The Character of Macbeth

THE CHARACTER OF MACBETH: A STUDY OF EVIL?

Shakespeare wrote Macbeth sometime between 1605 and 1606. Shakespeare sets his drama at a moment in Scottish history soon after the end of English rule, which had dominated Scotland from the beginning of the tenth century. Shakespeare’s primary source for Macbeth was Raphael Holinshead’s account of Scottish history in Chronicles of England, Scotland or Ireland (1577), although Shakespeare altered the version of the facts for dramatic purpose. The supernatural motif in Macbeth has been the source of controversy is essentially the tragedy of man’s lack of faith in his own free will.

Is Macbeth a very/ somewhat/ not at all sympathetic character? Macbeth is a Scottish general, a brave soldier and a powerful man, but not a virtuous one. He is an ambitious man and this is what makes him commit murder, after this he is crowned king of Scotland.

At first, Macbeth it is thought to be a very sympathetic character, because of his brave and capable warrior, but through his three attributes: bravery, ambition and self- doubt, he becomes a not at all sympathetic, he turns irrevocably evil. The terrible effects of guilt, when Banquo’ s ghost appears, pessimism, when his wife dies and his ambition to secure the throne disintegrates him from a man with powerful strength of character to a low personality and finally to loneliness. Macbeth ceased to be a sympathetic hero once he made the decision to kill Duncan, but by the end of the play he has become so morally repulsive that his death comes as powerful relief.

Another focus of critical surrounding in Macbeth is the ambiguity of sex roles. The raven himself is hoarse/ That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. /Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood, / Stop up th’access and passage to remorse, /That no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/ Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,/ And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,/ Wherever in your sightless substances / You wait on nature’s mischief./ Come, thick night,/ And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,/ That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, /Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, / To cry ‘Hold, hold!’. To “unsex” means to suppress weakness associated with her feminine nature, in order that Macbeth murders the king. It is stated very clearly that Lady Macbeth will do just anything for the throne. Macbeth feelings of doubt and insecurity make Lady Macbeth to “effeminate” his weakness. It s Lady Macbeth that is the steal behind Macbeth and her ambition is strong to make Macbeth kill Duncan. Later, Macbeth is willing to kill Duncan and his wife’s answer is “be a man and get on with”, she manipulates him through his lack of manhood. (1)

Whence is that knocking? , after he murders Duncan, evil is knocking at his door and is his choice that he opens his soul to the evil or not. The enormity of Macbeth’s crimes and guilty will fallow him through the play. The blood is an important motif in this play, because it is everywhere beginning with the opening battle. His wife response to this murders is “A little water clears us of this deed” (II.ii.65).Once again guilt is present as conscience of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; this guilt will hound them to their death.