Analysis of Macbeth Classic Tragedy Written by William Shakespeares - Research Paper Example

? The ics always reflect the human situations of their times, either directly or symbolically. It is this relevance to their times that makes these classics relevant for all times. If one examines the socio-political fabric of today, one sees overambitious politicians trying to stick on to power by any means. They do not mind cheating or even destroying their own comrades to keep their autocratic rule in tact. One can have examples from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin to many autocratic rulers in different parts of the world today. Even with in democracies such fascist trends are increasingly seen these days. It is under this contemporary socio-political ambience that one has to re-read William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth. Its relevance is in our own socio-political scenario. It shows that though there is enough goodness in the society, the evil forces often dominate. The rulers are more concerned about their self achievements and gains than the collective progress of the society. This leads to the dominance of the evil over the goodness around. But Shakespeare predicts the failure of the evil and final victory for the good. It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384BC -322 BC) who defined the dramatic form of Tragedy in his great work “Poetics”. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero should never be perfect. The fall of a completely virtuous person from a height will create only moral anger among the audience. The fall of a villainous person will only satisfy the moral sense among the audience for the appropriate punishment for the villain .Thus Aristotle insists that the best tragic hero exists in between such extremes. “A person who is neither perfect in virtue and justice nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity, but rather one who succumbs through some miscalculation” (Poetics, Chapter 13). According to the Aristotelian standards Shakespeare’s Macbeth falls into one of the best tragic heroes possible. Ambition going unchecked beyond all moral limitations is the main theme of Macbeth. It is the personal as well as the social morality that checks the ambitions of the powerful. But once these moral checks are let loose the rulers get overambitious and finally tyrannical. The play’s two main characters express this unchecked ambition, bringing destruction to them. Macbeth is a Scottish general who is depicted as a courageous soldier. Macbeth appears in the play first as wounded captain who narrates his courageous acts in the battle field. So the initial impression created is that he is a brave and efficient soldier. Such a man is not, by natural logic prone to commit evil deeds. But this perspective about him gets upset once he interacts with the three witches who prophecies that he is to be the future king. With this prophecy, his physical courage gives away as a mask to the hunger for more and more power and advancement in the power structure. This forces him to commit evil deeds. Just the prediction that he will become the king was enough to trigger these inner self full of ambitions. Ambitions also lead him to self doubts too. Thus the character of Macbeth is a battle field of three strong attributes of his character – Physical strength and courage, ambition for more power, and self doubt. All these attributes are so strong that through out the play they battle with each other for supremacy. Finally his ambitions take over leading to a sense of guilt too. What emerges out is a man of very weak character. Thus Macbeth turns out to be not a Shakespearean villain, but a tragic hero, who perishes by his own doings. The villains of Shakespeare like Edmund in King Lear or Iago in Othello or Richard the third in the play by the same name are mere villains and not tragic heroes, because they have the inner strength to subdue any sort of sense of guilt and self doubt. They are sure characters who knew what they are doing. Macbeth on the other hand is not equipped mentally to face the after effects of the crimes he commits. His courage and strength are more physical than psychological. The struggle between the good and evil is very evident in Macbeth as he gets plagued with tensions and worries before he gets ready to kill Duncan.. First he succumbs to his worries and gets his attempt to kill him aborted .But evil can be encouraged easily. Thus finally the devilish sense of purpose of Lady Macbeth wins over his goodness and pushes him into committing that crime. She finds her husband ambitious but “too full of the milk of human kindness”. (Act 1, Scene 5) Thus she evokes all evil spirits to overcome the human kindness in her husband. She begs to the evil spirits thus: “you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / of direst cruelty” (Act 1, Scene 5, .38–41). As it was a forced crime committed with out real conviction it leads to the slow disintegration of the otherwise powerful character of Macbeth, pushing him into total loneliness. In fits of fevered unsure actions he plans a series of murders so that the throne finally will be his. But the sense of guilt never leaves him which often over shadows his ambitions. This is very evident when Banquo’s ghost appears and confronts him. After the death of his wife who was the immoral force behind all his evil deeds, he gets into absolute despair and finally succumbs to total pessimism. All these together create the drama of conflict between the good and evil, the duality of a villain and a hero which creates the tragic tension in the character of Macbeth. His preconscious vitiated with ambitiousness takes him to the road of evil where he plots murders to reach the top of the political hierarchy. But the innate goodness in him, which he cannot disregard, creates deep sense of guilt so that he fails to be happy in his achievements. This is the identity crisis of Macbeth that makes him a tragic hero. The finale of the play shows that evil cannot sustain itself too long. When the English army surrounds his dwelling place, he gets back his physical vigor. He becomes a brave warrior again. Though reckless in fighting the stronger enemy, he exhibits his bravado. The battlefield brings out the real Macbeth out again. He no more is affected by those inner turmoils. The fighting warrior in him never thinks of committing suicide when surrounded by the enemy army. He decides to fight. “Why should I play the roman fool and die / on mine own sword?” (Act 5, Scene 10, 1-2). In the last encounter with Macduff, Macbeth suddenly fears for his life, but he declares that he will not surrender “[t]o kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, / and to be baited with the rabble’s curse” (Act 5 Scene 10, 28–29). He goes down fighting. The play completes thus a full circle, beginning with Macbeth winning the war and ending in him perishing in the battlefield While discussing the struggle between the good and the evil for dominance in the play, one cannot ignore Lady Macbeth. She is one of Shakespeare’s most horrifying female characters. She enters the scene by plotting the murder of Duncan, the king. She represents all the evil traits that take over Macbeth - over ambitiousness, and ruthlessness .But she has great mental strength. She knows that Macbeth has his inert goodness in him (“too full of the milk of human kindness”) and she knows that he will have to be pushed hard to do the evil so that her ambition to be the queen of the kingdom will come true. She even wishes that if she were not a woman she will be able to do the crime herself instead of depending on her husband to do it.( “ unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / of direst cruelty” ) She believes that only the masculinity can do crimes and attain power. Thus she has the masculine spirit in her; but it is housed in a female body. Though the ambitions are masculine in nature she knows how to manipulate a male to suit her ambitions, that too through female methods. Thus Shakespeare implies that the humane nature is common to both the males and females. Females too can be ambitious and power hungry. They can be cruel in their pursuit for power. But the society puts constraints on them, so that they are not allowed to act by their own. Lady Macbeth knows so well of these constraints and knows how to manipulate her husband. Her manipulative efforts are very effective too. The goodness in Macbeth makes him weak and doubting. Lady Macbeth pushes him forward into committing the crime by questioning his manhood. He is made to think that to prove himself as a man he had to be stronger enough to commit the crime which his wife wants him to .But again Shakespeare, through the portrayal of Lady Macbeth, argues that evil cannot have the last laugh. She encourages her husband to kill the king and steadies his nerves immediately after the commitment of the crime. But as in the case of Macbeth, the sense of guilt plagues her mind too. As stronger was her ambition, so stronger is her sense of guilt too. She finally represents the fatal failure of the evil, a pray to the perils of evil deeds. She slides into lunacy and by the close of the play she is reduced to a mere sleep walker. She wishes to wash away the blood stains of sin from her hands. “What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes. /will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” (Act two, scene two, 57-59). Finally she kills herself thus becoming the epitome of the final failure of the evil. In this perpetual power play between the good and the evil, what are the forces that control the game from behind? Shakespere hints that the forces of evil behave like supernatural forces. They manipulate the weak traits of humans. It is through the witches that Shakespeare proves this point. The witches, referred in the play as the weird sisters, are forces of temptation for the weak humans to commit the evil. They play on the overambitious Macbeth and make him a helpless puppet. They can be interpreted as the agents of fate. But for the temptation of the witches, Macbeth would not have committed the crime of killing the king. They strongly influence and ignite the evil traits in the character of Lady Macbeth too. But with all these evil forces working against the goodness of man, the final victory seems to be that of the goodness. Thus Shakespeare leaves a ray of hope for the good. At the same time, he reminds that one has to have great inner strength to resist the temptations of the evil and to remain good for ever. Evil forces may look successful sometimes. But this success is short lived. The goodness overtakes and survives finally. When the great Japanese film maker Akira Kurosawa made a film based on this Shakespearean play, he called it “The Throne of Blood”. He ends the film with a post script graphics on the screen which reads: “Such ambition always destroys”. ------------------------------- Sources referred: 1) Aristotle, Poetics, Translated by Malcolm Heath, Penguin Classics, March 1997 2) Shakespeare William, Macbeth, (Dover Thrift Editions), Dover Publications, December 1993. Read More