Shakespeare's Ultimate Regicide

Shakespeare wrote six plays involving regicide: in chronological order, Richard the Third, Titus
Andronicus, Richard the Second, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth. 1 At the most fundamental
level, however, the first four of these plays have history as their narrative base and, of the two other
tragedies, Hamlet is more about avenging a father/king's murder than about king killing. In the
representation of regicide as such, they all lead to Macbeth, both sequentially and aesthetically.
Macbeth offers the most concentrated and archetypal exploration of the whole process as well as the
magnitude and consequences of king killing, the direst offence against the moral codes sustained by
the dominant ideology in the playwright's socio-historical background.
In order to understand the nature of king killing as a moral transgression in Shakespeare's
plays, we must understand the nature of government and of kingship, particularly as conceived by
Shakespeare's contemporaries. Some elements essential to king killing are the motives for the
criminal act, the magnitude of the transgression, including the act's impact on the state of the realm,
and the impact the whole undertaking bears on the perpetrator of the act. By comparing the ways in
which Macbeth and the other plays involving regicide handle these elements, I hope to establish that,
as the ultimate regicidal play, Macbeth delivers the most explicit and extensive moral lesson against
ethical misdeeds in general and regicide in particular, in a tragedy of human aspiration which goes
off a certain limit.

I.
Killing the head of a state is not just any criminal transgression: it has an overwhelming impact,
among other things, on the order of the state. But in Shakespeare's time, it contains ethical
repercussions far beyond its political impact.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived in a world ruled largely by faith and moral codes.
As an ethical system governing the conduct of members of society, the state religion preached a faith
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in the teleological design of the world. One official homily advising obedience to authority and
submission to the status quo gives a description of the divine order of the universe. It is worth
quoting at some length for the way it incorporates both social and natural orders in the hierarchies of
the divine plan:
Almightie God hath created and appoynted all thynges, in heaven, yearth, and
waters, in a moste excellent and perfect order. In heaven he hath appoynted distincte
Orders and states of Archangelles and Angelles. In the yearth he hath assigned
Kyngs, princes, with other gouernors under them, all in good and necessarie order . .
. The Sonne, Moone, Starres . . . do kepe their order . . . All the partes of the whole
yere, as Winter, Somer Monethes, Nightes and Dais, continue in their order . . .
Every degree of people, in their vocacion, callyng, and office, hath appointed to them
their duetie and order. Some are in high degree, some in lowe, some Kynges and
Princes, some inferiors and subjects. 2
This perfect teleological design formed the basis of the ideology of the so-called Elizabethan World
Picture. However, as Jonathan Dollimore tells us, "at the same time it was unthinkingly (and
perhaps sincerely) invoked by the preacher it was being exploited by the state" to keep the masses in
awe. 3 No violation of this divine order, it was obvious, could pass unpunished by the retributive
providence. This world picture may not still be, in the Elizabethan era, the unquestioned orthodoxy
that it was in the middle ages but, Dollimore argues on the same page, it was still prevalent "in
significant and complex ways—that is, as an amalgam of religious belief, aesthetic idealism and
ideological myth."
Kings, in this ideological system, are perfect earthly representations of the divine order, as
clearly indicated in the above quoted sermon. "The king," in the words of Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "is
the perfect impersonator of Christ on earth." Kantorowicz goes on to elaborate:
The power of the king is the power of God. This power, namely, is God's by nature,
and the king's by grace. Hence, the king, too, is God and Christ, but by grace; and
whatsoever he does, he does not simply as a man, but as one who has become God
and Christ by grace. 4
This concept of Christ-centred kingship is everywhere in Shakespeare's plays. Most notably in
Richard II, the king is more than once referred to as "God's substitute, / His deputy anointed in His
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sight" (I.ii.37-38); he is "the figure of God's majesty, / His captain, steward, deputy elect, / Anointed,
crowned, planted many years" (IV.i.125-27).
Related to the king's religious sanctity is the mythology of the king's two bodies—his body
natural and body politic—a concept which stems directly from the two bodies of Jesus Christ and the
recognition of the bishop's dual status. Edmund Plowden explicates the concept thus:
The King has two Capacities, for he has two Bodies, the one whereof is Body
natural, consisting of natural Members as every other Man has, and in this he is
subject to Passions and Death as other Men are; the other is a Body politic, and the
Members thereof are his Subjects, and he and his Subjects together compose the
Corporation, . . . and this Body is not subject to Passions as the other is, not to Death,
for as to this body the King never dies. . . . 5
The enigmatic guise and symbolic function of the king are further enhanced by the many aspects the
twinned conception of kingship takes on. In his dual capacity, the king has important legal, political,
social, ethical, and religious functions.
This concept of the king's dual capacity is familiar to Shakespeare's dramatic world. His
characters know full well that the king cannot just "Carve for himself," because his choice must be
"circumscrib'd / Unto the voice and yielding of that body / Whereof he is the head" (Hamlet, I.iii.22-
24). Even the Romans on Shakespeare's stage speak about setting "a head" on the "glorious body" of
Rome (Titus Andronicus, I.i.186-7).
Kings are not to be challenged just as divinity is not because, with their religious sanctity and
double capacity, kings stand for order and authority. John of Gaunt, in Richard II, says he may
"never lift an angry arm against" "God's substitute," and whatever judgement is to be made on the
king should be left to heaven (I.ii.37-41). The king's dignity and his laws are not to be subverted
even by the king himself. The king, York explains to Richard II, is not entitled to "take from Time /
His charters and his customary rights," since these are the things which guarantee the king's own
succession and rule, or he will "pluck a thousand dangers" on his own head (II.i.195-205).
Kingship being of such loftiness and consequence, king killing, by all measures, constitutes a
most heinous act—morally, religiously, and politically. The transgression against God lies not only
in killing God's deputy on earth, but also in its major motivation—ambition, which was officially
defined in the homilies as "the unlawful and restless desire in men to be of higher estate than God
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hath given or appointed unto them," 6 although the right to aspire toward a higher estate was ardently
upheld by Renaissance humanism. As a crime against the king's body politic, regicide is also a
crime of high treason. Thus king killing, with its multiple offenses, acquires a symbolic significance
as the direst crime, the most monstrous transgression. Macbeth offers just an archetypal case of such
a transgression.

II.
Among the motivations, or mixtures of motivations for killing the king in Shakespeare's plays,
ambition figures as the most predominant, precisely because it is the most rebellious. The desire to
replace a legitimate king, not to mention by killing him, rebellious against the almighty in heaven
and the supreme authority on earth, is a moral transgression in itself, and its outcome a sin as well as
a crime in the Elizabethan ideology. Ambition is the worst motive for king killing, and killing the
king the worst crime by ambition. What makes Macbeth the most concentrated and archetypal
representation of the most formidable transgression is essentially the combination of these two.
Macbeth depicts ambition as the sole motive for killing the king. The play begins with report
of Macbeth's valiant victory in service to Scotland and of golden opinions heaped upon him. But
"Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (I.i.11): the "fairness" shining on and in Macbeth is immediately
overshadowed by, and in his mind confused with, the foulness of his ambition. As Macbeth ponders
upon the witches' "supernatural soliciting" in his very first soliloquy (I.iii. 130ff), he reveals that the
thought of murder has indeed occurred to him already. Again, in the letter to his wife, where
Macbeth describes with suppressed excitement his encounter with the witches, he further discloses
his ambition. His "partner of greatness" (I.v.11) understands his message well; she says of him:
"Thou wouldst be great, / Art not without ambition," worrying only that he is "without / The illness
should attend it" (I.v.18-20).
Indeed, Macbeth's humanity, or lack of "illness," sets off the intensity of his ambition as a
cause to his inhuman pursuit. The contrast is given in his second soliloquy. Beside the dangers of
teaching bloody lessons, what halts Macbeth is his moral awareness. He says of Duncan,
He is here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
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Who should against his murtherer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off. (I,vii,12-20)
In addition, on the level of personal interests, Macbeth displays his indebtedness to "gracious
Duncan" (III.i.65):
He hath honor'd me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon. (I.vii. 32-35)
In conclusion, Macbeth confesses, "I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only /
Vaulting ambition" (I,vii,25-27). It is pure ambition that ultimately stifles his good senses, drives
him to the antithesis of moral and ethical conduct, and eventually brings about his own destruction.
By comparison, however, ambition does not figure so prominently as the impetus for killing
the king in the other plays. It is either mixed with other motives, as in the two English histories, or
does not constitute a part of the act at all, as in the Roman histories.
As the concluding play in Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy, Richard III brings to a
climax the struggle for the royal diadem, a progression from the dynastic rivalry in the Henry VI
plays to a drama of wanton personal ambition. It has many similarities with Macbeth, both being the
story of a man who wants to be king so badly that he is willing to murder but on becoming king is so
insecure that he has to wade deeper and deeper into blood. A history play in the chronical tradition
but, as Lily Bess Campbell has observed, bordering on tragedy 7 , Richard III follows the course of A
Mirror for Magistrates in giving admonition to the politically unscrupulous machiavel by the
destruction of Richard of Gloucester.
However, in 3 Henry VI, the preceding play, Richard is motivated first by the Yorkist's
rightful claim to the throne and then by the desire for revenge against the Lancastrians for the
ignominious slaying of his father. His ambition for the crown that motivates his action in his own
play is also suggested in the preceding one:
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So do I wish the crown, being so far off,

And so I chide the means that keeps me from it,
And so, I say, I'll cut the causes off,
Flattering me with impossibilities. (3 Henry VI, III.ii.140-43)
For the time being, however, he but dreams and wishes. But, if he has mixed motives for killing the
Lancastrian King and Prince of Wales in 3 Henry VI, his murdering three Yorkist royal hopefuls in
his own play—his brother Clarence, his nephews Princes Edward and York—who stand, in his own
words, "between my soul's desire and me," is the result of his sheer wickedness and evil ambition
which he openly declares in the passage above and in the opening soliloquy to his own play.
The feud between the two royal houses and his own wickedness together may drive Richard
to be the bloodiest of Shakespeare's assassins, but they do not make him a good paradigm for a
moral lesson. To start with, the political setting with factional striving and dynastic struggles in
which Richard finds himself—even with the emphasis on personal ambition—tend to defuse the
moral dimension of his crimes. Secondly, Richard is presented as a machiavellian villain. His
unnatural birth and the hump on his back become in the play symbols of his born wickedness. Like
the Bastard Edmund in King Lear, he feels that since he is born out of the normal, no law of nations
is binding to him. His syllogism may be unseemly but he is able to justify his crimes with a rationale
as deformed as he is physically:
. . . since the heavens have shaped my body so,
Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word "love" which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me: I am myself alone. (3 Henry VI, V.vi.78-83)
The destruction of a villain with whom nobody can identify delivers little apprehension to "men like
one another" and, therefore, reduces the universality of the admonition. For Macbeth, who, on the
contrary, "is full o' th' milk of human kindness" (I.v.16-17) and therefore with whom "men like one
another" can associate easily, wickedness is but a consequence of his fatal flaw, ambition. Richard
III's hunch back, as an outward symbol of evil, is transformed into Macbeth's air-borne dagger—the
evil that is inside him, which lends his story a psychological depth. Macbeth is driven to regicide
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and usurpation by ambition, and further wickedness is subsequent to or the consequences of

ambition, to which if he had not succumbed, he could still be an acclaimed hero and a noble thane.
In Richard II, the history fifth in order of composition, the playwright "is less committed
[than in Richard III] to building political propaganda out of obvious moral symmetries and the moral
lessons they convey." 8 Also a history play, Richard II is a study of kingship and usurpation in a
political atmosphere. There is no outright ambitious villain as Richard III, but over-reaching desire
is still behind the dethronement and eventual death of a king, although that desire seems to be mixed
with, and to have grown from, a justifiable one for revenge.
Judging the king, which John of Gaunt would rather leave to heaven, is taken by
Bullingbrook into his own hands. The action is to some extent justified, since the king has
committed injustice not only against him as an individual but also against the divine decree of
inheritance. Richard's banishing of Bullingbrook (and Mowbray) is motivated by a desire to conceal
his accountability in Gloucester's death and a fear of Henry's "courtship to the common people"
(I.iv.24). Apart from the banishment, he inflicts further injury on Henry. Immediately after the
death of Henry's father, John of Gaunt, Richard orders:
Towards our assistance we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd, (II.i. 160-162)
thus depriving Bullingbrook of a rightful inheritance for his own indulgence. This deprivation, as a
violation of linearity, comprises rebellion against the divine law of succession, which is also a law
his own body politic is based on. Therefore, Bullingbrook stands on good ground for revenge when
he leads an army against Richard II. In Northumberland's words, he would be Duke of Lancaster
"richly in both" title and revenue "if justice had her right" (II.i.227). Justice does appear to have her
right in rallying many nobles and a strong army around Bullingbrook, and in reinstating to him all
that he has been ignominiously deprived of.
But injustice is also there. Even though Richard II is not a good king, he is a legitimate one.
Leading an army against him and eventually depriving him of his crown and causing his death is
high treason and regicide. Just as public opinion went with Bullingbrook before, now discontent
emerges in his court as soon as he is crowned king. Revenge has given way to ambition, which
leads to usurpation and regicide. The pin-pointing of Bullingbrook's ambition, however, is difficult.
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Certainly it is hinted at early in the play when King Richard says of him, "How high a pitch his
resolution soars!" (I.i.109), and when Richard says again later, we have
Observ'd his courtship to the common people,
...
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope. (I.iii.24-36)
In addition, Henry later admits to guilt for the way in which he came to the throne, but that is in the
next plays in the sequence, 1 and 2 Henry IV. In Richard II, the crime of regicide does not come
until nearly the end of the play. All but seventy lines of the dramatic action are mainly concerned
with the character of the rival cousins and the qualities of kingship. In other words, even though
Bullingbrook's usurpation has a perilous and prolonged political impact, his ambition as shown in
the play is clearly nowhere near that of Macbeth's in either intensity or moral magnitude.
Titus Andronicus comes least close to Macbeth among these of Shakespeare's plays.
Although there is a "king" killed, king killing has little to do with the main action, nor does ambition
comprise a motive in causing the king's death. Titus has neither ambition nor any other motive or
clear intention to assassinate Saturninus. He could have been emperor had he not supported the
latter for the crown and, in fact, it was Saturninus who kills Titus and is then killed by the son of
Titus in a surge of revengeful retaliation. The emperor's death is but a byproduct of Titus's revenge
against Tamora rather than the central focus of the tragedy.
Shadows of ambition and usurpation do exist but only in the emperor himself, and they do
not lead to or result in regicide. Although Saturninus is the eldest son of the late emperor,
succession by primogeniture is not necessary and, as the play clearly shows, he comes out to seize
the crown by might rather than right or merit. Twice he calls out to his followers, "draw your
swords," "Plead my successive title with your swords" (I.i.4). That he does not have to kill to get the
imperial crown is only because the noble Titus, who would have won the title by election had he
such aspirations, transfers it to him. If anything, the ambition or, rather, greed for the imperial
diadem displayed in Saturninus merely dilutes any condemnation of the emperor's being killed. The
shade of ambition perceived in Saturninus has nothing to do with regicide.
Julius Caesar's ambition is unfulfilled. That, however, does not mean that it is not perceived.
In fact, his first words in the whole play conspicuously deal with his concern for an heir. The scene
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takes place immediately after Caesar returns from defeating Pompey and renders the triumvirate
paralysed, and is presented with comical seriousness:
Caes. Calphurnia!
Casca. Peace ho, Caesar speaks.
Caes. Calphurnia!
Cal. Here, my lord.
Caes. Stand you directly in Antonio's way
When he doth run his course. Antonio!
Ant. Caesar, my lord?
Caes. Forget not in your speed, Antonio,
To touch Calphurnia; for our elders say,
The barren, touched in this holy chase,
Shake off their sterile curse. (I.ii.1-9)
This "sterile curse" on Caesar's part contrasts sharply with his self-infatuation; and his wishes to
shake it off, under such particular circumstances, cannot but imply some dynastic aspiration.
Caesar's ambition is also suggested in his mock coronation. Through Casca's mouth, we learn that
Caesar is offered a crown three times, albeit "not a crown neither"; and that "he put it by thrice,
every time gentler than other"; but "he was very loath to lay his fingers off it" (I.ii,236-42). He even
"swooned" and fell under the stress, a show which again stands as a mockery to his conceit and a
revelation of his mind. Furthermore, Caesar's sense of danger also reflects some dark intention on
his part. Right after his third appearance at the Capitol, he points out the danger that lies in Cassius,
who is to be feared because, Caesar says, he "thinks too much; such men are dangerous," and he
"looks quite through the deeds of men," especially those of "a greater" man (I.ii. 201-210). Caesar's
fears of Cassius somewhat resembles Macbeth's fear of Banquo because Banquo too "hath a
wisdom" that may see through Macbeth's deed. Certainly this "greater" man is up to some deed that
he fears to be seen through.
However, even though Caesar challenges the constituted authority of Rome for personal
power, his ambition is never directly laid bare. It is either implied by way of his self indulgence, or
observed by his enemies, or betrayed by his own fears. Besides, his ambitious plan is not
completely acted out.
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Even if we treat his defeating Pompey and dissolving the triumvirate as figuratively
regicidal, his usurpation never becomes a fact—he is not crowned emperor. By dint of this
fact, neither can his assassination be precisely called regicide. Furthermore, the motivations for his
assassination do not start from ambition. Brutus acts out of loyalty to Rome, and Cassius out of
jealousy of Caesar. None of the assassins, in fact, cherishes that over-reaching desire which resides
in either Claudius or Macbeth. The basest motives for striking down Caesar appear trivial vis a vis
Macbeth's motive.
Hamlet is the only play other than Macbeth in which pure ambition is featured, but the act of
king killing precedes the play. What has happened is either indicated by the Ghost's request for
revenge or by the play-within-the-play which serves as Hamlet's test of Claudius. Both suggest no
reason other than ambition and lust for Claudius to murder his brother, King Hamlet, and take his
crown and queen. The motives of the murder are also directly presented by the perpetrator himself
in one of his few soliloquies as "My crown, my own ambition, and my queen" (III.iii.55).
Hamlet, like Macbeth, is farther removed from its remote origins, legendary or historical,
than any of the other regicidal plays which have history as their narrative base, and therefore can
also present its subject matters more theatrically. However, Hamlet is more precisely a revenge
play. It develops around the revenger rather than the murderer; around the revenger's much delayed
action owing to his suspicions, conjectures, tests, indecision, hesitation, rather than the usurper's
regicidal action, which has already happened before the play starts, and forms only the cause and
groundwork for the play's action. Although enunciated by Claudius in the prayer scene, the ambition
displayed in Hamlet does not enjoy the full-fledged portrayal as in Macbeth. It is only in Macbeth
that ambition and its results become the full meaning of action.

III.
Regicide typically entails manifold moral and social transgressions—murder, fratricide or patricide,
the usurpation and abuse of power, and high treason. Each and every one of these transgressions, in
light of the official homilies quoted earlier, is a crime against the natural and social orders which
God has outlined in a unified divine plan, and each and every one of these transgressions is found in
Macbeth's murder of Duncan. The multiplicity of Macbeth's crime is such it surpasses the
magnitude of that of all other regicides.
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Macbeth murders the king's body natural and, thereby, kills the head of the realm of the
Scottish body politic which, the exiled Malcolm laments, "sinks beneath the yoke: / It weeps, it
bleeds, and each new day a gash / Is added to her wounds" (IV.iii.39-41). The condition as
described is the result of Macbeth's tyrannical rule. He has become so suspicious and full of fear
that Scotland itself as well as individuals like Banquo and Macduff suffer. Bringing news from
Scotland to Malcolm, Rosse also reports,
Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile. (IV.iii.164-67)
On top of the crime of removing the head of Scotland's body politic, Macbeth places in his
stead a usurper king, a misfit, a tyrant. He is himself keenly aware that he is wearing "borrowed
robes" (I.iii.109). Therefore, in a futile effort to stabilize his shaky rule, and to prevent the "Bloody
instructions" from returning to "plague on th' inventor" (I.vii.9-10), he hunts after Banquo and others
who suspect his foul play, killing even Macduff's innocent family.
It is true that all regicides cause devastations to the king's body politic, bringing war, famine,
an often tyrannical rule to the country, but Macbeth's plunging the country from fair sunshine into
utter darkness has a totally shattering effect on the state. In both Titus Andronicus and Richard II,
the reigning monarchs have already rendered "high majesty" wasteful, and their removal does not
bring their countries into much worse condition than they are already in. In Titus Andronicus,
Saturninus's ascending the throne smells of usurpation and does more harm than good to the realm,
therefore his taking off cannot be much worse to the realm; the play begins with a headless Rome
and ends with Rome headless.
Kingship is a prominent issue throughout Richard II. King Richard himself is at the same
time the symbol as well as the violator of divine order and of state order. He has, by usurping the
Lancastrian patrimony, broken the law his body politic rests on. Therefore already "The King is not
himself" (II.i.241); he is rather a "wasteful king" that had not "trimm'd and dress'd his land" properly
(III.iv.55-57); his troops are "well assured Richard their king is dead" (II.iv.17), which is
symbolically apt and eventually self-fulfilling. His enemies, not surprisingly, accuse him of
"grievous crimes / Committed . . . / Against the state and profit of this land" (IV.i.223-5). Although
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it is prophesied that with Bullingbrook's usurpation "The blood of English shall manure the ground, /
And future ages groan for this foul act" (IV.i.136-8), the present state is already in chaos, as the
Welsh Captain observes,
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven,
The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change, . . . (II.iv.8-11)
Richard II has weakened his body politic so much, that it becomes imperative to launch a rebellion
to "make high majesty look like itself" (II.i.295). In this perspective, Bullingbrook's crime against
the state is a quantitative addition on top of that committed by Richard II.
Bullingbrook's usurpation will, in turn, incur "tumultuous wars" which
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound.
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny
Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd
The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls. (IV.i.140-144)
We may suspect the neutrality of this prediction since it comes from Bullingbrook's adversary, but as
it refers to the War of the Roses, the audience would know that what Carlisle is saying comes to
pass. Bullingbrook's crime against the state is certainly no lesser in magnitude than Macbeth's. Yet
it is a crime committed in reprimand of another, and therefore falls short of the drastic and totally
shattering impact exerted by Macbeth's crime. In another note, Henry's unlineal body natural in
Richard II is given a more subtle and symbolic representation in Macbeth's "borrowed
robes"(I.iii.109), which elevates a political case to a more universally moral one.
Likewise, in murdering King Henry VI who lacks linearity owing to his grandsire's
usurpation, Richard of Gloucester may be seen as an involuntary agent of providential retribution
(Campbell, 123), while nonetheless inflicting further and more atrocious offenses against the state,
as well as against God. In fact, Richard is made to bear all the political crimes of both the Houses of
Lancaster and York. By killing the many royals of both Houses and placing his misshapen body
natural on the throne, he surely does the body politic formidable damages. But except for a few
mentions of Richard as a bloody tyrant, he is more notorious as a "murtherous Machevil" (3 Henry
VI, III.ii.193). The picture is more of Richard's craftiness and wickedness than the political
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repercussions his acts incur.

Claudius, like other regicides, causes the demise of the Danish body politic by killing the
king's body natural and usurping his crown. With his murder of King Hamlet, who is referred to as
"Denmark," "the time is out of joint" (I.v.188). Those who witness the ghost can sense that
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"(I.iv.90). To Hamlet, Denmark is plainly "a prison"
(II.ii.243). Yet "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (II.ii.249-50); the
rotten state seems to be evident only to those who have reasons to suspect something wrong.
Ostensibly, the state affairs are effectively run in the good hands of Claudius, who at the very first
appearance tactfully settles a border dispute by sending out envoys to Norway, and the move turns
out a success. This is where Claudius parts from other king killers—he does not seem to be a misfit
for the throne; indeed, he shows competence in his office as king. He is neither a misshapen
unnatural nor one whose roles of office are too big for him—unlike Richard III or Macbeth. Even
linearity is not too much of a problem with him: he does break the line of royal succession, but he
seems to try to mend it too by naming Hamlet his heir. Thus the magnitude of his crime against the
state is shown again not to match that of Macbeth's.
Apart from causing the demise of the king's body politic, Macbeth's crime consists also in kin
killing. Like Claudius, Macbeth murders not only a king, but a kinsman (Duncan calls him "valiant
cousin" [I.ii.24]). At a figurative level, however, the killing of Duncan can be seen as father killing,
for Lady Macbeth clearly states "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done't" (II.ii.12-
3). The killing of a kin is against the most basic human instinct, and against life and nature itself.
Macbeth says himself that the stabs he has made on Duncan's body "look'd like a breach in nature"
(II.iii.113). As an act of parricide it is "'Gainst nature still! / Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up /
Thine own live's means!" (II.iv.27)
Not only are these crimes unnatural, but they comprise a direct and literal "breach in nature,"
delivering as they do a shattering effect on the whole universe—earthly and heavenly. Nature
therefore produces very ominous signs. In the night of Duncan's murder, "Nature seems dead"
(II.i.50); the owls scream and crickets cry appallingly; it is observed afterwards that "The obscure
bird / Clamor'd the livelong night. Some say, the earth / Was feverous, and did shake" (II.iii.59-61);
more notably, Duncan's horses,
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race
 14

Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,

Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind. 'Tis said, they eat each other. (II.iv.14-18)
This is one of nature's exact copies of the deed done by Macbeth, who, "Valiant" and "worthy," has
turned wild and rebellious and has killed his own kin and king. Duncan's murder is also likened to
the fall of the sun that shines over Scotland. By wishing "O, never / Shall sun that morrow
see!"(I.v.60-61), Lady Macbeth hopes that Duncan will not live to see the next day; but she also
foretells the total darkness that Scotland is to be plunged into by the murder. Day and night, most
prominently, lose track of their natural cycles:
By th' clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of the earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it? 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. (II.iv.6-11)
Perverted and unnatural nature corresponds directly to the perverted and unnatural deed. Not until
the violator of the universal order and murderer of the sun is killed, and a new sun (Duncan's son)
put in place, will the total darkness be lifted.
None of Shakespeare's other regicidal plays places so much emphasis on darkness, so many
references to nature and its abnormality as does Macbeth. It is true that in killing the king, Richard
III, Bullingbrook and Claudius all kill their kinsmen and cause "breach[es] in nature" too. Richard
III's unnatural birth is the cause as well as the symbol of his hostility against life and nature. He
secretly hopes that "no hopeful branch may spring" from Edward's loins (3 Henry VI, III.ii.126). In
killing his nephews, he readily "smother[s] / The most replenished sweet work of Nature / That from
the prime creation e'er she fram'd" (IV.iii.17-19). Bullingbrook also makes "kin with kin and kind
with kind confound" (Richard II,IV.i.140) by killing his cousin and king. Claudius's deed is also
called "foul and most unnatural murther" (I.v.25). Richard III is responsible for the deaths of the
children in the Tower but at least he has reason (be it only his own) because they stand in his way to
the throne. Macbeth tries to have Fleance killed to prevent the son of Banquo succeeding to the
crown. However, the murders of Lady Macduff and her children are sheer wilful villainy, having no
 15

other reason than a fit of pique against Macduff. Not only does Macbeth portray violation against
nature to a singular degree, but it is a psychological case study of a murderer who turns from human
to a virtual beast.
On top of the manifold transgressions discussed above, Macbeth's crime consists of returning
evil for good and betrayal of trust, a breach of the simple common-sensical moral code. Duncan has
not only honoured Macbeth, but is also to labour to make him "full of growing" (I.iv.29). This
additional dimension, not seen in any other regicide, completes the moral spectrum violated. A
growing condition of aloneness, correspondingly, is dramatically personalized in Macbeth. In this
Macbeth can be compared to Richard III except that Richard himself declares "I have no brother."
Macbeth does have a wife, friends and admirers and his progressive solitude from them is within the
play. He loses Banquo his comrade in arms; he eliminates Lady Macbeth from his thoughts, by
asking her to "be innocent of the knowledge" (III.iii.45ff). Even in their last acts of heroism,
Richard flails out an embattled soldier against an army of adversaries; while Macbeth's is a personal
confrontation with Macduff whom he must face alone.
Macbeth's transgressions are multiple, covering every form of encroachment of all other
regicides combined. They are violations against nature, society, and God. They multiply his crime,
escalate the tension of moral conflict and, therefore, increase the magnitude of the tragedy and the
extent of social and political catastrophe, making his the most pathetic case of king killings.

IV.
Such crimes are of course to be punished, and the forms of punishment—death, loss of honour, of
crown, lack of scions—are not only most severe, but they also correspond to every form of violation
for which the deed is accountable. Waston observes,
Political realities as well as divine justice tend to make a usurper vulnerable to
counterusurpation, a regicide vulnerable to regicide, and an unlineal king incapable
of establishing a lineal succession. (14)
This spells out the exactitude of justice or of providential vengeance against the regicide. Macduff
killing the usurper king, Malcolm reclaiming his father's former throne, and Macbeth's leaving no
progeny behind are never more plainly indications of vengeance. Similarly, Richard III is killed
with no issue from his deformed body, and his crown is ripped off; Claudius is also killed with the
 16

rapier and poison of his own making. But the most deterring vengeance, the mental suffering and
psychological devastation that the regicide goes through, which is no less intimidating than the loss
of life, is never more effectively driven home than in Macbeth.
For the average person whose nature, like that of Macbeth's, "is full o' th' milk of human
kindness" (I.v.16-17), the first caution against wrong doing is the burden of moral conscience.
Macbeth, of all Shakespeare's king killers, is worst haunted by the agony of conscience,
understanding as he does fully well his triple obligations as kinsman, subject, and host, and the triple
ethical sinfulness of his fell purpose. To him the witches' prophetic greetings reveal a "horrid
image" (I.iii.135). His moral obligations protest against his wicked plan; his indebtedness to Duncan
for honouring him adds to the burden of conscience, and compels him to think twice:
We will proceed no further in this business:
He hath honor'd me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people. (I.vii. 31-33)
After the deed is done, the same guilty feeling makes "Amen" stick in his throat when he says he has
most need of blessing. The moral agony he suffers from also makes him see his "hangman's hands"
(II.ii.25-29), and compels him to insufferable anguish:
What hands are here? Hah! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red. (II.ii.56-60)
Even for Lady Macbeth, who is previously so determined to be unsexed and to have her
blood made thick (I.v.40-43), this agony of conscience compels her to a constant hand washing. She
recognizes in her dreams that "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand" (V.ii. 50-
51).
Beside the introspective moral apprehension that pierces Macbeth, fear is a constant
companion. Macbeth is afraid of the devastating consequences should the act result in failure
(I.vii.59). Even if the deed catches success and "trammel[s] up the consequence," he speaks
fearfully to himself,
... that we but teach
 17

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague th' inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th' ingredience of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. (I.vii.9-12)
That fear and anxiety in meditation becomes sensational horror once the bloody deed is performed.
The very first lines after the murder:
Macb. I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?
Lady M. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?
Macb. When?
Lady M. Now.
Macb. As I descended?
Lady M. Ay.
Macb. Hark! Who lies i' th' second chamber? (II.ii,14-17)
are full of doubts, fearful illusions, and anxious questions, all in short-breathed single-syllable
words. These half real half illusory sounds and sights keep haunting the Macbeths:
Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!"
...
"Glamis hath murther'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more." (II.ii.32-40)
From this moment on no peace of mind is ever to be enjoyed again. In retrospect, the less glorious
but infinitely more enjoyable peace of the past is lost for ever:
Nought's had, all's spent
Where our desire is got without content;
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (III.ii.4-7)
These words of Lady Macbeth describe the pathetic state of foully acquired glory. Apart from moral
burdens and constant fear that accompany ambition's action, the fruit turns out to be bitter too.
Psychological suffering, as a form of punishment, makes up one aspect of the admonition Macbeth
brings against cherishing any undue ambition or attempting any other ethical misdeed.
 18

That kind of psychological tension scarcely finds itself in Richard of Gloucester, who,
"determined to prove a villain" (I.i.30), is almost monolithically evil. Only at the night of his
doomsday when he is condemned by those angel-like ghosts, is he compelled to confront his twisted
selfhood. Even then he does not know whether he hates himself more than he loves himself:
What do I fear? Myself? There's none else by.
Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I.
...
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O no! Alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain; yet I lie, I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well; fool, do not flatter:
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murther, stern murther, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all us'd in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, "Guilty! guilty!"
I shall despair; . . . (V.iii.182-200)
He sounds more desperate than repentant. Being the dare-devil that he is, he never shows fear of the
consequences of his malicious deeds, except when he at last faces his doom. Richard dies a "most
deserved death" at which nobody pities him. He is an unrepentant villain with whom the audience
hardly associates. Mental suffering on the part of the king killer is hardly an issue in Richard III—
even as compared with Richard II.
When Shakespeare shifted from depicting evil incarnate to a concern with politics in the real
world, in Richard II, he brought in the mental predicament suffered by the usurper of the throne. In
saying "As I was banish'd I was banish'd Herford, / But as I come, I come for Lancaster" (II.iii.113-
4), Bullingbrook is able to justify his rebellion; but his usurpation of kingship puts him in fear, and
 19

King Richard's death brings burden to his conscience. He therefore offers, at the end of the play, to
do penance in order "To wash this blood off [his] guilty hand" (V.vi.50), though it might not be
totally for conscience's sake. This agony of conscience is dramatized more and more until in
Macbeth it culminates.
Brutus, in the next instance, honestly agonizes over the conflict of moral obligations to
Caesar and to republican Rome. He, as Portia observes, suddenly arises at supper, walks about,
musing and sighing, and too impatiently stamps his foot (II.i.238-44). To him,
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. (II.i.63-65)
But what separates him from the other king killers is that he has no personal interest whatsoever in
killing Caesar. His agonies are of a completely different sort: "Not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I
lov'd Rome more" (III.ii.21-22). If there is any cautionary undertone in his tragedy, it will be far
from comparable with Macbeth's.
Claudius, as a secondary character in his play, shows more guilty anguish than any of his
predecessors. His self-scrutiny borders on self-condemnation:
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burthen! (III.i.50-53)
And the weight of this "heavy burthen" presses him to fall apraying, even though he knows he will
not be pardoned if he is to "retain th' offense":
O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't
A brother's murther. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
... What if this cursed hand
were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
 20

To wash it white as snow? (III.ii.36-46)

But retain the spoils of the offense he does. It is only occasionally that Claudius's mental plight is
shown. Very soon, his inner world is closed, and he resumes his wicked plotting. Fear is also his
companion. He keeps a close watch on Hamlet lest the "bloody lesson" "commends th' ingredience
of [his] poison'd chalice to [his] own lips" (Macbeth, I.vii.9-12), which inevitably happens.
Macbeth's fear, in comparison, is much more sensational, intense, expanded, and sustained.
The moral lesson Macbeth delivers consists also of a level hardly figurative for
Shakespeare's contemporaries. Going against nature, plainly stated, will most surely have "the
multiplying villainies of nature" "swarm upon" the perpetrator (I.ii.11-12). Macbeth's crime, as I
have shown earlier, causes numerous perversions in nature. And these perversions of nature turn
back to plague on the Macbeths by breeding their worst nightmares. Macbeth forfeits that aspect of
his own nature which was fostered by the milk of human kindness and, as a result, he turns himself
into a virtual beast that lacks "the season of all natures" (III.v.140); his uncustomary illusions and
unnatural behaviour in the banquet scene is now to be taken "as a thing of custom" (III.iv.96) as if it
were natural to him. When Macbeth falters about "this business" by saying "I dare do all that may
become a man; / Who dares [do] more is none," his wife rebukes him by asking "What beast was't
then / That made you break this enterprise to me" (I.vii.46-48). Thus, having done more than
becomes a man, Macbeth loses his manhood and become a human nullity, a "beast." As well, Lady
Macbeth's hopes to alter nature, including her own natural trait and cycle, do seem to help her fulfil
her ambition on the one hand, but on the other, they also cause all natural cycles to collapse on her.
She wishes that "Never shall sun that morrow see," and the murder of the sun has plunged the
murderers into endless darkness, despite that she "has light by her continually" (V.i.22-23); she
wishes her own cycle to be stalled ("make thick my blood"), and consequently, her day and night,
sleeping and waking are all confounded. The Doctor's remarks on Lady Macbeth's somnambulism
carry a poignantly reverse sense: "A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of
sleep and do the effects of watching" (V.i.9-11). "Unnatural deeds / Do breed unnatural troubles"
(V.i.71). What finally brings about Macbeth's destruction is also nature metamorphosed: "none of
woman born" and the marching Birnan wood.
Further, the regicidal tragedy is also the Oedipal tragedy. "In fact," Watson puts it aptly,
"Macbeth's misdeed resembles the one Freud says civilization was formed to suppress: the murder of
 21

the ruling father of the first human clan" (85). The crime of regicide is a crime committed against
the patriarchal ruler. The admonition in such a tragedy is that if one kills one's father and stops the
fountain of one's own blood (Macbeth, II.iii.98-99), one also sterilizes oneself and is no longer able
to father any offspring. This warning is never more explicitly enacted than in Macbeth. Duncan as
the father figure is clearly indicated by Lady Macbeth: "Had he not resembled / My father as he
slept, I had done't." When Macbeth feels that his hands are to pluck out his eyes, he is also giving a
direct allusion to Oedipus, who plucks out his eyes upon realizing that he killed his father and
married his mother. The seedless consequence for breaking the line of royal succession is already
foreshadowed early in the play by the "strange intelligence" (I.iii.76) in the weird sisters, who place
"a fruitless crown" on Macbeth's head, and "a barren sceptre" in his gripe (III.i.60-61). And indeed,
fate 9 does have Macbeth die heirless.
Slight variations of this warning appear in Richard III, Julius Caesar and in Hamlet. None
of the usurper/regicides in these plays manage to produce progeny, let alone secure their succession.
Claudius's killing a brother and marrying his widow is a close variation of the Oedipal tragedy, and
no scion to him is mentioned. Julius Caesar also deals with the issue of an heir. Caesar returns
victorious, yet his first concern is to shake off his sterile curse. This not only undermines Caesar's
conceit, but also makes the concern trivial in comparison with Macbeth's vexation over his inability
to secure a lineal succession.

V.
There is a flip side to the regicidal drama, the carrying out of punishment against the ill-doing or
criminal king. The orthodox Christian position is that only God can administer justice and punish
his earthly agent, for He says "Justice is mine" (Rom. 12:19). Private vengeance, which is a
usurpation of the authority of God, is forbidden. However, Shakespeare's representation of
punishment of the criminal king, which grows from a just purgation of the state or an unjust personal
revenge in the earlier plays to a union of these two in Macbeth, indicates a gradual justification of
the personal revenge. It also gives a sense of progression.
The Earl of Richmond, in Richard III, the earliest of these plays, is clearly a purger of the
state. Coming from the untainted line of the Lancastrian family, and later uniting both houses by a
marriage with Elizabeth of York, he appears as a God-sent saviour who purges the state of the arch
 22

evil Richard III, on whom is gathered all the political crimes committed during the War of the Roses.
Although the souls of Richard's victims appear to curse him, they are more like angels bringing him
a message of providential vengeance than personal revengers. This vengeance is given all the glory.
Whereas personal revenge, taken by Richard of Gloucester against the Lancastrians, is
unequivocally profane and ultimately punished.
In Titus Andronicus, even though the Emperor does and acquiesces in grave wrongs to Titus,
revenge against him is never a question, even that against Tamora is very much belated. Titus is
referred to as a man "so just that he will not revenge" (Titus Andronicus, IV.i.129). Revenge is
clearly not justice, still less upon the king.
In Richard II, John of Gaunt sticks to the orthodox position and prefers to "let heaven
revenge" any wrong on the part of the King (I.ii.40). Duke of York strongly repudiates
Bullingbrook's personal attempts to "Be his own carver and cut out his way, / To find out right with
wrong—it may not be," he emphasizes (II.iv.144-5). But Bullingbrook goes against his father and
uncle by taking revenge into his own hands. To some his action is "justice ha[ving] her right," even
York ends up complying with him. This issue of personal revenge is apparently a point of
contention. However, in the final analysis, personal revenge is still a sinful and criminal act, since
Bullingbrook's action, as usurpation of divine authority, leads to his eventual usurpation of the state.
Things take a turn in Hamlet, where revenge is the subject matter. Hamlet the personal
revenger constantly finds himself on the borderline between antithetical realms. Even to the Ghost
requiring revenge, he throws similar doubts:
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked, or charitable. (I.iv.40-44)
Such murkiness between good and ill so "puzzles the will" that his conscience makes him a coward,
and he almost completely lost "the name of action" (III.i.79-87). "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind" to
act or not in his revenge is indeed the key question of the whole play. But weighing the matter over
with Horatio, Hamlet is finally able to argue,
Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon—
He that hath kill'd my king and whor'd my mother,
Popp'd in between th' election and my hopes,
 23

Thrown out his angle for my proper life,

And with such coz'nage—is't not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm? And is't not to be damn'd
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil? (V.ii.63-70)
These questions, like many others in the play, are not given a clear answer. But the open ends do
incline to doubt the position taken by John of Gaunt in Richard II.
With the transition of Hamlet, the action of revenge is much easier to justify in Macbeth.
Personal revenge against a criminal king is justified in that it is presented as one and the same with
providential vengeance. Malcolm is a combination of Richmond and Hamlet, standing as a purger
of state and revenger of a father/king's murder. Macduff, without Richmond's royal background, is
also given full confirmation to avenge the state and avenge his wife and children. Both are confident
in their "great revenge" (IV.iii.214).
In conclusion, Macbeth tops all of Shakespeare's regicidal plays, not only in the magnitude of
the crime, but also in the retribution administered to the criminal. The cautionary pattern against
political Machiavellianism shaped by the propagandistic attribute of Richard III and the realistic
portrayal in Richard II gains in universal and metaphysical dimensions and creates a moral drama in
Macbeth. The ghosts, for example, that were a nightmare for Richard III have become internal
waking fixations for Macbeth (the dagger, Banquo in the place of honour at the banquet). In
Macbeth, the destruction of the regicide/usurper is at the same time complete and yet restricted to
the person. On the one hand, the nation does not have to share the guilt of the political struggles as
in the histories; Scotland must be purged of the one usurper, the one regicide and that purgation is
carried out by the two men most injured by Macbeth's actions. On the other, the guilt which the
private Henry IV suffers while the public Henry continues to be a winner has become a force which
affects both man and ruler in Macbeth; both disintegrate.
Furthermore, despite its shortness and simplicity in action, Macbeth delves deep into the
inner world of the criminal to portray the process of his degeneration. None of the other king killers
would have said "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me / Without my stir"
(I.iii.143-4), nor do they suffer from the illusions as Macbeth does in the banquet scene; acts which
in Titus Andronicus, in Julius Caesar, in Richard III and Richard II, and in Hamlet are motivated by
 24

justified revenge or concern, by uncertainty, by fear, or by self-preservation, become senseless acts

of brutality in the murders of Macduff's wife and son.
Macbeth's increasing aloneness also makes him stands out. Titus has his brother Marcus and
the son whom he has protected from harm; Henry IV has nobles like Warwick to reassure him and a
son to advise; Brutus has other conspirators to share the guilt and an enemy who dubs him the
"noblest Roman of them all;" even Claudius has until the last minute the deceived Gertrude and
Laertes. Step by step Macbeth loses Banquo, other friends and thanes, and his wife, becoming
totally alone in the end to brood on his losses—those things which he must "not look to have," and
to face divine vengeance.
Macbeth's personal sense of loss leads to the great sense of loss which is an essential part of
any great tragedy, the sense that somehow the world is less because of the death of the hero. The
flashback which the final scenes of Macbeth provide recalls the "valiant cousin, worthy gentleman"
(I.ii.24) of the beginning of the play, the fleeing image of all that might have been.
Macbeth concludes the subject for Shakespeare: he wrote no more on king killing.

Zhijian Tao
McGill University

Notes

1. For the dates of Shakespeare's plays, I follow those suggested in the introductory remarks preceding each play in the
Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974). However, there are different speculations on the dates,
that of Titus Andronicus being least certain.

2. E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1944), 19.

3. Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his
Contemporaries (London: Harvester Press, 1984), 6.

4. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton UP,
1957), 48.

5. From Edmund Plowden's Commentaries or Reports, quoted by Kantorowicz, 13.

 25

6. Sermon or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory (London: C
& J Rivington, 1825), 650.

7. See L.B.Campbell, Shakespeare's "Histories": Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino: The Huntington Library,
1968), Chpt. XVI. This book will be referred to as "Campbell" hereafter.

8. Robert N. Watson, Shakespeare and the Hazards of Ambition (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984), 34.

9. In Shakespeare's time the word "weird" was in a transition between its old English meaning "fate" (spelt "wyrd") and
its modern sense of "unearthly" and "strange," so the weird sisters can stand for evil temptation as well as fate.