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Evil, both internal and external corrupts their minds, distorting their positive traits and exaggerating their worst. Both fall victim to 'vaulting ambition', pride and greed, tempting them to acts of treason and betrayal of friends, kinsman and the nation itself. Warfare on the battlefield mirrors the metaphorical warfare being played out between the forces of good and evil within them. Spurred by ambition, supernatural solicitation and by the taunting of his wife, Macbeth deliberately chooses to embark on what he knows to be an evil course. From the moment he listens with 'rapt' attention to the witches, he allows himself to be drawn further and further into a vision of hell. The audience accompanies him into a morass of nightmares, ghosts, bloody visions and false prophecies.
Abnormal conditions of mind such as insanity, sleep walking and hallucinations demonstrate his moral and emotional decline. We are given insight into their feelings of agitation, anxiety, fear, determination and regret which minimises the horror of the murder. Macbeth's soliloquies voice his inner thoughts, making him an object of pity as well as a fascinating portrait of evil. A psychological change takes place as we witness the valiant general become a ruthless murderer. Although conscious of this evil transformation, he cannot resist the process. Ambition has become a powerful drug, usurping his reason and will as he lurches towards personal disaster.
Brutality hardens him and his misrule brings suffering and chaos to Scotland. Macbeth Macbeth exhibits many of the traditional attributes of a tragic hero. Courage, determination, intelligence and moral awareness are clearly evident in his actions in the early scenes. His reputation is high and he holds a noble, aristocratic position of power and influence. He is introduced as a courageous general, worthy of respect and honour, brave, valiant, noble, imaginative, kind, ambitious, loving and artless. 'Brave Macbeth-well he deserves that name. ' He is ambitious for public acclaim, recognition and wants to appear great and admirable, as he says: '... I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon. ' He is willing to murder Duncan but shrinks from the recriminations and pity it will bring upon him.
He hesitates not so much from a troubled conscience or moral scruples but because he knows the King is loved and considered virtuous. Lady Macbeth accuses him of unmanly cowardice which goads him into action. She boldly mocks and ridicules his fears and Macbeth cannot bear to be scorned and baited as a coward by the woman he loves. With frightening speed he becomes a callous murderer, each successive crime bloodier than the one before. All are committed to gain personal security for 'To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus. ' In killing his king and kinsman he has released a bestial ferocity latent in his nature which has unhinged his mind, clearly shown in his vision of the dagger and his later distracted manner.
Morbid reflections generate an imagined voice crying 'Sleep no more!' and images of hands trying to pluck out his eyes. Obsession with power makes him ruthless for he thinks only of his own welfare. No feelings of pity, hesitation or qualms of conscience are shown. Everything must now give way to his interests alone.
Macbeth has travelled far from the man he was in Act I. Then, the mere thought of murder, made his heart knock against his ribs and his hair stand on end. He becomes a monstrous king causing his country to suffer 'under the hand accursed'. Deceit, dishonour, hypocrisy, treachery and arrogant egotism have replaced the positive characteristics he previously displayed. The warrior of Act I has become a murderous criminal by Act III and in the process of transformation he arouses the terror and fascination of the audience. Through his soliloquies in particular, the audience comes to share his thoughts and visions, forced to confront and accept the darker side of human nature, the bestial atavistic primitive side.
He changes before our eyes, becoming isolated, brutalized, desensitized and utterly corrupted by the effects of evil. His cursing the witches in Act IV, 'And damned be all those that trust them, ' is prophetically ironic for in believing in them he brings his own curse upon himself. 'Macbeth shall sleep no more'. He finds himself trapped in a new world where he is hated rather than honoured, where those 'he commands move only in command, Nothing in love. ' He has become corrupt and his mind teems with images of fear, blood and disorder. 'Oh, full of scorpions is my mind. ' He and his 'partner in crime' find that the crown, which they have waded through so much blood to steal, does but 'scald their brows and stuff their pillow with thorns. ' Murder does not answer his fears but only serves to call for new victims. He lurches into a series of sickening deceptions, no longer even confiding in his wife, no longer needing her advice or assistance for he has become evil enough without her. Incident after incident build to create a paradoxical world where 'nothing is but what it is not. 's uspicion, confusion, loss of self-control and mental instability are outward signs of his declining character. Only his wife's death touches him but he has become too dehumanized to mourn.
He aches with loneliness but accepts it as the price he must pay for the crimes he has committed. He becomes introspective, trying to make sense of a world that has become for him increasingly insane. He finds himself in an emotional void. Now that his wife, sole friend and true supporter is dead he watches helplessly as his thanes revolt and flee. His hopes decline as the witches' promises prove to be hollow and false. In the catastrophe of the final act, Macbeth agitation, uncertainty, irresolution, lack of plan and superstitious dependence on evil magic is contrasted with the steadfastness, organisation, courage and the conviction of Malcolm and his loyal subjects and the justice of their cause.
When the Scottish thanes march to join Malcolm's army, the audience watches as Macbeth goes through a series of rapidly changing emotional states. At first sullenly defiant, he gradually loses confidence, clinging doggedly to his superstitious assurances until he is finally overcome with weariness, agitation, discouragement and despair. 'Then fly, false thanes... I have lived long enough... ' He sinks into despondency on hearing of his wife's death only to be stirred into a final, baffled, desperate rage on finding that Birnam Wood is indeed coming towards Dunsinane. In the final scenes he concludes that life is only 'a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing. ' Deserted, bereaved, alone and with waning hopes, he faces ruin and ignominy. But his very strength and energy, and the dogged way he fights to the last, prevents the audience's pity from becoming pathos.
By becoming a murderer, the tyrant king realises he has robbed himself of 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends. ' By the end of the play Macbeth has become a 'butcher' and a 'hell -hound' and his heroic death cannot undo the fact that he knowingly committed crimes against king, countrymen and nation: 'They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, / But bear-like I must fight the course. 'Against all expectations, Shakespeare manages with theatrical skill to force the audience into feeling a grudging admiration for his final moments. To some extent he reassumes his warrior status, takes on with his armour, some of his earlier virtues of courage, determination and recklessness as the enemy is charged head-on. 'I have supped full with horrors. ' Lady Macbeth Lady Macbeth is strong-willed and resourceful. She denounces her femininity but is not inherently evil even though she becomes callous; "Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here." She criticises Macbeth's weaknesses, recognises his faults, dominates his will, guides and encourages him in the fulfilment of his ambition. She tries to soothe his mental turmoil generated by the 'scorpions' in his mind but is unable to understand them. She tries to save him from the misery of his morbid brooding, to help him cope and accept what is done and past. She coaxes him to remove his anxious look and be bright and jovial and at the banquet she does her best to shield him from censure.
Her use of imagery is powerful and emotive as shown in her sinister declaration that 'The raven himself is hoarse / that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan. ' The raven, inky black in colour symbolizes death and the presence of evil while its hoarseness is from his anticipatory calling of death. The harsh, onomatopoeic word 'croaks' is stark in sound and meaning while 'fatal' is full of foreboding. Her language is evocative and graphically depicts the evil forces she has invoked as her guides and mentors. She is much stronger and forthright than Macbeth.
By using the terminology of war and conquest, she rouses him as soldier. She is the opposite of her husband and able to overcome his infirmity of purpose by boldly cutting off the paths of moral retreat, and casting the matter into a personal controversy and domestic war. 'When you durst do it, then you were a man. ' Her quick wit speedily refutes his arguments and disposes of his objections. She seems unaffected by any moral conscience, remaining externally calm and in control. In the mental tortures that later come to afflict her, she pays a well-earned penalty for her misdeeds. She is both the 'fiend-like Queen' as Macduff calls her and a tragic heroine with a complex personality. She appears fearless until the murder 'Alack, I am afraid' and 'Had he not resembled my father...
I o'done it. 's he instigates murder but is incapable of carrying it out. Her iron-ribbed self-control is a facade. There is a sharp contradiction between her tongue a...
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