burden him throughout the entire play evoke sympathy and pity in the reader. Though he has the characteristics of an irredeemable tyrant, Macbeth realizes his mistakes and knows there is no redemption for his sins. And that is indeed tragic.
In Shakespeare’s tragic play Macbeth, Shakespeare creates the ruthless character Macbeth, who is willing to go beyond any measure in order to attain the power of being king, including murder, deceit, betrayal and overpowering the chain of being. Macbeth was first tempted by the idea of kingship when three witches presented him with their portent of Macbeth becoming the next King of Scotland. Ebullient, Macbeth, immediately informed his wife of the news and they both pondered the thought of having the power to rule all of Scotland. Lady Macbeth, a power seeker herself, promptly schemed a plan to kill King Duncan in order for her and her husband to rule, displaying her ready ambition for power. Macbeth’s thirst for power ate away at his conscience
In the early 1600’s, William Shakespeare penned an Aristotelian tragedy ‘Macbeth’ which provides his audiences both then and now with many valuable insights and perceptions into human nature. Shakespeare achieves this by cleverly employing many dramatic devices and themes within the character of ‘Macbeth’. Macbeth is depicted as an anti-hero; a noble protagonist with a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. This tragic flaw of Macbeth’s, heavily laden with the themes of ‘fate or free will’, and ‘ambition’, is brought out by Shakespeare in his writing to present us with a character whose actions and final demise are, if not laudable, very recognisable as human failings.
This specific action consequently resulted in Macbeth’s level of morality to continually decline as he is acutely aware of his own tyranny. Therefore Macbeth attempts to forget the horrific deed he has committed and be the figure that orders and disorders. Our perception of Macbeth being a wise and loyal soldier is now eroded, as we start to view Macbeth constantly questioning his own actions, and is also impelled to perpetrate further atrocities with the intention of covering up his previous wrong-doings.
Macbeth’s character is a clear example of how ambition corrupts man’s personality. After a brief period of hesitation, he finally decides to take the infamous way of murder in order to make his political desires come true. His ambition, stronger than the moral and social condemnation of killing, becomes his sole motive. The American philosopher David Young goes further in this analysis and sees in Macbeth how “the act of regicide is a ready means of illustrating the genesis of tragic structure in struggles for power'; (Young 318).
Ambition is an underlying theme throughout Macbeth, it is the tragic flaw in human kind, bound to lead to disaster. In Act 1 scene 7 this is one of the most interesting scenes of the play. This is the last time as we see Macbeth a freeman, he can still make the decision whether he wants to be good or evil. The choices that are preventing Macbeth are committing the murder, fear of the consequences on this earth, variety of feelings of kinship, loyalty, and hospitality he admires Duncan’s goodness as he is not the most moral character but hes power is what urges him on that are motives of good A soliloquy, which is found in Act 1, scene 7, in the lines 1-28, Macbeth debates whether he should kill Duncan. The imagery that is in this speech can be dark and moody for most people. Some examples we hear of imagery are “bloody instructions,” “deep damnation,” and a “poisoned chalice”—and suggests that Macbeth is aware of how the murder would open the door to a dark and sinful world. When the soliloquy ends, Macbeth goes to resolve to not kill Duncan but this only...