At the conclusion of the play, Malcolm refers to Macbeth as "this dead butcher and his fiend like queen

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At the conclusion of the play, Malcolm refers to Macbeth as “this dead butcher and his fiend like queen.” This is in direct contrast to the audience’s introduction to Macbeth where he is described as a brave courageous soldier, loyal to his king Duncan and devoted to his wife. Aristotle said that the only “proper subject of tragedy, is the spectacle of a man not absolutely or eminently good or wise that is brought to disaster not by sheer depravity but by some error or frailty.”

Critic A. Quiller-Couch states that “tragedy demands some sympathy with the fortunes of the hero and however gross his error or grievous his frailty, it must not exclude our feeling that he is a man like ourselves.” He argues how Shakespeare could make the audience sympathize with Macbeth, “a murderer and a murderer for his private profit… a traitor to his king, ingrate, self seeker, false kinsman, and perjured soldier.” The tragedy of Macbeth is that knowing the murder of Duncan will change his life forever and he understands that evil turns on the evil doer and that “bloody instruction… return to plague th’ inventor,” he still goes ahead with the murder. Macbeth is a flawed character, his frailty is greed and ambition and he becomes the victim of circumstances beyond his control. A. Quiller. Couch’s opinion Shakespeare has made Macbeth proceed to his crime “under some fake hallucination.” The initial image of Macbeth as brave and courageous is deceptive for it is his weakness, recognized by Lady Macbeth “yet I do fear thy nature/ it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness” that is played upon both by Lady Macbeth and the witches. She attacks his manliness while the witches reduce him with their prophecies. They voice Macbeth’s secret desire to become king of Scotland.

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The witches use Macbeth as a tool to generate evil causing social disruption and catastrophe. He is only too ready to believe the witch’s oracles which speak of perpetual safety. Their prophecies harmonize with his own flights of imagination only to reveal that “nothing is/ but what is not”. He becomes their willing instrument; he sees and does not see; supernatural manifestations obscure his sense of reality.

Brother Michael William describes the play as “about failing to come to terms with ambiguity and being taken over by it”; “fair is foul and foul is fair” underlines the ...

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