Is Macbeth entirely to blame for his own tragedy?
Here we have written a classic tragedy. It is the story about a hero, who becomes a fallen hero. Who exactly brought the downfall of Macbeth? The great play, Macbeth, was written by Shakespeare and is a tale of one man rising into power through treachery and deceit.
At the beginning of the play Macbeth is portrayed as a well respected and generally liked man, but his ego and his own ambition led him to believe that he was the rightful king of Scotland.
’All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!’
’All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!’
‘All hail Macbeth that shalt be king hereafter!’
With these words Macbeth’s tragedy begins. If the witches had not put the idea in Macbeth’s head, he would have been perfectly content with what he has in his own life.
The three witches are playing with Macbeth, teasing and taunting him. In their spells and chants they talk of their love for evil and mischief. They say, “Double, double toil and trouble” They also say “fair is foul and foul is fair’ which means that things are not as they appear in this play, they are unnatural and flipped upside down and also that fair and foul are both the same to them because they have no morals. The witches are the ones who make the whole story with their mysterious predictions to Macbeth. They say that there is going to be a battle and it will be “lost and won”, the battle between good and evil in the play and the battle in Macbeth’s mind between his morals and his “vaulting ambition”. This is the theme of the whole play and the two battles are merged together at times as the people around him influence the battle in Macbeth’s head.
