Universality Of Macbeth Essay

"Macbeth" is a tragic play that was written by William Shakespeare in the early 1600’s. It revolved around the character Macbeth and his urge to become king of Scotland. Macbeth had to do anything possible to become the king including murder, lying, and deception. However, Macbeth committed these evil deeds due to some influential people in his life. Between Macbeth’s wife persuading him to do anything to become king and the witches prophesying over him causes Macbeth to try and bury the past and control the future.

     In Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of Macbeth the main character Macbeth is driven from his status as a well respected warrior and lord of not one, but two Scottish regions to a dishonest, unloyal murderer. Macbeth gets caught in a web of lies and vile acts of murder in which he brings about his own demise. His criminal actions lead up to his tragic ending of life. ‘ They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But bearlike I must fight the course.’ His great ambition and gullibility of the witches predictions are two of the biggest factors of his downfall;however, Lady Macbeth was probably the biggest influence in the whole tragedy.

After he kills Duncan, Macbeth carries all the guilt, and is too shaken by shame to continue, while Lady Macbeth either feels no guilt, or represses it, because she is able to continue the deed and frame Duncan’s guards.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the theme of guilt and conscience is one of many explored throughout the play. Macbeth, is a well respected Scottish noble who in the beginning of the play is a man everyone looks up to; however as the play progresses he makes a number of bad decisions. Eventually, as a result of his actions he suffers guilt and this plays heavily upon his character until his personality is completely destroyed. Shakespeare uses a range of techniques in order to develop this theme such as, characters, imagery.

There is a constant war waging between good and evil in everyday life. It may be a war between two fractions that feel they are both in the right or an internal battle of good and evil. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth the titular character and his wife are battling against the true nature of themselves and in each other. Although they are known and seen by others as virtuous, their unsatisfactory greed and ambition lead both characters to become immoral.

In the beginning of the play Macbeth and Macduff are very similar in many aspects including rank, leadership, belief, and loyalty. But as the play unfolds, Shakespeare reveals these two characters are as different as night from day. In this essay I will compare and contrast the characters of the murderous Macbeth, and the forthright Macduff. I will consider their status within the Scottish society and the depth of their intelligence. I will also evaluate their actions and their relationships with other characters, including their families and I will discuss their degrees of ambition.

Even after he talked to the witches, Macbeth at times, seems to move through the play with murder slowly creeping on his mind. He follows a “ dagger of the mind” (2.1). Macbeth is nothing more than a victim of his own prophecies, which at the same time made him a murderer.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the title character Macbeth and his wife are both exceptionally ambitious, often taking rather radical measures to accomplish their goals. While this ruthless drive to power is seemingly prosperous at first, it quickly crumbles to naught as guilt infects their minds with grim consequences to follow. Macbeth transforms from a noble general to a guilt-ridden and despaired murderer, while Lady Macbeth’s usually stoic and masculine persona deteriorates into a pitiful and anxious shell of her former self. The feeling of remorse quickly plagues the two characters and overpowers ambition through manifesting itself through nightmares, ghosts, and paranoia, and ultimately leads to their demise.

    Since The Tragedy of Macbeth was written there has been speculation about the cause of Macbeth's downfall.  Readers ponder whether Macbeth's fall was caused by a flaw in his character, Lady Macbeth, or an outside force of evil.  Although the witches set a certain mood and Lady Macbeth exerts a certain influence on him, Macbeth's downfall is caused by his own character.

According to the classical view, tragedy should arouse feelings of pity and fear in the audience. Does Macbeth do this?

During act one, scene seven of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the author began to tinker with the main character, Macbeth, and mold him into an antagonist. He did so by exposing his minor flaws, which eventually grew into gaping moral issues. Macbeth was a noble servant to the crown, but one could come to the understanding that, ultimately, he valued his ambition more than what he already had. This led to him becoming deceitful and dishonest towards his king and kinsman, Duncan, who eventually murdered. However, Macbeth knew before the slaughter that the action that he would commence was morally incorrect, and this was one of his tragic flaws; Shakespeare did this on purpose.

of King Duncan's army. His personal powers and strength as a general won him the

comes to an agreement with himself that he will not go out of his way

The story of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a classic one of betrayal and destiny. One of the major themes of the play is the use of equivocation to create ambiguity. The definition of equivocation from the Oxford dictionary is: the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication. The very definition of equivocation contains the use of ambiguity, thus making the two very connected in terms of the story of the play. Equivocation is used multiple times throughout the piece to create a sense of uncertainty, which in turn makes the reader not sure of what will happen next. This makes the reading of the play very compelling. Shakespeare uses equivocation to make the reader think one thing,

In the article “The Moral Thinking of Macbeth,” Gregory Keller briefly writes about the predictions for Macbeth and how he and Lady Macbeth respond to them. She mentions how Macbeth struggles with his “Conscience” in the dagger scene and how Macbeth has to kill Duncan because Lady Macbeth cannot. Keller’s main question was, “Does thinking make an ethical difference or does it fall short, at least in the case of Macbeth, motivating good…” She goes into depth about everyday experiences and how people analyze them. “The tales of everyday life are told in part for the way in which they expose a particular movement of living, a sequence of thinking, acting, and judging that we have come to prize or fear, that relates as a particular movement of