Crime and Punishment in Macbeth

Aside from its historical basis, the play incorporates elements of religious beliefs and practices in
renaissance England, regarding witchcraft, prophecy and dangers of sin. Other than to supernatural
elements, Shakespeare uses metaphorical symbols through out the play that follow the
development of character’s inner struggle, reveal their darkest intensions and finally reflect their fall.

Shakespeare offers a vivid description of man’s demise due to his involvement with sin and crimes
that carry penalties. In the play, Macbeth’s fall into damnation illustrates the spiritual punishment
and dangers of sin.

Macbeth is a tragedy of crime and punishment in which the character carries out crimes as if
contrary to his nature. According to (Smith 2005), In his soliloquies, Macbeth presents himself as a
‘divided and increasingly tortures personality” Lady Macbeth sates that “yet do I fear thy nature, its
too full of human kindness’ she knew Macbeth is a warrior but not a villain. He is a kind and
empathetic person in heart. Lady M, sees his kindness as a weakness and sets her role in the drama
as the villain and the manipulator.

“com you spirits… unsex me here. And fill me from crown to top with direst cruelty” and also she
says there is lack of illness in his ambitiousness. That means lack of inhumanity. And challenge him
and strongly inculcate the idea that being a man is getting what he wants. “when you durst do it,
then you were a man” in this way Shakespeare shows the origin of the future internal agony of the
character.

Macbeth’s concscience is the one of most impressive thing about him. Over and over again it drows
us to him and ask us to pity him. Fight in the mind of Macbeth is conveyed by in his soliloque in the
scene 7. Macbeth thinks about consequences of crime. Not only the thought about requital prevents
M from killing Duncan, other feelings are stronger, his obligation towards Duncan and country, rules
of kinship and empathy towards the king. Macbet admits that Duncan is a meek ruler and pity like a
“naked newborn baby” pity and compassion are presented like spontaneous natural forces with
stands to bloody work.

One of his soliloquy illustrates M’s refusal of his intention. Only the interfearence of lady M
brings him back to previous decision to kill Duncan.

The descriptions of delusions and its reason represent the nervous tension of the character who is
ready to murder his kind. M thinks about reasons for his delusion. A dagger is only “ a dagger of the
mind” a false creation proceeding from the heat oppressed brain. At night the murder is disturbed
with a wolf howl. Metaphors in his soliloquy reflect the horror that invades Macbeth some minutes
before the murder.

As soon as he killed Duncan M suffered from guilty conscience. In appears in strange obsessive
visions and metaphors. He thinks he hear a scream “Macbeth shall sleep no more”

This foreshadows the moral punishment that they are going to receive. Lady M will walk her way to
a guilty death. At first she didn’t understand her husband’s agony. Any trifle seems to him an awful
sign. Knock at the gates terrifies him. “will all great neptunes water wash this blood?” Macbeths
asks himself and answer by means of hyperbole. News about the death of the king made him to do
self- confession.

The next solliloque of M expreeses his fear of Banquo. M conciders that Banquo is dangerous due to
many reasons. He is honourable, fearless, brave. “with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear
to pieces that great bond” this was his ‘pale fear’. He generalizes the feeling of killing Banquo, doing
another murder by thinking that “ things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” M tells about his
sufferings. Guilt conscience of Macbeth is associated with an image of a snake. “we have scorched
the snake but not kill it” but agains plays with destiny murder of Banquoe and his son.

M envies Duncan that sleeps well, nothing can touch him. He says that it is better to be with the
dead than on the “torture of the mind.” M confesses that “full of scorpions in his mind” this is his
fear of Banquo. He generalizes his idea of killing Banquo by telling” Thing bad begun make strong
themselves by ill”

“when the brains were out, men would die…but now they rise again”. He speaks about autumn in his
life.that looks like a yellow leaf. He is deprived of all that attends the old age , honour, obiedience,
love.

Lady M’s death plays an important role in the play. “out out brief candle, life is nothing but a walking
shadow”. M losses the will to live so he even rejects to fight with Macduff. This guilt is as much as
the ambition. Is at heart of the play..” (Parker 2006)

(Colston 2010) says that ,“the witches treacherously promise greatness and invulnerability as the
serpent falsely promises divinity and immortality…in believing himself invulnerable. He believes
himself to be divine”

King James’s ‘Daemonologie’ states that God could use witches to punish sinners eventhough they
work for the devil.

At the time of Macbeth originally produced, the crime of associating with the devil was a major
component of the people’s perception of witchcraft. It is an omnipresent force, ever ready to prey
upon man’s weaker instincts.” (Thomas 1991)

Weird sisters in the tragedy is symbolic. Their poetry is the controlling influence which the dramatist
never lets the audience forget. (Paul 1950)

Fair is Foul…

“Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble” they serves as a trigger of the
beginning and continuation of M’s crimes. Witches took possession of M’s boy and the mind.

Macbeth risked the consequences of eternal damnation for the glory of the temporal crown.

Prophecies forged the ambitious dreams of the character and at the same time horrified him.

Getting crowned at the cost of murder is so awful. Such intensions pass away just as they come up.

When Lady M SAYS “all’s spent, where our desire is got without content”

Macbeth is a portrait of damnation, a study of evil and a landscape of hell. Because of his consession
to sinMacbeth becomes emmersed in the evils of hell. Death, destruction, moral anomie of the
character who has lost the meaning of the life. Symbolic elements create a psychological portrait of
the main characters. On the other hand Shakes uses them to create individuals. These characters
become collective images of sinners and righteous men.