Free Will in William Shakespeare´s Macbeth

Fate versus free will is a huge theme in the play Macbeth. It is Macbeth's fate that leads his free will to act the way he does. When the witches say "All hail Macbeth the future king" (I.iii.51) it leads Macbeth down a road of death and self-destruction. If Macbeth hadn't known

The main instance of Macbeth’s free will being shown is in his murder of Duncan, to become king. Macbeth heard the prophecy from the Weird Sisters that he was to be king and immediately began to plan the murder of the present king. Many would scoff at hearing such a claim, but Macbeth used it as justification for murder. It was clear that being King was something that Macbeth desired, and would do anything to achieve it. It became impossible to tell if Macbeth becoming King was as a result of fate, because he took the matters into his own hands. Right after hearing the prophecy, the first thing Macbeth does is write a letter to Lady Macbeth telling her of his plan. He did not let the statements run their course. Macbeth and his wife planned out the actions necessary for Macbeth to become king. He may have eventually become King if he never did anything, but there is no way of knowing what would have happened.

   Destiny "Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." (William Jennings Bryan) Are we in control of our own destiny, our own fate, or are our lives really already planned and mapped out for us? Does Macbeth willfully choose evil in order to achieve his "destiny"? Or, is his "destiny" doomed by the witches' prophecies? Macbeth may not have made any of his same choices, if the three Weird sisters hadn't come to him. In Shakespeare's play Macbeth, Macbeth is no pawn of fate. Although Macbeth was destined to become king, the path he chose to take to achieve his aspiration of obtaining the throne was of his own free

Macbeth’s downward spiral of events was created through his own free will. The witches did foretell his future but they never directly controlled his actions. The sisters did not cast a spell to make Macbeth go crazy. He was engulfed in his lust for power and his battle with his conscience. This led to his insomnia

In Shakespeare’s Tragedy Macbeth, it is very debatable if fate, or freewill is what causes Macbeth to do the things he does through out the tragedy. Freewill is at work most through out the tragedy because Macbeth is convinced he can change or speed up the fate the three weird sisters prophesized for him at his own will. Throughout the play, Macbeth slowly begins to think he can modify his fate by using the prophecies told to Macbeth by the weird sisters and attempting to change them by his free will.

In the story Macbeth, Shakespeare plays the puppet master. He uses witches as a connection between the supernatural and human world. Macbeth is initially described as a valiant and supposedly loyal warrior for his king Duncan. However this quickly changes as the plot unfolds. The witches show a mirror image of Macbeth’s future to Macbeth himself and this is when his true identity begins to emerge. The actions he carries out lead him to power as a king but also to his death. Through this Shakespeare manage to implant a key question in the readers’ minds: what determined Macbeth’s fate? As we learn from reading the book excuses seem to be Macbeth’s hobby and become increasingly more common the further

In the play Macbeth, we see an innocent man who is also recognized as a great warrior and hero, till the witches appeared and we begin to see changes in his behavior. When the witches’ prophecies comes true, you begin to wonder, was it the witches’ doing in causing Macbeth’s downfall or was it Macbeth’s own choice that he made himself? Macbeth shows a few signs of it being him that’s making those decisions. In the five acts we see a transition between fate and free will and both seem to act on each other throughout the play.

Within the play, Macbeth is influenced by many: the witches; his wife, Lady Macbeth; possibly Hecate, Goddess of the Underworld; and his own desire to be crowned king. The question is: was he just influenced by them, and acted upon his own choice and free-will; or did they control him, forcing him to act against his wishes against his free will?

One of these prophecies is the main driving factors towards violence throughout the play. The witches tell Macbeth that he will be King. And although at first he may be skeptical the witches say a couple more things that start to impel Macbeth towards the witch's fate. Those two things they say are, “Fair is foul, foul is fair” and, “All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!...’’. The first quote the witches are telling Macbeth that killing Macbeth is civil and playing the civil way is wicked. Basically all in all, they are saying killing Macbeth is the right thing to do. In the second quote the third witch says that Macbeth will be the king, that is fate. Although these things the witches say do not persuade Macbeth to kill King Duncan, they get him thinking. These prophecies end up getting to the ear of Lady Macbeth and give her the leverage to manipulate Macbeth and the ideas to come up with this plan to kill King Duncan. Once she starts manipulating Macbeth he does not directly tell her no because the witches gave him this ideology that he should be king and that it is fate for that to happen. Lastly the witches bring this presence through the scenes of killing the king of pure evil that leads Macbeth into King Duncan's room and he leads him to Murder Duncan. The evil overtakes him and causes him to do

As the play goes, Macbeth shows a character of free will. Although his destiny was pre-determined for him by the witches, he took action to believe and to make sure that his prophecies will come true. Macbeth is a strong character with many deep desires that include gaining power, and so throughout the play with the many crimes he had committed, there was no turning back for him. In all, his decisions help shape the future ahead of him.

Yet after his encounter with the witches, his mind was going back and forth trying to figure out how he should act upon the prophecy of becoming king! It was by then that the idea of fate had been planted into his head, and with such good title to come with it, why wouldn’t he want to believe his ‘fate’? Something that I found very interesting about the witches was that looking closely at line 24-25 when one of the witches says, "Though his bark cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tossed." From what I seemed to understand, these lines seemed to really show the limitations to the witches’ powers, because they were basically saying that they could only make life rough for the clueless captain, but they could not kill him. I think that this is really important to all the people who thought that the witches had ‘written out’ Macbeth’s fate because in the same way as the previous stated scene they can tempt Macbeth with predictions about his future, but they cannot make him choose evil. Meaning that in this scene, one of the conflicts is obviously fate vs. free will! All the witches really did was find a way of stirring up evil, by tempting Macbeth into choosing to opt for evil instead of good. “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, without my stir.” (Act 1. Scene iii. Line 10). Here, Macbeth seems content to leave his future to "chance." If "chance" will have

Throughout William Shakespeare's famous tragic play, Macbeth, Macbeth is torn between letting fate take it's course, or using free will to help speed up the prophecy. In this tragic play, Macbeth is presented w/ two paths to take to act upon. He has th option to listen to the witches prophecy & let fate lead him to his destiny or to use his own free will & actions get where he is destined to be. After Macbeth hears the prophecy, he chooses free will when it comes to fate, the murders, and the guilt.

Most of the big events of this play are influenced by Macbeth’s knowledge of the prophecies and whether these are true or not, they end up affecting the way he makes decisions. The previous example, where Macbeth has horrible visions, clearly shows how knowing the prophecy creates horrible images in Macbeth’s mind, but there are many other examples. For instance in act III Macbeth decides to kill his friend Banquo and his son because a prophecy said his children would be kings. Because of Macbeth knowing the prophecy he takes harsh action. Another example we see is in the second meeting with the witches, where apparitions speak to Macbeth. These say that no man born of a woman shall harm him, that only when the Birnam forest rises to his kingdom he will be vanquished, and one tells him to be weary of Macduff; resulting in a surge of over confidence that leads Macbeth to oversee what the phrases mean, but also to leads him to be reckless in his decision making because he loses all fear, resulting in his demise. Macbeth is quick to take action after hearing out the witches and says, “Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits./ The flighty purpose never is o’ertook/ Unless the deed go with it. From this moment/The very firstlings of my heart shall be/ The very firstlings of my hand” (4.1.145-149). There are still some examples of free will and being able

In the beginning, the witches did tell Macbeth their predictions about his future, but they never said to take further actions themselves. This shows that he used his freedom to take actions with the help of his wife as he tells Lady Macbeth, “I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show. False face must hide what the false heart doth know”(1.7.92-96). After all those convincing and offending, Macbeth finally makes up his mind to do the deed. He had the choice of not doing the execution, but he ended up choosing his wife’s side, which is proceeding with the plan. Macbeth truly loves his wife, and Lady Macbeth used his love for her as an advantage to make him commit the crime. Although, when Macbeth finally murdered Duncan, he was filled with remorse and fear of what he had done. He made the decision himself, so now he has to face the consequences with or without Lady Macbeth. In addition, Macbeth was indeed devastated by his own doing, but he later got over it and took actions above and beyond the deed, and this makes him more than a man according to his dear wife. Once Macbeth had a little taste of killing another human being, his desire to kill increased. Because of his own ambitions, he later takes the next step on his own without his wife knowing either, he orders poor people to be the murderers of Banquo to prevent Banquo’s children from being the future kings as the witches have predicted. Similar to how Lady Macbeth got Macbeth to kill Duncan, Macbeth also induced the two people to murder Banquo. Macbeth convinced the two, but corroborated that they understood, and told them, “Both of you know Banquo was your enemy”(3.1.129-130). The two hired to be murderers agreed, and took off to do what Macbeth have commanded them to do. Also, this plan of his concludes that

Early on into the play, three witches predict Macbeth’s fate. The witches told him that they saw him as Scotland’s future king. Macbeth’s destiny relies on the witches because they manipulate his life with magic, but it can also rely on free will as well. Even though the witches predict his future, Macbeth can always change his future with different choices he makes. Free will caused Macbeth to fall, because even though his future was seen by the witches, he could always change that future by making different choices along the way.