The villains Shakespeare creates for his plays are always intricate characters. These characters do not carry the simple simplicity of just being evil; they are unique specimens of human emotion. The reasons behind their actions are sometimes unclear and their motives unsound. This is what draws the reader to these rogues: connections are sought and found. In Hamlet, Claudius is an ambitious king with no legitimate reason to be on the throne. In Macbeth, Macbeth is a devious general who, through ambition, steals the throne. The actions of each are both fueled by their lofty aspirations. Claudius is unusual in that he is a two-sided character. He seems throughout Hamlet to be an effective king, dealing with all political and military …show more content…
Despite his fearless character in battle, Macbeth is concerned by the prophecies of the Witches, and his thoughts remain confused, both before, during, and after his murder of King Duncan. When Duncan announces that he intends the kingdom to pass to his son Malcolm, Macbeth appears frustrated. When he is about to commit the murder, he undergoes terrible pangs of conscience. Macbeth is at his most human and considerate when his masculinity is ridiculed and degraded by his wife. However, Macbeth has resolved himself into a far more stereotypical villain and asserts his manliness over that of his wife. His ambition now begins to spur him toward further horrible deeds, and he starts to disregard and even to challenge fate. Nevertheless, the newfound resolve causes Macbeth to move onward.
Macbeth's excessive pride and ambition are now his dominant character traits. These features of his personality are well presented when he revisits the Witches of his own accord. His boldness and ideas of invincibility mark him out as lost to the toughs of ambition.
Macbeth more or less loses his identity in the fluctuations of fortune and the storm of passion. This is where he differs as a character to Claudius, who it would seem is naturally unmoral and owes this to nothing but himself; he does not even repent for his actions. However, these characters do share much and there is a repetition of the same general idea, more or less, between them. For both are tyrants,
The tragedy Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, follows the rise and fall of a loyal Scottish warrior. Macbeth is portrayed as a man of multiple sides, presenting three main traits – bravery, ambition, and self-doubt – throughout the play. The character is an example of how ambition and guilt can have terrible effects on an individual lacking in strength of character. Although some people may perceive Macbeth as malicious, his weak character shows that he is incapable of conquering guilt and self-doubt. The prime themes of the play are: ambition, loyalty and betrayal, good and evil, appearance versus reality, supernatural and fate. Shakespeare presents these themes through the actions of Macbeth and their results: the corrupting effects
The character Macbeth in the story of Shakespeare’s Macbeth faces decisions that affect his morals. He begins as an innocent soul, dedicated to serve his kingdom and its king, Duncan. As time passes and opportunities present themselves combined with the deception of the evil witches, Macbeth begins his descent into madness. Macbeth’s innocence and loyalty are completely corrupted due to his over confidence, guilty conscience, and the inevitability of human nature. Macbeth looses sight of what is morally right to do in life because his logical choices are changed by these factors.
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.
After hearing the prophecy that he will become king, Macbeth resolves to leave his future up to fate proving his pride and prestige are very important to him. Once he is told of Malcolm being named successor to the throne, Macbeth decides that if he is going to reach his goal he cannot leave it up to luck. Again Macbeth’s resolve to murder Duncan wavers when he leaves the grand banquet to assess his situation and decide whether he wants to proceed. His arguments include wishing to keep his honor and not kill Duncan for Duncan is there ‘in double trust’. Thus, Macbeth is shown to be clinging to his honor. Finally, Macbeth must stand his ground one last time against his wife who uses tact to emasculate Macbeth. In his final attempt to stop the whole ordeal before it can start Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he does not want to ‘cast aside’ the honor he has just recently received. Unfortunately, Lady Macbeth will have none of what her husband is saying and so convinces Macbeth to follow through with his plan of murdering King Duncan. Hence, the audience is given the first example of how powerful selfish motives are and how quickly they can spread to others along with cause them to perform unthinkable
Macbeth’s desire to become king and take the crown from King Duncan ends up hurting him more than helping him. Initially, Macbeth was against murdering King Duncan and didn't think he could do that to his very own king. Lady Macbeth believes that her husband will not go through with his plan however he does end up killing him. She states “Yet I do fear thy nature; It is too full of of the milk of human kindness. As he kills the King he starts to see things like the floating dagger and that seems to make him extremely
Shakespeare’s presentation of the way King Claudius acts ties with the idea that each character of Elsinore assumes a false personality. Shakespeare presents King Claudius as a person who can manipulate others easily. He is skilled in public speaking and thus, able to persuade
Lady Macbeth is a complex and intriguing character in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. She is a difficult character to embody as her personality seems split between two sides, one that is pure evil, sly and conniving in contrast to her softer, vulnerable, weak and feminine side. In the play we see her in these two main ways. The reader may feel a certain animosity towards Lady Macbeth throughout the first few acts as her personality appears more and more distasteful, in spite of this towards the end she has a serious breakdown over the guilt that torments her, even in her sleep, regarding her hand in Duncan’s untimely death.
Macbeth's tragic flaw in character was the paradoxical pairing of his ambition with his passivity. Throughout the play we see many examples of Macbeth's conflict between his ambition to attain the crown and his passive attitude towards the actions that are required to obtain it. Macbeth's ambition is first
Macbeth’s ambitious ways takes over his whole inner self throughout his time of first wanting to be king. Macbeth was thought to be a great leader and war hero before he was king. Macbeth was hatched an idea by three suspicious witches in whom he had never come in contact with before. They told him that he would one day become King of Scotland. After the witches disappeared, he got to think a lot about what they told him and pondered the words they spoke. Macbeth sends a letter to his wife about his feelings of what he had heard. When Macbeth returned back to his castle his wife wanted to lead him down a dark path and feed his ambition. Macbeth decides he wants to go after the crown after consulting his wife. "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on th'other...." (Act I, scene vii) This shows that Macbeth’s only reason to kill Duncan is for his ambition. Macbeth ends up killing Duncan. The way Macbeth killed Duncan made it a great crime scene. Macbeth still
Macbeth is very distinct character the thing that makes him different from all the other characters is the amount of ambition he has. The biggest ambition that he has is to give Scotland a new king and he wants to become the one that has all the power over them. The first thing that he does is kill King Duncan so he can get the throne and then he kills his best friend so he won't tell anyone. Most people wouldn't be willing to do the things he did because it was very dark and evil so they just wouldn't have the heart or dedication to do something so terrible it just shows how much becoming the king and taking over the throne meant to him. The witches brought on the thirst so they basically killed the king. If they would have never told macbeth that it was fate for him to be king he never would of killed the king, or anyone else that he killed. Once he thought he could become king he couldn't get it out of his head and once his wife pushed him to do it he went through with it. Macbeth gets more evil as the play goes on. He became the villain in the play because he killed the king and he also killed his best friend Banquo, and he reached his highest point of evil when he killed Macduff’s wife and child. He made very bad decisions since he made those decisions he had to fight very hard to keep his position as the king, so he didn't let anything get in his
Planning the murder is not something that Macbeth initially is comfortable with. He feels as though murdering Duncan is going to have many consequences that he will have to suffer with. By having Duncan as his kinsman, subject, host, and most importantly the fact that he is his ruler, Macbeth says that he will not kill Duncan. Soon Lady Macbeth challenges whether or not Macbeth is a man, and he once again decides that he will kill Duncan by persuading him that they will both be successful as a result of the murder.
Macbeth is displayed, as the villain throughout most of the play due to his evil will. The murders, lies and problems for the kingdom are just some of the events. However, before all this there was a good side to Macbeth. The good traits such as bravery, honour, ambitious and loving were just a few of these traits. Macbeth is a brave solider for his king in times of need especially in the beginning of the play. “For brave Macbeth-well he deserves that name” (1.2.16). The Captain stating this shows that his fellow soldiers see him as a brave and loyal solider to the kingdom because of his great efforts on the battlefield. His ambition is one of the great factors that starts off with good intent and doesn’t have enough to do anything with a will of evil. Lady Macbeth questions the will in him to obtain the crown. She says, “it is too full o’th’milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way” (1.5.16-17). She tells him that she doesn’t think he has what it to obtain the crown because he
Macbeth’s mental and moral deterioration throughout the play engages the audience illustrating how guilt overwhelms his conscience He believes he hears voices crying “Macbeth has murdered sleep” this demonstrates how he is battling against his morals and his ambition. His good qualities are battling his bad thoughts and this is the main reason for his mental downfall which makes for a deeply engaging plot. Macbeth goes from being a man of bravery, strength, honour yet he slowly loses these qualities. He once believed that killing a good man was an evil, un-worthy thing to do yet by the end of the play he is killing the people he once had close relationships with to get himself out of the mess that was dragging him deeper into despair and tragedy. This process is enthralling for the audience who cannot resist watching him go to any length to save himself as his morals go into deep decline. Ambition has completely taken over him in the soliloquy in which he states; “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleap itself and falls on the other.” In this instance Macbeth is interesting because he realises that the only thing that is making him want to kill Duncan is
Macbeth is a very complex character whom reflects man's thirst for power through the drastic changes of his personality; thus being one of the slightest reasons in which make this intriguing character, greatest of all Shakespearean’s well-known works.
Claudius is a coward when it comes to murder. Claudius finds the most indirect way to kill someone: usually with poison. The King also manages to get Laertes to be the one to fatally injured Hamlet– showing hs manipulative tendencies. “Thou art slain./ No med’cine in the world can do thee good./ In thee there is not half an hour’s life./ The treacherous instrument is in the thy hand,/ Unbated and envenomed… The King, the King is to blame” (5.2.344-51). Here, Laertes is explaining that the king poisoned his fencing sword so he could impart the fatal blow on to Hamlet. It is not Claudius that takes the credit; Hamlet has to find out from Laertes that he is dying. Even as Hamlet is dying, Claudius still chooses to remain a coward. As the antagonist, Claudius is meant to embody evil, condemnable traits that make readers hate him. Shakespeare is