Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Critical Essay

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Sep 7, 2018 · 7 min read
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There Is Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

As William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, unfolds, the audience is absorbed into postbellum Scottish society and the protagonist, Macbeth’s, struggle with fate, temptation, and fear. While each scene progresses, Shakespeare manipulates different aspects of human nature and our species’ struggle to see past a false facade. The audience is incessantly confronted with “equivocat[ion]” (2.3.8) and is left on its own to discern the borders between what is “fair” and what is “foul” (1.1.12). In like manner, it is often unclear to whether a character is sane or insane. As Macbeth approaches its tragic climax in Act Three, Scene Four, Shakespeare clarifies that Macbeth is not insane, but, rather, has become diseased. He achieves this key message through the display of Macbeth’s breaking point to his accumulating fears. The scene’s development of the motif of disease is critical to the story arc of the play as it marks the point where Macbeth forfeits his own sensibility to the manipulative power of his disease and accelerates his descent towards a tragic demise. With this degeneration, however, Shakespeare evokes a strong sense of sympathy in the audience and creates a powerful, empathic character-audience bond which is vital to the success of the tragic plot.

Three Witches

As Macbeth progresses, Macbeth is plagued with an onslaught of fears. As these phobias cumulate, they become a virulent disease which dismantles his psyche. Macbeth is first infected with this fear after encountering the three Witches and receiving their prophecy. Despite Banquo’s forewarning message that the Witches are “instruments of darkness” whose only motive is “to win us to our harm,” Macbeth considers murdering Duncan to become “king hereafter” (1.3.136,135,53). This “horrid imagining” causes Macbeth to have “present fears” of himself and the potential evils in his mind (1.3.151,150). Two scenes later, Macbeth again acknowledges his fears while expressing his increasing desire to kill Duncan: “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” (1.3.57–60). Through these words, Macbeth additionally displays how his fears are manipulating him into dividing his “hand” from his “eye” in attempt to disassociate his mind from the bloody task. This fear gradually grows inside Macbeth to the point where it acts as a deterrent and causes him to reject the plan of murdering Duncan. Near the end of the first act, Lady Macbeth scowls at her husband when inquiring “art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?” (1.7.43). As Lady Macbeth exploits Macbeth’s fear, her words mark the point where her husband’s fright is no longer private, and the first time it manipulates him to act against better intentions. Although he is finally convinced to murder Duncan in Act Two, Macbeth’s fears do not go away. After staining his hands red with Duncan’s blood, Macbeth again exemplifies the fear inside of him when saying, “I’ll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done. Look on ‘t again I dare not” (2.2.66–67). Prior to Act Three, Scene Four, Macbeth develops an overwhelming fear which has the capability to manipulate his behavior.

Act Three, Scene Four is a focal point in Macbeth’s battle with his festering phobias as it causes him to surrender his own integrity in public. Near the beginning of the scene, Macbeth’s self composure threshold is crossed when he gains a new fear. After The Murderer notifies him that Fleance escaped, Macbeth exclaims, “Then comes my fit again… now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears”(3.4.26–27). The culmination of his fears quickly transitions into an episode of paranoia. As the ghost of Banquo, an apparition only visible to Macbeth, enters the room, the King exasperatedly questions the Scottish nobles: “Which one of you have done this?” (3.4.59). Here, Macbeth externalizes his fears by immediately feeling victimized instead of rationally considering his own responsibility for the ghost’s appearance. Subsequently, Macbeth spirals into various outbursts of dialogue towards the ghost of Banquo. After Lady Macbeth rebukes his fits as “the very painting of [his] fear,” Macbeth confesses to his guests that he has “a strange infirmity” (3.4.74,104). This line marks the point where Macbeth reveals his bad condition to the public, and, in doing so, accepts in his own mind that his body is being fouled by disease.

Just as this scene is significant in the development and revelation of Macbeth’s disease, it is key to the degenerative plot of Shakespeare’s tragedy, as it initiates Macbeth’s final downfall. Accordingly with Macbeth’s concern earlier in the play, “I have…vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / and falls on th’ other,” this scene is the moment just when Macbeth reaches the vertex of his leap over the horse and begins descending towards the ground (1.7.27–28). Throughout the scene, Shakespeare emphasizes the looming deterioration of Macbeth through irony. From Macbeth’s first toast, “health on both!” to Lady Macbeth’s words, “he will again be well,” to Lennox’s farewell, “better health / Attend his majesty,” characters constantly mention the words “health” and “well” (3.4.44,67,148–149). The stark contrast between their positive wishes and the tragedy’s necessary demise of Macbeth acts as a marker to the audience signifying that the King’s pathologically induced fall is underway. Separate from this, Act Three, Scene Four impacts the degenerative plot as it begins Macbeth’s hunt for a cure to his unbearable fears. He is ignorant, however, to the fact that such a cure is nonexistent. Near the end of the scene, Macbeth professes, “I will tomorrow… to the Weïrd Sisters. / More shall they speak… For mine own good, / All causes shall give way” (3.4.164–168). This dialogue prioritizes his own well being and expresses his belief that the Three Witches will remedy his troubles. In addition to trying to find a cure from the sisters, Macbeth touches upon the notion that killing all who counter his authority will expel his fears. Soon after asking Lady Macbeth “How say’st thou that Macduff denies his person / At our great bidding?” (3.4.159–160) he states, “Strange things I have in head, that will go to hand, / Which must be acted ere they may be scanned” (3.4.171–172). By killing Macduff, Macbeth believes he is curing his fear because he is eradicating all threats to himself and his power. Coupled with this, this scene marks the turning point where Macbeth begins to act recklessly without contemplation. In the second half of the quote above, Macbeth proclaims that in order to kill Macduff and return to stability, he must act without prior thought. Macbeth’s misunderstanding that his troubles can be cured through these two methods backfires horribly, and is the vehicle which accelerates him towards his own death.

Macbeth and the Witches

Although Macbeth embraces evil in Act Three, Scene Four, and takes the step of no return into the river of “blood” (3.4.168), he also evokes a sense of sympathy in the audience that is vital to the success of Shakespeare’s sympathetic-degenerative plot. Fear is a universal deterrent among humans that has the power to bend people in a way they would not normally bend. Because of the relatability, audience members of Macbeth gain the insight into how Macbeth is being toyed with by his disease. As they bear witness to his character deterioration, it is difficult not to feel sympathy and remorse on his behalf. During his interaction with the ghost of Banquo, the audience is also offered the perspective that Macbeth may be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. As this is a relatable and understandable consequence of killing, the common human emotion of empathy becomes tied to Macbeth. In addition, it dissociates Macbeth from his cruel intentions by regarding them as unfortunate symptoms of the disorder. More probable than this source of sympathy, was the sympathy evoked through the manipulation of superstitious beliefs. The performance of Macbeth was in the Elizabethan era, a time of ubiquitous superstition and genuine belief in things like ghosts. In fact, the desired audience of the play was James I of England, a highly superstitious individual. As the ghost of Banquo haunted Macbeth throughout the scene, Elizabethans were bound to pity him, for they knew of the horrible effect a ghost can induce in even the strongest person. This sympathy is crucial for the success of the tragedy as it prevents the audience from rooting against Macbeth, and, as a result, produces the release of the final “catharsis.”

As Act Three, Scene Four progresses, Macbeth’s disease metastasizes and begins the true sympathetic degeneration towards the nadir of his tragic struggle. This scene is pivotal in the fulfillment of the tragic plot’s criteria and is crucial to the evocation of emotion in the crowd. While we watch Macbeth succomb to his fears in the scene, the audience pities him. This pity, however, does not come without fear for ourselves, for as Aristotle says in the Rhetoric, “what we pity in others, we fear for ourselves” (1382b 26, 1386a 27). In his essay, Joe Sach expounds upon that idea: “Tragic fear, exactly like tragic pity, and either preceding it or simultaneous with it, shows us what we are and are unwilling to lose.” Macbeth’s struggle acts as a template for all other humans. This template stresses that everyone, even a “valiant” and “worthy gentleman,” can be utterly destroyed by fear (1.2.26). From this, the audience fears fear itself. But, this fear is accompanied by recognition of our luck and how fortunate we are to not have to face the disease which so rapidly fouled Macbeth. It is this recognition which has caused Shakespeare’s Macbeth to survive through more than four centuries of viewers and continue to affect the minds of people today.

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