For an in depth analysis of Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, check out the MACBETH SITE (yes, there is actually a site dedicated to the tragedy).

Character Analyses

Macbeth

When we first hear of Macbeth, he is a man much honored by his countrymen for his leading and courageous part in defense of his good king and native land. However, almost as soon as we meet him, we realize that he is both ambitious and murderous. For as soon as the Witches greet him with the title of future king, Macbeth thinks of murdering Duncan, the current king. But Macbeth is not merely the kind of man who serves his king until he has an opportunity of killing the king. Macbeth, though he may wish to murder Duncan for Duncan's crown, nevertheless also wishes to be a good man. In fact he thinks of himself basically as a good man. This becomes obvious from his fright and his consciousness of his fright that result when he pictures himself murdering Duncan. Nevertheless, the powerful drive of his ambition has dangerously affected him. Macbeth regards the predictions not so much as predictions but as "supernatural soliciting," that is, as requests to him from powers greater than man to attain his goal of the crown. Since Macbeth has mainly homicidal methods in mind, he in effect thinks of the predictions as invitations to murder. Although Macbeth does not understand the trick his mind has played on him, he has in fact been warned away from falling into the very trap laid for him by his ambitions and by the Witches. Banquo warns Macbeth, after the latter has learned that he has been made the Thane of Cawdor, that the agents of the devil sometimes tell us small truths "to betray's/ In deepest consequence." But the unheeding Macbeth in the very next speech refers to the predictions as "supernatural soliciting."

Now, Macbeth's conscience must contend not only with his powerful ambitions. Macbeth's conscience must also contend with Lady Macbeth, his wife,and Macbeth's love for his wife. Macbeth's love for his wife is so great that his ambitions strive as much for her as for himself. In his letter to her telling of his meeting with the Witches he calls her "my dearest partner of greatness" and he says that he wishes her not to be ignorant of what greatness "is promis'd thee." All of his thoughts, when he thinks of the pleasures and prestige of the kingship, include his wife. She on her part loves him equally and wishes to see him king at least as much as she wishes to see herself queen. But she is aware of his prickly conscience, which would make it difficult for him. "To catch the nearest way," that is, the murderous way. She, therefore, uses the most effective method at her command, shame. Macbeth, after all, is a soldier, and he loves his wife. Neither for himself as a soldier nor before his wife would Macbeth want to appear as a coward. So despite his decision not to go ahead with the murder, when Lady Macbeth accuses her husband of cowardice in making his decision, he succumbs to her, and they continue with their plans for the crime.

Why had Macbeth decided against committing violence for the kingship? In a soliloquy in the seventh scene of the first act, he tells us that it is not death in the next world that he fears. Rather, he is afraid that his crime for the kingship will teach others to commit similar crimes when he is king. However, despite Macbeth's apparent indifference to religion and morality, he is really very much involved with both. He gives as further reason against killing Duncan the fact that Duncan is Macbeth's relative and his guest, both of which relationships urge Macbeth against committing the crime. And a final reason for not killing Duncan is that pity should prevent Macbeth from harming the good man and gentle king that Duncan has been. For most Elizabethans these reasons would have implied a concern with religion and morality, the extent of which Macbeth does not consciously admit.

Yet Macbeth allows himself to be shamed into the crime by Lady Macbeth. But, while she has whipped him into committing the act, she has not succeeded in silencing his conscience or stopping his concern with eternal things. After the murder he is distressed that he has not been able to say "Amen" at the end of prayers he had heard two men reciting. And at the same time his conscience hurts so, that he thinks he hears voices which cry, "Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep. . . ." He is in fact so hampered in his actions by the conflict between his knowledge that he has committed the crime and his abhorrence of it, that he becomes immobile. After the murder, when the two realize that Macbeth has brought the daggers from the murder chamber, Macbeth cannot return, even though returning means the difference between discovery and success. When Lady Macbeth has returned from placing the daggers near Duncan's attendants and hears the knocking at the gate, she almost has to push Macbeth into their bedroom so that they will look as though they have just been awakened.

The efforts of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to attain the crown are successful. But Macbeth's awareness that he has given up his eternal soul makes his especially sensitive to his desire to make his kingship secure. Also contributing to his sensitivity is the fear that his crime may be discovered. The two motives make him first turn on Banquo and Fleance, Banquo's son, as the cause of his anxiety. Banquo was present at the Witches' meeting with Macbeth and that fact may make him especially able to discover Macbeth's crime. Also the Witches had predicted that Banquo's children rather than Macbeth's children would be kings. Perhaps Macbeth projects onto Banquo his own turn of thought and presumes that Banquo will attempt to attain the crown just as Macbeth himself had done so. Macbeth says, " . . . to that dauntless temper of his mind, / He [Banquo] hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor / To act in safety." At any rate, even if Banquo himself does not make an attempt, Macbeth's children will not succeed Macbeth and Banquo's will. In that case, Macbeth will have lost not only his soul but the fruit of his labor in this world as well. For a man does not work only for his immediate profit in this world but also for the benefit of his children, who will make his name live on in honor. Macbeth therefore decides to have Banquo and Fleance killed.

Although, after the murder of Duncan, Macbeth's conscience had brought him nearly to immobility, he still decides to murder Banquo and Fleance. Nothing must stop him from living securely: "But let the frame of things disjoint,both the worlds suffer, / Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep / In the affliction of these terrible dreams, / That shake us nightly." Despite these desperately resolute words his conscience is still able to attack him. At his state dinner the sight of Banquo's ghost makes him shake with guilt and fear. But this terrible experience causes Macbeth to be only more desperate in his efforts to repress his conscience and stem his fear and guilt. He will return to "the weird sisters," the Witches, whom he now recognizes as evil, so that he may "know / By the worst means, the worst," He repeats his determination that nothing shall stop him in his quest for security. "For mine own good / All causes shall give way . . . ." And all "Strange things" that he thinks of will immediately be acted out. Macbeth has completely committed himself to evil.

Why has Macbeth done this? Why has not the terrifying experience with Banquo's ghost warned him into repentance? Macbeth partially answers that question for us. "I am in blood / Stepped so far," he says, "that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er." Macbeth says that he finds it too tiresome to repent. But to someone who understands the worth of repentance, the process of repentance, hard as it may be, is hardly too tiresome. What has happened is that in making his first decision for evil instead of good and in accustoming himself to the thoughts necessary to maintain the results of that decision, Macbeth has confused the values of good and evil. That is, he has confused fair and foul, which confusion has all along been the devil's aim. Macbeth, in other words, has forgotten the comfort of a life without a screaming conscience or desperate thoughts. But behind his forgetfulness, at the very heart of his confusion of fair and foul, lies Macbeth's egotism. In order to repent, Macbeth would have to give up the kingship, which is giving him so much trouble. But he is unable to do so. The kingship still means more to him than quiet days and the possibility of heaven. Macbeth would rather rule in the hell he has made of his world than serve a good king and God in heaven. He therefore accustoms himself to his current life of anxiety, forgets the pleasures of easeful days, and finds it "tedious" to repent.

This same egotism is in evidence when Macbeth says that nothing will stand in the way of his security. "For mine own good, / All causes shall give way," he says. Earlier he had said that he would "let the frame of this disjoint" before he would live insecurely. Macbeth would destroy the world to gain security in his kingship. Of course, this is the reduction to absurdity which results from completely egotistic thought. Here is a man who would rule the world, yet would destroy it if he could not rule it securely. What world would there then be left to rule? And this foreshadows his later feeling, that he wishes the end of the world would come with is own desperate end. We see the irony of the completely egotistic pursuit. At the beginning of the play Macbeth had a good deal of stature. But his attempts at self aggrandizement have reduced Macbeth to the size of a small man ineffectively flailing at a large world completely beyond his control. Really knowing this, Macbeth finds it "tedious" not only to repent but also to "go o'er," that is, to go on in his life.

However, he is not yet ready to admit the implication of this remark, which tells us that Macbeth despairs of this life as well as of the next. And in fact he never does completely despair. No matter how much he comes to hate himself and life, his egotism also prevents him from ever simply surrendering his life. He therefore works harder and harder to maintain his security. Banquo, his first object of fear, is now dead. But Macbeth is now frightened of Macduff and attempts to kill him. When Macduff escapes, Macbeth capriciously murders Macduff's family. Soon we hear that all of Scotland is frightened of Macbeth. The only way in which Macbeth can cause people to obey him is through fear, for that is the only motive for obedience that Macbeth can understand. Macbeth has therefore turned Scotland into a reflection of his own mind; he has turned Scotland into hell. But only devils and Macbeth wish to live in hell. And so his people begin to revolt against him. Macbeth becomes increasingly isolated. Not only are the people within Scotland revolting against him; Scotsmen have fled the land, and they are returning with an army of Englishmen to fight Macbeth. Finally, Macbeth is also isolated from the one person outside himself whom he has loved and for whom he has acted, his wife. She, too, had begun suffering the torments of a guilty conscience. Mainly because he loved her, he stopped telling her about his dire deeds so that she would not have them on her conscience. But she has felt responsibility for them as well as for those she actively helped to commit, and her conscience has increasingly paralyzed her mind. Macbeth, partially because he loved his wife and acting therefore more and more on his own, partially because her own conscience caused a mental breakdown, and finally because his wife dies, finds himself toward the end of the play in total isolation.

Thus isolated at the end of the play, Macbeth's final hope is the second set of prophecies of the Witches. They had told him that he would be harmed by no man born of woman and that he would not be defeated until Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane. Macbeth, thoroughly committed to evil and careless in his desperate search for assurance, believed them, although he should have realized from past experience that their promises of hope look good only on the surface. Now that he is isolated, the impossibility of his defeat, which the Witches' prophecies seemed to indicate, seems incredible. Yet Macbeth hopes on. But he only hopes; he barely believes. He is in a fever of anxious activity. He commands his servant to dress him in his armor; then he commands his servant to take it off. But one decision seems firm. He will stay in the castle of Dunsinane, which is easily defended against a siege, and starve his enemies into defeat. But this resolution holds only until he sees Birnam Wood. It seems, he says, as though the Witches were only fooling with him. His desperation grows, and feeling the imminence of defeat, he orders what remains of his army out into the field, for he wishes to die at least actively fighting. But he also says that he is beginning to wish himself dead. Such a wish is not surprising. For when Macbeth wished earlier to see the destruction of the world if he should not be secure, when he found life too tedious to continue, when he felt anxious with guilt and fear, implied always was a hatred for himself and for life. And now in his final, desperate straits he expresses the hatred overtly.

And so Macbeth goes out into the field. Like a bear tied to a stake, he "must fight the course." He has one last hope, that his life "must not yield / To one of woman born." But finally he meets Macduff, who was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripped." On hearing this bit of information Macbeth does not wish to fight with Macduff. But when Macduff threatens to make him a public show, Macbeth fights. He would rather die than bend to Malcolm or "be baited with the rabble's curse." Macbeth dies, then, not wholly to be scorned. His terrific egotism prevents him from bowing, as he should bow, before the rightful king, Malcolm. But it also prevents him from submitting to the indignity of being "baited with the rabble's curse." Although that indignity would present him as the monster he has become, Macbeth still thinks of himself as a man, and as such would rather die than suffer the indignity. This feeling in him reminds us of the worthy Macbeth at the beginning of the play.

We also see that he still has the courage to act on his convictions, desperate though that courage may be. And it is not merely an animal courage. For he knows now that he must die. He fights as a man. At the conclusion of the play, although we have come to abhor Macbeth, we cannot help but feel a certain admiration for him. But much more we have a sense of irony and waste: irony because some sterling qualities have been put to such evil use, waste because Macbeth was a potentially great man who was lost.