In Act One Scene Four, Macbeth hears that Malcolm is the successor to the throne. In Macbeth’s first major soliloquy, we see that he is capable of hiding his devastation to deceive the king – “Stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires.” He describes Malcolm, heir to the throne, as a step he must “overleap”. We notice how Macbeth is becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of becoming king that he feels anger towards anyone who is an obstacle in his way. This is a dangerous sign that he is on the turning point of losing his morals.
Shakespeare is aware that if the audience begins to detest Macbeth they will soon become disinterested in his character and, thus, begins to show some of his more favourable qualities. In Act One Scene Seven, Macbeth reveals his conscience and emotional depth through his long soliloquy in which he tries to persuade himself not to kill the king. He recites to himself many reasons for not killing Duncan – “this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek.” He speaks of him in very rich language and uses imagery of vulnerability with phrases such as “naked newborn babe” and “plead like angels”. This makes the audience realise that the only thing driving him is his “vaulting ambition.”
Macbeth shows guilt and changes his mind – “We shall proceed no further in this business”. However, Lady Macbeth drives and stimulates his darker thoughts her husband kills the king because she attacks his manhood and destroys his ambition to become king without killing someone – “to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man”. It is clear that Macbeth is weak because he allows himself to be easily manipulated. When he does agree to do it, you can see how unsure he is of the plan because he questions it – “If we should fail?” At this point in the play we should see that Lady Macbeth is the one who is doing all the plotting and she is the character with more status. At this stage the audience may begin to feel sorry for Macbeth as they realise that Lady Macbeth has grasped that he is overly ambitious and uses it against him to get him to commit the murder.
In Act Two Scene One, just before he kills Duncan, Macbeth has a vision of a dagger floating in the air before him, its handle pointing toward his hand. His mind is full of dark thoughts and this once fearless soldier is now tormented by images of blood and fear of the unknown. In the soliloquy, he wonders whether the dagger is real or a "dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain”. Although he sounds quite determined, it is clearly evident that he feels tremendous guilt for the act he is about to commit.
After the murder Macbeth clearly feels regret for what he has done and believes that when he was murdering Duncan and he could not say amen, it was a sign that God had abandoned him “amen stuck in my throat”. He speaks of how he can no longer sleep – “voices cry in the house that he shall sleep no more”. Macbeth speaks metaphorically about how he cannot wash away the guilt or cleanse him – “will all great Neptune’s ocean will wash the blood clean from my hand?”. The enormity of Macbeth's crime has awakened in him a powerful sense of guilt that will haunt him throughout the play. Blood, specifically Duncan's blood, serves as the symbol of that guilt, and Macbeth's sense that there is enough blood on his hands to turn the entire sea red will stay with him until his death. Lady Macbeth's response to this speech will be her mundane remark, "A little water clears us of this deed". We can see that Macbeth is being driven by the seemingly heartless Lady Macbeth.
There is a clear reversal in character between Macbeth and his wife. Before, it was Macbeth doing what Lady Macbeth commanded even though his conscience told him otherwise. But now Macbeth’s head is filled with maliciousness and evil plots –“Full of scorpions is my mind”. Macbeth does not tell her about his plans and keeps her ‘innocent of the knowledge’ because she has become weak minded and can not take any more horror. As Macbeth talks to the murderers, he uses the same techniques that Lady Macbeth had used to convince him, by questioning their manhood and calling them cowards. Macbeth now has to remind Lady Macbeth to mask her unease –“make their faces visors to their hearts, disguising what they are". Yet despite his displays of fearlessness, Macbeth is undeniably overwhelmed with guilt and doubt, which he expresses in his reference to the "scorpions" in his mind and in his declaration that in killing Banquo they "have scorched the snake, not killed it".
In Act Three Scene Four, Macbeth encounters the ghost of Banquo at the banquet. Although it is invisible to the rest of the company and thus most likely Macbeth’s imagination, Shakespeare deliberately does not make this obvious. This serves its purpose in exaggerating to the audience the fact that Macbeth is turning insane. As he offers a toast to company, Banquo's ghost reappears and shocks Macbeth into further reckless outbursts. There is a contrast between this scene and the one in which Duncan's body was discovered; Macbeth was once cold-blooded and sure of himself, he now allows his anxieties and visions to get the best of him. Macbeth mutters to his wife that "blood will have blood" and tells Lady Macbeth that he has heard from a servant-spy that Macduff says that he will visit the witches again tomorrow in the hopes of learning more about the future and about who may be plotting against him. Macbeth is desperate to do whatever necessary to keep his throne, -“I am in blood, Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er". By this point in the play Macbeth’s morals have changed significantly. In Act One Macbeth was unsure between his loyalty and honour compared to ambition and his desire for power. But now loyalty and honour mean nothing compared to ambition and lust for power. He shows this when he kills Banquo and also plans to deal with Macduff- Macbeth will stop at nothing to make the throne securely his.
Macbeth believes that the more evil tasks you perform, the easier they become to do –“Bad begun, make strong themselves by ill”. It is at this stage of the play that Macbeth visits the witches to find out what he should do next and they tell him to beware of Macduff. When he hears about Macduff rebelling against him, he murders Lady Macduff and her young son. This marks the moment in which Macbeth descends into utter madness. Unlike before, he has no reason for murder, killing neither for political gain nor to silence an enemy, but simply out of a furious desire to do harm. Here, Shakespeare uses Malcolm and Macduff’s long conversation to distract the audience from the barbaric act that Macbeth had committed. The love they hold for Scotland unites them in opposition to Macbeth, and grants them moral legitimacy to seize power, what Macbeth distinctly lacked. This conversation is used at this exact stage in the play, when Macbeth has just killed brutally, as emphasis by contrasting the brutal Macbeth with the noble Malcolm and Macduff.
However, towards the end of the play, Shakespeare again attempts to rekindle the audience’s more sympathetic thoughts towards Macbeth. He is shown to fight on even against the vastly overwhelming odds. This portrays him as the man of courage that he once was. The audience would show signs of compassion for Macbeth when he states his helplessness – “stepped too far that should I wade no more returning was as tedious as go over” – he does not wish to commit these acts but he is too far into it, that there is no stopping now. Shakespeare makes a final portrayal of Macbeth’s emotional depth in the speech he makes after his wife’s death, one of the most key speeches of the entire play – “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” This speech gives deep insight into Macbeth’s view on life, as meaningless and dreary. As death looms, Macbeth comments on his disgust at how he is now king, but as with life, when one dies, one is dead, nothing else – “and then is heard no more.” When the battle begins, Macbeth clings against all apparent evidence, to the notion that he will not be harmed because he is protected by the prophecy—although whether he really believes it at this stage, or is merely hanging on to the last thread of hope he has left, is debatable. However, the witches prophecies are seen to be ‘half-truths’ and Macbeth is killed by the caesarean Macduff. Malcolm's victory and assumption of the crown of Scotland signifies that play itself is finally saved from the chaos engendered by the tyrannous Macbeth.
Throughout the play, we find Macbeth’s character changes. At first he appears to be a brave and honourable soldier. However, his character proves to be more complex. There is a darker side to him; his weakness, his greed and ambition lead him to murder the king. The weak side of his nature lays him open to manipulation by his wife and his thirst for power drives him on. However, the remorse he primarily feels upon murdering the king is short lived. Indeed the darker side of his nature overtakes his fears of God forsaking him: “amen stuck in his throat”. He is eclipsed by the ruthless side of his nature and is enthused to commit more atrocious murders to further his ambitions. Macbeth ceased to be a sympathetic hero once he made the decision to kill . His wife may have started him on his killing streak, but he was the one to finish himself off, but by the end of the play he degenerates into such a morally repulsive man that his death comes as a powerful reprieve.
