Macbeth is compared with a lot of charters in the play one of these would be Banquo. Banquo is Macbeths friend and they both meet and get prophesies from the Witches’ but unlike Macbeth he is not blinded by ambition and sees through the prophesy as a trap and resists their temptation which also show he has more self control than Macbeth. “The instruments of darkness tell us truths; win us with honest trifles, to betrays in deepest consequence.”
Another character he is compared with is Macduff. Macduff mistrusts Macbeth as soon as he is made king and shows this by refusing to go to his coronation. He is compared to Macbeth on his beliefs, where Macduff believes that maleness is something that you can be sensitive and have feeling as well as being strong and shows this by saying “But I must also feel it as a man” when he finds out that Macbeth has murdered his family and takes the time to grieve for them. Where as Macbeth sees maleness as only being tough and strong and says to Lady Macbeth “Bring forth men children only” this quote shows how Macbeth sees strength as being male because he wants strong children and asks for them to be male, also in comparison to Macduff when hears the news that Lady Macbeth has died he doesn’t take the time to grieve like Macduff instead he carries on with the war between him and Malcolm.
The last character he is compared with is his wife, Lady Macbeth. They are both ambitious, but her ambitions make her manipulative and dominate over Macbeth because she is the one that enforces the murder and attacks his manliness if he does not compile to her wishes. “What, quiet unmann’d in folly?” unlike Macbeth she does not think of the consequences and tries to suppress her guilt and even call on evil sprits to help her achieve this “Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry, hold, hold.” As the play progresses they both drift apart and as she loses her confidence and begins to be over racked with guilt, Macbeth gains more confidence and becomes stronger and continues on with other murders and plots. So in a way they are like a ‘set of scales’ that they each balance each other out with their ambitions and motives one always has to be stronger than the other and they switch roles during the play.
The imagery uses around Macbeth are predominantly clothes and blood. The clothing imagery is used first and usually is shown when talking about wealth or title. Macbeth asks when made the thane of Cowdor, “Why do you dress me in borrow’d robes?” he says this because the thane of Cowdor was still alive but was considered a traitor and was to be executed and this is a form of dramatic irony because Macbeth will eventually turn out to be a traitor to Duncan in the end.
The other image used is blood, Macbeth uses blood when talking about the murders he has committed and that he can not come back from it, “I am in blood stepp’d in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious ad go o’er” so Macbeth chooses to carry on in what he is doing because he sees no point and how it will benefit him just the same as trying to go back to before the murders.
Another important aspect of Macbeth’s character is his role in the play. He is the leading role and most of the other charters distrust him or learn that he is not to be trusted. Shakespeare shows his importance in the play by the language he uses for him. Important charters in Shakespeare speak in blank verse known as iambic pentameter, and all of Macbeths speeches are all written like this along with Lady Macbeth which shows their status in the play and for Lady Macbeth to be as equal as a man in the play show that she is just as important which would have been unusually for the time the play is set in. Macduff also speaks in iambic pentameter which shows he is of equal status as Macbeth as well.
Different audiences would have saw and judged Macbeth in different ways for example a Shakespearean audience would have judged him as a traitor and would have see him as the ‘villain’ of the story also his consorting with witches and witchcraft would have been seen as evil and they would have been scared of it because at the time most people would have believed in witchcraft unlike a modern audience who would be more cynical and generally don’t believed in the supernatural and would have seen and respected Macbeth as and ambitious warrior that got lost in his ambitions and who meet a tragic end because of it.
My own opinion of Macbeth and I would judge him as a courageous warrior that got tricked and sucked in by his ambitions and that is a perfect example of how too much ambition can be your immediate downfall. I respect his decision to choose a path and follow through with it even if it is the wrong one, but him realising what he did what he did what was wrong shows he still has what he had at the start of the play and that would be deep down he is still the hero and warrior that he was before the witches’ and his uncontrollable ambitions. During the play peoples opinions change on him as the character himself changes and eventually becomes something that is corrupt and leads to his death but one thing that does stay the same is that he still fights for himself and what he set out to do and example of this would be at the end of the play he repeats the line “give me my armour” Macbeth knows what like is like and is determined to fight on and be a warrior “curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.” In the end Macbeth finally realises what Banquo did at the beginning that The Witches’ deliberately tricked him but by then it is too late to do anything so he courageously carries on fighting, “And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d that the palter with us in a double sense”
