Macbeth - A study of evil.

Authors Avatar

The play “Macbeth" written by Shakespeare explores the theme of good and evil. Shakespeare cleverly mixes these two themes within the play therefore creating a dramatic atmosphere. What is the true meaning of "evil" you ask? It is simply, "the urge to destroy whatever is good; the brooding presence of murderous intention and action".

Macbeth was married to Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play there are some similarities between the two personalities. As the play develops so do the characters because both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth experience a change in their lives that they cannot forget. Macbeth in the beginning of the play shows his valour as a warrior in battle fighting for good (the king and country). However, in the captain’s account of the battle, there is a disturbing suggestion of extreme violence.

“Like valours minion carved out his passage

Till he faced the slave,

Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’chaps

And fixed his head upon our battlements.”

The captain also mentions the word “Golgotha”, which would have an immediate impact on a religious audience, as the captain was referring back to the crucifixions of Christ. However, as the audience discovers later in the play and this account, despite his capacity for violence he is disturbed greatly by the news of Duncan’s death, the king he had actually killed. Macbeth faces a difficult choice though as Duncan is the king of Scotland and it was considered to be satanic of a person to kill the “father” of a country. Another fact was that Macbeth was one of Duncan’s most loyal subjects and “kinsman”. A kinsman was like a family member such as a father, which also relates to the Father of Scotland.

        Macbeth appears for the first time when he was with Banquo, a noble friend. They are both walking round a heath. There was no mention of the whereabouts of the heath probably to add the effect of mystery, but there is also something that suggests the evil that is about to engulf Macbeth. This is created by the thundery weather to highlight the brooding presence of evil. Once Macbeth had heard the prophecies that the witches tell him his reaction is somewhat different to Banquo’s reaction, who was very excited, Banquo notices this and asks,

        “Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear

        Things that do sound so fair?”

Macbeth then becomes even more agitated when he hears about the Thane of Cawdor being punished for treason, by Angus (one of the king’s messengers), and Macbeth is to be the Thane’s replacement! Macbeth “rapt” with the thought that the witches’ prophecies were coming true expresses his feelings in soliloquy revealing that the thought of killing Duncan had crossed his mind. At this point the witches have “sown a seed” in Macbeth to murder Duncan in order to satisfy his ambition to become king. He sends a letter back home to Lady Macbeth telling her of his thoughts of killing Duncan and becoming king. When Macbeth returns home to find the king is coming to stay at his castle, Lady Macbeth sees this as an excellent chance to kill the king and therefore make Macbeth king. After much discussion they are both agreed on the murder. Macbeth has another soliloquy this time about how he should kill Duncan.

        Macbeth experiences a major moral decline after the murder of Duncan. Macduff knocks at the castle gates and Macbeth at once wished that the murder had not taken place, “Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.” In his desperate despair Macbeth begins to breakdown (By this I mean that Macbeth’s actions become more careless, ruthless and paranoid about his security). Macbeth slowly withdraws from his wife and starts to build up his own security against anyone who has the potential to overthrow him from the throne, by killing or destroying those who he considers his enemies. During the course of the play Macbeth hires some murderers to kill these people as he had enough anguish from killing Duncan. He then orders the death of Banquo and his son Fleance and has Macduff’s family slaughtered, most of these people were also kinsmen or their families. Macbeth has nearly turned totally evil, although there is one point in the play where Macbeth could have chosen to turn back and repent for all that he had done in the past but he chooses to go on along the path of violence rather than to turn back,

Join now!

        “…I am in blood

        Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more

        Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

After visiting the witches once more, he returns to his castle, where “he is so hardened to horror” that when his beloved wife died he is hardly touched by her death. He then reveals his thoughts in another soliloquy and probably the most recognized speech out of the whole play,

        “She should have died hereafter;

        Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”

He then loses faith in life itself,

        “…It is a tale

        Told by an idiot, full of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay