“As his host who should against his murderers shut the door, not bear the knife myself.”
This shows his contrasting feelings of loyalty on the one hand to his king, who is also his guest and friend, and on the other hand his ambition to be king blinds him to his own conscience. Before Macbeth kills Duncan he has an illusion where he sees a dagger before his eyes. I think this shows us that Macbeth wants to be evil as he tries to take the dagger: if he had tried to leave it we might have had more sympathy for him.
Throughout the play Macbeth is controlled and influenced by two main parties, one of them is Lady Macbeth the other is the witches. Lady Macbeth puts pressure on Macbeth to kill Duncan, calling Macbeth a coward and saying how the plan can’t fail: she reminds him of how he would feel if he does not keep his resolve:
“And live a coward in thine own esteem”,
manipulating him by appealing to his vanity and goading him into action with her taunts. This shows that Macbeth is unwilling to stand up for his own beliefs: if his wife tells him that he should kill Duncan he will do it.
After Macbeth has killed Duncan he kills the two sleeping guards: this was entirely Macbeth’s idea as it had nothing to do with lady Macbeth. This shows that Macbeth’s evil deeds are not just down to pressure from other people.
The most powerful influence over Macbeth comes from the witches. Even from the first time Macbeth meets them he seems to respect them and believe every word they say. Although the witches never told Macbeth to murder Duncan, they told him if Duncan was dead he would be king, using similar arts of persuasion to Lady Macbeth. This might be a powerful incentive for anyone with as little sense of morality as Macbeth seems to have. This might also suggest that “the witches” are products of Macbeth’s own tortured mind. Later on in the play when the witches give Macbeth three prophecies, Macbeth believes in them so thoroughly that he fails to spot the catch in the little rhyme the witches chant. The first time Macbeth meets the witches it is the witches who choose for them to meet, but then Macbeth goes back to see them, it is his choice to return to their temptation.
To call Macbeth a butcher is an understatement: he killed many people, friend, foe and even family. Even at the very start of the play people congratulate Macbeth on being brave and fighting well:
“With his brandished steel, which smoked with bloody execution.”
Already this shows that Macbeth has killed and has killed many. We can tell from Polansk’is movie version that he considers Macbeth a butcher as when he appears after killing Duncan he is covered in blood like a butcher. As the play progresses Macbeth’s deeds get grimmer and grimmer. After his killing Duncan, Donalbain and Malcolm fear for their lives as they suspect Macbeth of doing this dreadful deed:
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles; the near in blood, the nearer bloody.”
That is the first murder Macbeth does but it is quickly followed by two more, each of the two guards who were supposed to be guarding Duncan. The murder of Duncan was planned whereas with the guards it was spontaneous, showing Macbeth’s fighting side and the madness of the kill which is overpowering him. Macbeth has already shown that he can kill members of his own family as Duncan was his cousin, but also he can kill his best friend and war compatriot. The witches had told Macbeth:
“Be bloody, bold and resolute.”
Macbeth becomes a bit cowardly and instead of killing Banquo himself he hires murderers to do it for him. The way Banquo is killed is very gory and bloodthirsty, lessening our sympathy with Macbeth:
“With twenty trenched gashes on his head.”
The last murder that Macbeth is responsible for is the murder of Lady Macduff and her children. This murder is particularly nasty, as it is the killing of women and children. In the video by Polanski the child is naked showing it to be weak, frail and defenseless:
“Your wife and babes savagely slaughtered.”
I think that if he could, Macbeth would never have started killing but like he says trying to get out would be as difficult as to go on:
“All cases shall give way. I am in blood stepped so far, that should I wade no more returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
There are times in the play when Macbeth is wise and sensible and he doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would get the idea into his head to try to kill to become king. When Malcolm calls Macbeth a butcher he has no idea of the Witches’ influence over Macbeth. To call Macbeth a butcher is slightly unfair as I think a lot of the things he does, he does because he is too easily influenced by other people. He is weak and easily pressurized into doing things.
Macbeth has an alternate side, a side which is poetic and profound: he thinks about life, its brevity and pointlessness:
“Out, out brief candle, life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.”
It is possible that without the intervention of the witches Macbeth really never would have ever thought of killing Duncan.
Near the end we can see that Macbeth regrets the whole thing and doesn’t want to cause any more deaths on his behalf. He says to Macduff:
“Of all men else I have avoided thee, but get thee back, my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.”
The effects that Polanski uses to portray Macbeth are very good: he uses very grim music when Macbeth or when his castle, Dunsinane, come into view. The music he uses is a wailing bagpipe which sounds a bit like the crying wails of people in terror. Polanski portrays Macbeth as being very sad and constantly in a world of his own. Polanski enhances the fact that the play is very gory by including bear baiting, and after the bear is dead it leaves a trail of blood, similar to the trail of blood Macbeth has left throughout the play. Like the trail of blood, at Lady Macduff’s murder there is screaming which gets louder and louder in the same way Macbeth’s evil grows and grows.
Although Macbeth does seem to be pure evil there are some quotes, which shows that he regrets murdering:
“Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.”
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”
“I am in blood stepped so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
I think in some ways Macbeth was most definitely a butcher, killing without a second thought, but in other ways the real butchers were the witches. Their twisted minds devised the entire set of murders. Calling Macbeth a butcher is probably pretty accurate as he chose just to accept the will of others rather than stand up to his own willpower. Thus we could conclude that Macbeth is a butcher, but a butcher who is compelled to acts of evil in a sort of madness, from which he occasionally awakes and has moments when he is aware of what he has done and regrets it. Therefore there is an element of “there but for the grace of God” in Shakespeare’s portrayal of Macbeth: it makes us feel uneasy because we ,in understanding how he comes to be possessed by evil, are admitting the possibility that we can all be thus possessed in certain extreme circumstances. Evil is thus shown to be a universal threat which can possess anyone, and not just a threat particular to this one character. This is why universally Macbeth is known as the unlucky play. Actors fear bad luck or evil is catching and will infect them if they perform the play.
In conclusion, Macbeth is indeed a butcher, but much more than that: he is an exploration of the nature of evil.
