Federal University Gusau

Faculty of Humanity
Department of English and Literature
Course Code: LIT-311
Course Title: Shakespeare and Contemporary

Topic: Did Macbeth always want to be king?

Group K
Oguntade Olayinka Saliu 2010103016
Maria Odufa Ami Okhani 1910103005
Abdulsalam Sani 2020103002
Lovina Kwandoh Danlami 1910103017
Godiya Nehemiah 1910103023

Abstract

Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in

1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on
those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James,
Macbeth most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting
company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is
Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.

Keywords:Macbeth, Conflict, Banquo, Murder, Scotland.

 About the Author

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is
widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant
works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and
a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living
language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains
arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and
reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married
Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime
between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner
(sharer) of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age
49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records
of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as
his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and whether the works attributed to him were
written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily
comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then
wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and
Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his
life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his
lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of
Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition
of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben
Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an
age, but for all time".

Introduction
A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one
day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife,
Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked
with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from
enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil
war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.

Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and
Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from
the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the
execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed and will not mention its
title aloud, referring to it instead as "The Scottish Play". The play has attracted some of the
most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and has been adapted to
film, television, opera, novels, comics, and other media.

The Novel

Macbeth is a tragedy that tells the story of a soldier whose overriding ambition and thirst for power
cause him to abandon his morals and bring about the near destruction of the kingdom he seeks to rule.
At first, the conflict is between Macbeth and himself, as he debates whether or not he will violently
seize power, and between Macbeth and his wife, as Lady Macbeth urges her husband toward a course
of action he is hesitant to take.

Once Macbeth stops struggling against his ambition, the conflict shifts. It then primarily exists between
Macbeth and the other characters, in particular Banquo and Macduff, who challenge his authority.
Macbeth is the protagonist in the sense that he is the main focus of the narrative and that audiences
frequently have access to his point of view. However, as he often acts against his own best interests, as
well as the best interests of the other characters and his country, he is also the antagonist. The
characters who oppose Macbeth and eventually defeat him do so to restore order and justice.

The play opens with the consequences of someone else’s ambition. In the first scene, audiences hear
about the bloody conflict that resulted from the rebellion led by the Thane of Cawdor. The rebellion
foreshadows the consequences of overreaching one’s role. The conflict is initiated when Macbeth
encounters the witches who prophesize that he will become first the Thane of Cawdor, and then the
King of Scotland. As soon as he learns that their first prophecy has come true, he is awakened to the
possibility of the second also being realized. As Macbeth marvels to himself,

“Two truths are told

 As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme” (1.3.128-130).

In a crucial turning point in the play, Macbeth is faced with a choice: to take decisive action to claim the
crown as his own, or to simply wait and see what happens. Every choice he makes, and everything that
happens for the rest of the play stems from his decision here. Macbeth feels ambivalence, as he wants
to be king but also knows that he owes Duncan to loyalty both

“as his kinsman and as his subject” (1.7.13).

The tension between duty and ambition sharpens when Lady Macbeth learns of the prophecy that her
husband will become king, and immediately begins strategizing ways to bring about the fulfilment of the
prophecy. Now Macbeth is torn between loyalty to Duncan and loyalty to his wife, who does not appear
to feel any shame, doubt, or remorse about the dark act she is plotting. She is eager to

“pour my spirits in [Macbeth’s] ear

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes [him] from the golden round” (1.5.25-27).

The audience has the sense that Lady Macbeth may have been longing for just such an opportunity
where she can put her intelligence and strategic ability to good use.

Lady Macbeth successfully manipulates her husband into taking action, telling him,

“When you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.51).

This initial conflict over whether or not he can kill his king, which exists both between Macbeth and
himself and between Macbeth and his wife, is resolved when Macbeth acts, murdering Duncan and then
seizing power after the more obvious heirs flee in fear of being accused of the crime.

After the murder, the conflict resides primarily in the opposition between Macbeth and the individuals
who mistrust his power and how he got it. Having damned himself by killing Duncan, Macbeth will stop
at nothing to hold on to his power. At the start of Act 3, the audience learns that Banquo is suspicious of
whether Macbeth may have achieved power through nefarious means. Perhaps because he knows that
Banquo has reason to mistrust him, and certainly because he fears that Banquo’s heirs are a challenge
to his lineage, Macbeth arranges to have Banquo and his son murdered.

Both Macbeth and his wife have changed: Macbeth, formerly hesitant, is now completely firm and
decisive, and Lady Macbeth, formerly impatient and bloodthirsty, now thinks it would be fine to leave
matters well enough alone. For example, she explicitly tells him that he

“must leave this” (3.2.35)

while he explains that things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” (3.2.55).
 The murder of Banquo furthers heightens the conflict. Macbeth is a tyrannical figure, and the plot
revolves around him being removed from power and punished for his crimes.

The expository speech between Lennox and the lord in Act 3, Scene 6 clarifies that political loyalties
have shifted and that Macbeth is now viewed as a usurper who needs to be deposed. We see that
Macbeth’s rule is disastrous for Scotland as a whole, as Lennox laments the fate This

“this our suffering country

Under a hand accursed” (3.6.49-50).

Macbeth’s horrific order of the murder of Macduff’s wife and children creates a more specific personal
conflict within the broader one; Macduff now has a case for personal vengeance against Macbeth.
Spurred by his rage and grief, Macduff vows to

“Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself

Within my sword’s length set him” (4.3.234-235).

Macduff’s declaration of personal enmity against Macbeth sets the stage for the final conflict between
the two and for Macbeth’s defeat. A positive outcome becomes impossible for Macbeth as he gradually
loses his authority, power, and eventually his wife.

Ultimately, Macbeth’s overreliance on his belief he is fated to be king leads to his downfall, since he
arrogantly misinterprets the witches’ prophecies, believing that they promise him glory while in fact, the
prophecies predict how he will be defeated. While the audience has long understood that the witches
are untrustworthy and up to no good, Macbeth only realizes this fact when facing his death. He laments
that the witches

“palter with us in a double keeps

That keep the word of promise to our ear

And break it to our hope” (5.8.20-22).

Although he blames the witches, his ambition is equally to blame. He heard what he wanted to hear
and believed what he wanted to believe from the first moment he met the witches.

Yet Macbeth is not entirely unsympathetic, as he had several powerful forces inciting him to action, and
for a long time truly believed he was following his fate. His death resolves the political and social conflict
since the legitimate king can now return to power and restore order to Scotland. The play’s brief falling
action allows for the promise of a brighter future under Malcolm’s new reign.

Conclusion
The audience sees Macbeth for the first time just moments before he and Banquo encounter the
Witches. Thus, there’s not much time for the audience to learn anything about Macbeth before the
Witches’ prophesy. However, immediately upon hearing that he will be king, Macbeth seems to have a
strong reaction, causing Banquo to say

“Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair?” (1.3.)

Macbeth’s reaction suggests he has powerful feelings about the prospect of being king. Similarly, when
Lady Macbeth reads a letter from Macbeth telling of the prophecies for his future, she immediately
begins to plot to kill Duncan and take the throne, suggesting that Lady Macbeth has also always
dreamed of being queen.

Reference

Benedict, David (14 October 2021). "'The Tragedy of Macbeth' Review: James McArdle and Saoirse
Ronan in an Over-Directed and Under-Dramatized Production". Variety. Archived from the original on 19
June 2022. Retrieved 19 June 2022.

Green, Jesse (29 April 2022). "Review: In a New 'Macbeth,' Something Wonky This Way Comes". The
New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 June 2022. Retrieved 19 June 2022.

Sherbo, Arthur (1951). "Dr. Johnson on Macbeth: 1745 and 1765". The Review of English Studies. 2 (5):
40–47. doi:10.1093/res/II.5.40. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 511908.

King of England, James I (2016). The annotated Daemonologie: a critical edition. Warren, Brett. R. ISBN
978-1-5329-6891-4. OCLC 1008940058.