“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!”
These prophecies aroused Macbeth's curiosity as to how he could be King of Scotland. As the play progresses, Macbeth relies more and more on the witches’ prophecies only to find, too late, that he should,
“Doubt the equivocation of the Fiend
That lies like truth.”
Finally he realizes that the, “juggling fiends” could be, “no more believed”. The witches have been important in part for Macbeth’s fall from hero to villain.
The influence of Macbeth's wife, Lady Macbeth also contributed to his degeneration of character. Lady Macbeth plays an important role in this play because she provided the scheme, by which Macbeth could more readily and more immediately assassinate King Duncan. Lady Macbeth tells her husband,
“When Duncan is asleep, his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail, so convince”,
“When in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie, as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan?”
Macbeth is in struggle with his conscience but is goaded by Lady Macbeth to proceed with the murder when she questions his manhood. Macbeth’s image of himself forces him to reply,
“I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none”
As soon as Macbeth has performed the treasonous deed he immediately regrets his wrongdoing. At this point of the play the audience can note the change in Macbeth's character. Macbeth's first murder was a trying experience for him, however after the first murder; killing seemed to be the only solution to maintain his reign of the people of Scotland. Therefore, it was Lady Macbeth who introduced the concept of murder to Macbeth as the shortest way to obtain the crown that was prophesied by the witches.
Macbeth's ambition also influenced his journey form hero to villain. However, Macbeth's ambition had not been strong enough for him to kill the King. He declares,
“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent but only
Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other”
But Lady Macbeth's influence comes in to play. If it were not for Lady Macbeth, his ambition would not have been enough to drive him to obtain and then maintain his title of King of Scotland no matter what it took, even if it meant murdering. Macbeth is led to say,
“I am settled; and bend up
Each coporal agent to this terrible feat.”
Macbeth's ambition leads him to murder, greed, violence and power hunger. Macbeth shows this when he kills his King and later orders the killing of Fleance and Macduff’s family.
In conclusion, the prophecies given to him by the witches, Lady Macbeth's influence and plan, and his intensified ambition, all contributed greatly to his degeneration of character, which resulted in his downfall and finally his death as a “dead butcher”. From being a hero of his King and country at the beginning of the play Macbeth becomes the tyrant and the villain. Is Macbeth a hero or a villain? Shakespeare reveals him as both a hero and a villain.
