“Captain: But the Norwegian lord, surveying vantage, with furbished arms, and new supplies of men, begin a fresh assault.”
Ross and the captain go onto tell how Macbeth and Banquo managed to repel the Norwegians and the treacherous Thane of Cawdor. Duncan orders for the Thane to be killed, and that Macbeth should get his title as a reward.
At the start of the play, Macbeth is portrayed as a hero, even though we don’t see him at first.
Meanwhile, Macbeth and Banquo meet three witches, who tell Macbeth that he is fated to be Thane of Cawdor and later the King of Scotland. Shortly afterwards, Ross arrives and tells Macbeth he is now the Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth is shocked, but then he begins to get ideas and writes a letter to his wife, Lady Macbeth. She urges him to kill Duncan so that he may become king.
“L. Macbeth: O never shall sun that morrow see. Your face, my Thane, is a book where men may read strange matters. To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue; look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.”
Macbeth agrees to let her prepare everything, while he will commit the murder. It is at this first point that Macbeth is turning evil.
Later on, however, Macbeth gets nervous and decides not to do the murder, but Lady Macbeth tells him to “screw your courage to the sticking place.” Along with a few other orders, she manages to persuade Macbeth to commit the murder. He becomes more and more determined to carry it out, another sign that he is turning evil.
Macbeth waits until he is alone at the dead of night and then he starts going to Duncan’s room to commit the murder, on the way he starts imagining there is a floating dagger in front of him.
“Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?”
Macbeth commits the murder and becomes very troubled, and is convinced that he cannot wash the blood off his hands.
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous sea incarnadine, making the green one red.”
Macbeth begins to wish that he had not killed the king, but pulls himself together when the body is discovered. He realises that he must commit more murders in order to strengthen his hold, particularly as the witches told Banquo that all of his ancestors would be kings, and then plans his next crimes without Lady Macbeth’s knowledge.
“Macbeth: O full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife. Thou know’st that Banquo and his Fleance, lives
L. Macbeth: What’s to be done?
Macbeth: Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed.”
This another sign of how evil Macbeth is. The next sign comes after the three witches show him the three prophecies and he orders for Macduff and his family to be killed. This is as evil as he gets, as shortly afterwards Macduff kills him when Malcolm leads an attack on the castle, and the three apparition’s prophecies come true.
Overall, Macbeth becomes the most evil when he order’s for Macduff’s family to be killed. He starts off a hero, but gets more evil as the story progresses.
