Macbeth - Shakespeare's Greatest Work

No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red" Macbeth Quote (Act II, Sc. II).

Everyone has a quality that they do not like about themselves. Some people struggle to be social, others may be too controlling of people. The list goes on and on, but the point is that everybody has a particular quality that they must learn to control or else that particular quality can get out of hand. Of course, one could write a list of characters that have major flaws. There is no better example than William Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Anyone who has ever read it, could easily identify the fatal flaw that the character Macbeth possesses which is greed. Even though many readers can all agree that greed is Macbeth’s fatal flaw, the argument as to whether or not

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.

‘Macbeth’ a Scottish play known as one of Shakespeare’s best plays was written in 1611 by William Shakespeare, during that time King James the 1st was the king of Scotland, the Jacobean times was a time where people had a fascination with witches and witchcraft, ‘Daemonolgie’ was a book written by King James the 1st himself, this was about ways to spot a witch, which intrigued people. Since ‘Macbeth’ has a Scottish theme Shakespeare may have written this play to please King James since there is references to Banquo which is a direct descendant of King James, also it is said that Banquo wasn’t a very nice man but Shakespeare presents him as very loyal and kind person

On the other end of the spectrum, Macbeth must deal with the moral uncertainty of the actions he does commit. When he goes to kill Duncan, the dagger appears, which he judges to be “A dagger of the mind, a false creation /Proceeding from the heat oppressèd brain” (II.i.38-39). It is something that has materialized because he has a humoral imbalance. This is the “psychic distress” Roychoudhury says, “threatens often to undo the protagonists” (218). Because his mind is not right, Macbeth goes down a path of self-destruction. Macbeth does not murder all of his possible enemies at once, it takes four separate murders until he is finished. This goes against Machiavelli’s prescription in The Prince: “Violence must be inflicts once and for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful” (32). Though the audience does not get a chance to see whether the people are resentful, Macbeth is resentful of himself. He has “terrible dreams / that shake us nightly” (III.ii.18-19), violent nightmares, because of his guilt from murdering Duncan. His own rumination contains the same idea: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly” (I.vii.1-2). The repetition of the “w” sound evokes the madness behind Macbeth’s thoughts. This is not easy to get out when spoken. His words are more than his tongue can handle, he cannot manage to get everything done all at once. The state Macbeth usurped to obtain is in trouble by Machiavelli’s standards

When we are first introduced to Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth he is illustrated as a loyal warrior hero to Scotland. Macbeth’s recognition on the battlefield helps gain him great honor from King Duncan who later announces him as Thane of Cawdor. However, throughout the play the audience is able to discover his human flaws. Ironically, his first characteristic of being a mighty powerful man actually changes to be a weak man who gets stepped all over on. Through his soliloquies for instance, the audience can read that he is just any regular human being who has private and selfish ambitions. From the beginning he is manipulated by the three witches’ prophecies and Lady Macbeth who all triggered his ambition of wanting to

We believe that to obtain a position of power we must acquire, or presently have traits of deception, force, and manipulation, although the people who think this are dead wrong. People with the greatest amount of power get authority through ambition, responsibility, and motivation. In the play Macbeth written by William Shakespeare, it shows a story about a fictional tragedy in which a strong scottish general named Macbeth receives news from witches that he will one day become king. The new king of Scotland would be him one day. He created a large amount of confidence and ambition out of this tale, that he comes to his goal by killing the king to take the throne of the now deceased, king Duncan. The power Macbeth obtains corrupts Macbeth and leads to him being a manipulative, overpowered leader. Macbeth has absolute power and goes against all laws of nature to get to that point of obtaining the position he eventually has through cheating god.

Macbeth, his journey begins as a noble soldier. Whose sole purpose is to protect king and country. However we will see him go from this noble hero to a very power crazed, prideful murder.

Macbeth, though originally a valiant and prudent soldier, deteriorates into an unwise king whose rash decisions conclusively end in the atrophy of his title, power, and position. Several factors contribute to the downfall of Macbeth, which produce a contagion effect and ultimately end with his demise. He receives help from his “inner ambitions and external urgings” which result in his downfall (Bernad 49). The “external urgings” consist of the weird sisters who disclose his prophecies, which enlighten him about Duncan’s throne, and Lady Macbeth who abets Macbeth to realize his deep desires and come to the conclusion to murder Duncan. However, Macbeth is the most significant contributor as he makes his deep desires come to reality. In Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, while the weird sisters and Lady Macbeth are important contributors to Macbeth 's downfall, they are not most responsible. Macbeth is, in fact, the most prominent contributor to his downfall whose actions, decisions, and state of mind lead to his downfall.

In most Shakespearian tragedies, the hero possesses a character trait which under normal circumstances would be a virtue, but which under the special circumstances of the play proves to be a fatal flaw. Macbeth consists of several situations where the hero portrays many such qualities that drive him to commit wrong actions. Macbeth’s desires convinced him to ignore the impact of his actions. In addition, his doubtfulness controlled his consciousness and finally his blindness affected his aptitude to seek reality. An analysis of Macbeth’s actions and behaviour reveals that Macbeth should be justified as a tragic hero validating the belief that he possesses several fatal flaws which eventually resulted in his downfall.

Macbeth is a play based on King James I, it was written by William Shakespeare, however this play isn’t a king and queen fairy tale, but it’s a play about greed and guilt, chaos and murder and three evil witches who use prophecies to influence Macbeth to do bad things, using flattery would instigate his inner ambition to become king, which in the end doesn’t lead to a very happy ending.

Macbeth, the tragic hero in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, suffers from the fatal flaws of insecurity and indecision, allowing him to easily be manipulated, which causes the audience to feel sympathetic toward him. After Macbeth has heard the prophecy from the three witches and he has been named thane of Cawdor, he is led to a strong internal conflict: “If good, why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair… / Shakes so my single state of man that function / is smother’d in surmise” (I.iii.144-151). Macbeth’s questioning of his goodness shows his insecurity, and because he questions it, he over thinks it, causing him to make critical errors. These choices arouse the audience’s pity and terror because pity is felt for the position he was seemingly forced into and terror is endured for the actions Macbeth might take. After many events have occurred, Macbeth returns to the witches to find out more about the prophecy, because he is insecure in his position: “Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee? / But yet I’ll make assurance double sure. / And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live” (IV.i.88-90). Once again, Macbeth’s insecurity leads him to asking questions he shouldn’t be asking, questioning his choices, and depending on the witches, allowing them to easily manipulate him. Catharsis is evoked in the audience because they think about their personal lives and if anything in manipulating them, which connects them to the plot and causes an

In Macbeth, Shakespeare first builds Macbeth’s character as a courageous and capable warrior through the wounded captain’s account of his valor on the battlefield. However, this perspective is complicated as a result of Macbeth’s interaction with the three witches, in which the notion that his physical courage is accompanied with an insatiable yet empty ambition and a tendency to self-doubt becomes known. These three attributes: bravery, ambition, and self-doubt, struggle for mastery of Macbeth throughout the play. As the story progresses, Macbeth’s ambition spurs him into regrettable action in which self-doubt and guilt cause him to undergo intense inner conflict between right and wrong, causing a domino effect which evidently leads to more malicious actions and the death of his wife. Macbeth may be classified as irrevocably evil, but his weak character separates him from Shakespeare’s great villains—Richard III in Richard III, Edmund in King Lear, Iago in Othello—who are all strong enough to conquer guilt and self-doubt. Macbeth, despite the great warrior he is, is ill equipped for the psychic consequences of his actions. In Act 5, Scene 5, Shakespeare uses Macbeth to demonstrate the dreadful effects that empty ambition can have on a man who lacks strength of character, using a temporal tone to highlight the futility of life and answering the question: can a lust for power lead to loss of humanity?

Shakespeare, in his plays, often uses the repetition of a word, not because he cannot think of a synonym, but to place emphasis on that word and therefore the idea conveyed by the use of the word. Macbeth is no exception. Macbeth takes place in Scotland in the 11th century and discusses the issues of equivocation, fate, the future, and paranoia, as if to warn and inform the audience about such issues. Shakespeare wanted to inform the public about the consequences of equivocation - the use of ambiguous language to hide the truth - and to reassure them about placing their trust in the King, both because of the Gunpowder Plot, which had occurred not long before the writing of the play. Macbeth warns about the danger of tempting fate while indirectly persuading the audience to rebuild their trust in the monarchy, which had been precarious because of the long-lasting religious persecution. To convey this theme, Shakespeare uses the repetition of several words, a prominent one being ‘man’. All of the uses of ‘man’ rely on the social standards of the time, which dictated the behavior and traits of men and women. These social ‘rules’ were rarely broken, and those who did not abide by them were ridiculed. Shakespeare expands on the meaning of these rules through his uses of the word ‘man’, and other terms relating to gender, which convey one of three distinct social ideas: what a man is, what a man should be, and what a man should not be.

I have been given the task and privilege of directing the film Macbeth, (Macbeth) and the essay will examine many aspects of the play including the main characters, personalities, themes as well as the important incidents in the film and the historical background. I have chosen Lady Macbeth as the main character for discussion.