DR.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY,

LUCKNOW

LITERATURE REVIEW

MACBETH

SUBMITTED BY SUBMITTED TO

SHRESHTHA ADITYA DR. ALKA SINGH

B.A.LL.B (HONS.) ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR (ENGLISH)

ROLL NO. 132

 INTRODUCTION

Macbeth was written in 1606 by William Shakespeare, during the reign of king James I, who
succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James I supported Shakespeare’s acting company, and
among all the plays written by Shakespeare, Macbeth most clearly reflect Shakespeare’s
relationship with the king. In writing Macbeth, Shakespeare showed what would be the future of
Scotland in terms of the Kingship. In the play, the witches’ prophesize that Banquo will be the
father of kings showing that James’s family are the descendants of him.

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest and the bloodiest play. It tells the story about a man
(Macbeth) who kills his king so as to become the king of Scotland and commits further murders
to maintain his power. Macbeth was a brave Scottish general who receives a prophecy from three
weird witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Full of ambitious thoughts and
being provoked by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and seizes the throne of Scotland.
He begins his reign with guilt and fear but soon becomes a tyrannical king, as he commits more
crimes to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. This massacre gradually turns Macbeth and
Lady Macbeth to arrogance, madness, and eventually leads to their death.

Macbeth is not a complex play as it is based on a true Historical account but it is definitely
Shakespeare’s most dramatic and praiseworthy. The play not only shows the harmful effects of
ambition, but it also deals with the relationship between cruelty and greediness, oppression and
kingship, trust and treason, guilt, chaos and disruption of the natural order.
Plot summary

The play opens with the three mysterious witches having conversation with each other
accompanied by thunder and lightning. These weird sisters agree to meet again upon the heath
when the battle is lost or won. The battle was between Duncan, the King of Scotland and the
king of Norway. There they meet Macbeth and Banquo, two of Duncan’s generals, who were
returning after winning the battle. The witches prophesize that Macbeth will first become the
Thane of Cawdor and eventually will be the king of Scotland. For Banquo they prophesize that
he'll be father to a long line of future kings of Scotland, though he will never be the king himself.
The two continued their journey but were skeptical enough to wonder about the prophesies.

On their journey, they meet Ross, a messenger from King Duncan. He told them that the old
thane of Cawdor turned out to be a traitor and that Macbeth has been named as the new thane of
Cawdor. Since the first prophecy of the witches was fulfilled, both Macbeth and banquo were
taken aback. Suddenly evil thoughts of becoming the king make Macbeth restless but he initially
decided to wait for the fate to take its course.

 A perfect opportunity arises when King Duncan decided for a royal visit to Macbeth's castle.
Macbeth tells the whole incident to his wife Lady Macbeth who unlike Macbeth was very sure of
his becoming the king. When Macbeth returns to the castle, he is convinced and directed by her
that he must kill Duncan that very night as it was the only way to achieve his destiny. Initially
Macbeth is hesitant to commit the murder as he was afraid of the consequences. But Lady
Macbeth convinced him that she will make the guards of Duncan drunk so that they will not
remember the evening and moreover blame them for committing the crime. Thus Macbeth
commits this evil deed while the king was asleep. Haunted by his act, Macbeth was again
supported by his wife who had become stronger by this treacherous murder.

The next morning when the dead body of Duncan was found, Macbeth quickly kills the prime
witnesses, the guards of Duncan and to demote the suspicion, Lady Macbeth faints. Afraid of
being killed like their father, the two sons of Duncan, Malcolm and Donalbain fled to raise an
army in England and Ireland respectively. Macbeth assumes the kingship of Scotland thus
making the second prophesy of the witches to be true. Macbeth starts to worry about the witch's
prophecy that Banquo's descendants will be the future kings. He hires murderers to kill banquo
as well his son fleance but the latter escaped. At a celebratory banquet on the night of Banquo’s
murder, Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth and sends him into state of horror. This shocked and
scared the guests and angered his wife who again tries to strengthen Macbeth but it created
stigma on his character.

To know more about his future and to ease his fear, Macbeth again decided to meet the witches.
The witches not only confirmed that Banquo’s sons would be the future kings of Scotland but
they also provided some more prophesies. They asked him to beware of macduff, another general
of Duncan. They also said that Macbeth cannot be defeated until the birnam woods march
towards Dunsinane and until he meets an enemy who is not born of a woman. After hearing the
prophesies, Macbeth was over confident and was sure that no one can harm him but for
precaution, he decided to finish macduff. But he came to know that macduff had already fled to
England to join Malcolm. Macbeth decided to seize Macduff’s castle and orders to kill his wife
and children.

In England, when macduff receives this news he gets incited with rage and Malcolm also
persuades him to take vengeance from the tyrant Macbeth. With the support of the English army
and along with other Scottish generals, they ride to Scotland to take on murderous Macbeth.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, lady Macbeth goes mad, she walk in her sleep and recalls that
murderous night when Macbeth killed Duncan. She has been taken ill and she eventually
commits suicide. The news of her death made Macbeth sad and lonely as she was his last
companion. But he waits for the English army confidently because the prophesies were in favor
of him. Wait! Were they really in favor of him? The answer is NO. Later we come to know that
the prophesies had latent meanings which were actually against Macbeth.

Malcolm planned to cut the branches of the Birnam forest so as to hide behind it and moved
towards dunsinane. Macbeth could only see the forest coming towards him and thus he realised
that his end was near. But he had something to cheer about since no man born of a woman could
harm him. This also proved to be a misleading prophesy when Macbeth finally faces macduff in
a single combat. Macduff tells him that he was not born but was prematurely taken out of his
mother’s womb. On hearing this, Macbeth understood the game of the witches and with a loud
cry attacked macduff and later killed by him. In the last scene Malcolm, the rightful heir, is
crowned as the new king of Scotland.

Character sketches

Macbeth

Macbeth is introduced in the play as an above ordinary person and as a hero, brave general, a
bold, resolute man of action who is referred to “Valor’s minion”, “Bellona’s bridegroom’’, the
king’s ‘’valiant cousin’’, a very “eagle’’ among ‘’sparrows’’, a ‘’lion’’ among ‘’hares’’. Though
having these qualities, he lacks loyalty and later killed his king Duncan. When the witches
prophesize that he will become the king of Scotland, Macbeth starts harboring evil ideas. Even
after when he became the king, he committed more crimes to protect himself from suspicion.
Macbeth was not born wicked but the circumstances lead him to that path. He was not sensible
enough to understand the prophesies of the witches which were actually against him. When
Macbeth hears the witches’ prophesy, his thoughts changed towards committing murder all on
their own. This shows that Macbeth had a murderous feeling inside and the witches lead that
feeling to come out.

Lady Macbeth

 Lady Macbeth was a very ambitious woman who desired for force, power and position. She was
stronger and pitiless as compared to Macbeth and she was the one who provoked him to kill
Duncan and seize the throne. She was the real witch as it was only because of her that Macbeth
took the path of destruction. But after the carnage starts, Lady Macbeth herself succumbs to guilt
and madness to such a degree that she commits suicide.

The three Witches

Till the end of the play, we do not know who were they, where did they come from, and why
they chose Macbeth for their prophesies. We only know that these three mysterious creatures
were the servants of Hecate and they came to plot mischief against Macbeth using their magical
charms and spells. Their prophesy provoked him to kill Duncan, Banquo and Macduff’s family,
and to blindly believe in his own immortality. After this, they just vanished in the air like
bubbles. Later in the play the word “witches” seems to be ironical as they help the people of
Scotland to get rid of the tyrannical ruler, Macbeth.

Banquo

Banquo is introduced in the play as a friend of Macbeth and a general of king Duncan’s army.
He was a brave and loyal nobleman and his wisdom frightened Macbeth. Unlike Macbeth he is
sensible and cautious enough by not being mislead by the witches. When he heard that his
descendants would be the future kings of Scotland, he did not move away by it and remained
calm. He suspected that Macbeth had killed Duncan but remained quiet and this mistake of him
later costs his life.

Duncan

Duncan is introduced as a noble person possessing all the qualities that a king should have. He
was a victorious, generous, and a considerate ruler. The only quality he lacked was that he could
not understand people as in case of Macbeth and his wife. On the night of his murder, one could
hear loud cries coming from the skies showing that even the god loved him.

Macduff

He is also a Scottish general in Duncan’s army. Unlike banquo, he is a person who feels and act.
When he suspects that Macbeth has killed Duncan, he immediately leaves Scotland for Malcolm
and king of England’s help to overthrow Macbeth from the throne. He was the one who was not
born of a women and killed Macbeth who murdered his wife and children.

Themes and motifs

Macbeth is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more
than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear, and only slightly more than half as
long as Hamlet. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a
heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. That brevity has also
been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be
"stripped for action"; the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth; and the
oddness of Macbeth himself compared with other Shakespearean tragic heroes

As a tragedy of character

At least since the days of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson analysis of the play has centred
on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the
character. Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly
reviled. This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to Caroline Spurgeon, is
supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him
with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several nimisms he
applies: His garments seem either too big or too small for him – as his ambition is too big and his
character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. When he feels as if "dressed in
borrowed robes", after his new title as Thane of Cawdor, prophesied by the witches, has been
confirmed by Ross (I, 3, ll. 108–109), Banquo comments: "New honours come upon him, / Like
our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, / But with the aid of use" (I, 3, ll. 145–146).
And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in
vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd
cause / Within the belt of rule" (V, 2, ll. 14–15), while Angus, in a similar nimism, sums up what
everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power: "now does he feel his title / Hang
loose about him, like a giant's robe / upon a dwarfish thief" (V, 2, ll. 18–20).

Like Richard III, but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades
through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a
predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to
be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown." Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this
characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in
this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous
protagonist, all but demanded it.

Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation.
Robert Bridges, for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing
horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime. For many
critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. John Dover Wilson
hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and
wife discussed their plans. This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role
of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition
seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises: "I am in
blood/Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, Boris Pasternak compared

Macbeth to Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature.
They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He
goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine . . . one of those active, insistent wives" who
becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself." According
to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.

As a tragedy of moral order

The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the
moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural
order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the great chain of being, although the play's
images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. He
may also have intended an elaborate compliment to James's belief in the divine right of kings,
although this hypothesis, outlined at greatest length by Henry N. Paul, is not universally
accepted. As in Julius Caesar, though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even
amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of
the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively
mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.

Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the
play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a
mystery play on the harrowing of hell. Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex
attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between
the play and the tyrant plays within the medieval liturgical drama.
The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of
normative gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as
she appears in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the
play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic
critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger
theme of inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral
order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as
embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.

As a poetic tragedy

Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence
on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely
associated with Andrew Cecil Bradley, is clear as early as the time of Mary Cowden Clarke, who
offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She
suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish
military action

Witchcraft and evil

Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches by Henry Fuseli

In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as
agents and witnesses. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During
Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traitor and rebel
that can be." They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the
confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between
reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear
whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being
subject to the rules of the real world. The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is
fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by
establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted
as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates
the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them. The witches'
spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play Fidele
and Fortunio published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.

While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of
temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his
mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of
temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind,
then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while
Banquo rejects.

According to J. A. Bryant Jr., Macbeth also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between
King Duncan's murder and the murder of Christ:

No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, Macbeth is distinctively
Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may
go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of
Saul and Jezebel as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the
progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.

Critical analysis

Macbeth not only is the shortest of William Shakespeare’s great tragedies but also is anomalous
in some structural respects. Like Othello, the Moor of Venice (pr. 1604, pb. 1622) and only a
very few other Shakespearean plays, Macbeth is without the complications of a subplot.
Consequently, the action moves forward in a swift and inexorable rush. More significantly, the
climax—the murder of Duncan—takes place very early in the play. As a result, attention is
focused on the various consequences of the crime rather than on the ambiguities or moral
dilemmas that had preceded and occasioned it.
In this, the play differs from Othello, where the hero commits murder only after long plotting,
and from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (pr. c. 1600-1601, pb. 1603), where the hero spends most
of the play in moral indecision. Macbeth is more like King Lear (pr. c. 1605-1606, pb. 1608),
where destructive action flows from the central premise of the division of the kingdom.
However, Macbeth differs from that play, too, in that it does not raise the monumental, cosmic
questions of good and evil in nature. Instead, it explores the moral and psychological effects of
evil in the life of one man. For all the power and prominence of Lady Macbeth, the drama
remains essentially the story of the lord who commits regicide and thereby enmeshes himself in a
complex web of consequences.

When Macbeth first enters, he is far from the villain whose experiences the play subsequently
describes. He has just returned from a glorious military success in defense of the Crown. He is
rewarded by the grateful Duncan, with preferment as thane of Cawdor. This honor, which
initially qualifies him for the role of hero, ironically intensifies the horror of the murder Macbeth
soon commits.

Macbeth’s fall is rapid, and his crime is more clearly a sin than is usually the case in tragedy. It is
not mitigated by mixed motives or insufficient knowledge. Moreover, the sin is regicide, an
action viewed during the Renaissance as exceptionally foul, since it struck at God’s
representative on Earth. The sin is so boldly offensive that many have tried to find extenuation in
the impetus given Macbeth by the witches. However, the witches do not control behavior in the
play. They are symbolic of evil and prescient of crimes that are to come, but they neither
encourage nor facilitate Macbeth’s actions. They are merely a poignant external symbol of the
ambition that is already within Macbeth. Indeed, when he discusses the witches’ prophecy with
Lady Macbeth, it is clear that the possibility has been discussed before.

The responsibility cannot be shifted to Lady Macbeth, despite her goading. In a way, she is
merely acting out the role of the good wife, encouraging her husband to do what she believes to
be in his best interests. She is a catalyst and supporter, but she does not make the grim decision,
and Macbeth never tries to lay the blame on her.
When Macbeth proceeds on his bloody course, there is little extenuation in his brief failure of
nerve. He is an ambitious man overpowered by his high aspirations, yet Shakespeare is able to
elicit feelings of sympathy for him from the audience. Despite the evil of his actions, he does not
arouse the distaste audiences reserve for such villains as Iago and Cornwall. This may be because
Macbeth is not evil incarnate but a human being who has sinned. Moreover, audiences are as
much affected by what Macbeth says about his actions as by the deeds themselves. Both
substance and setting emphasize the great evil, but Macbeth does not go about his foul business
easily. He knows what he is doing, and his agonizing reflections show a person increasingly
losing control over his own moral destiny.

Although Lady Macbeth demonstrated greater courage and resolution at the time of the murder
of Duncan, it is she who falls victim to the physical manifestations of remorse and literally dies
of guilt. Macbeth, who starts more tentatively, becomes stronger, or perhaps more inured, as he
faces the consequences of his initial crime. The play examines the effects of evil on Macbeth’s
character and on his subsequent moral behavior. The later murders flow naturally out of the first.
Evil breeds evil because Macbeth, to protect himself and consolidate his position, is forced to
murder again. Successively, he kills Banquo, attempts to murder Fleance, and brutally
exterminates Macduff’s family. As his crimes increase, Macbeth’s freedom seems to decrease,
but his moral responsibility does not. His actions become more cold-blooded as his options
disappear.

Shakespeare does not allow Macbeth any moral excuses. The dramatist is aware of the notion
that any action performed makes it more likely that the person will perform other such actions.
The operation of this phenomenon is apparent as Macbeth finds it increasingly easier to rise to
the gruesome occasion. However, the dominant inclination never becomes a total determinant of
behavior, so Macbeth does not have the excuse of loss of free will. It does, however, become
ever more difficult to break the chain of events that are rushing him toward moral and physical
destruction.

As Macbeth degenerates, he becomes more deluded about his invulnerability and more
emboldened. What he gains in will and confidence is counterbalanced and eventually toppled by
the iniquitous weight of the events he set in motion and felt he had to perpetuate. When he dies,
he seems almost to be released from the imprisonment of his own evil.

Conclusion

The play was a very interesting read. It highlighted various significant aspects such as tyranny,
kingship, loyalty and justice. It was an effectual play, telling the tale of a general named Macbeth
whose greed of power led him to kill his king and to usurp his throne. The theme of the play
being justice, Macbeth is later killed and the rightful heir of the king becomes the new ruler. The
book not only captures the legal essence of the theme but also the emotions of love, anger,
revenge, spite and fear, making it dynamically engrossing. At last I would like to conclude by
quoting: “Man does not make circumstances, circumstances make the man.”

Bibliography

 http://www.enotes.com/topics/macbeth/critical-essays/critical-evaluation
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth
 Macbeth by William Shakespeare