Macbeth goes ahead with the deed in Act 2, scene three where his conscience hampers his ability to cope mentally with the deed when a dagger appears before him pointing towards King Duncan’s room demonstrating his guilt. This could be a reminder of his wife’s word and will for Macbeth to kill the king and have the throne to themselves, when Macbeth reaches the king’s room he hesitates over killing him and it seems his soliloquy from Act 1 scene 7 haunts his thoughts and he falters - here I doubt his ability to carry out the deed and it could be possible that lady Macbeth had pushed him over the limit of his cruelty - however when the king awakes he must kill him or face hanging like Thane before him, this act shows his and his wife’s ambition put together have led to him becoming a tyrant and one step closer to becoming evil. When Macbeth becomes king due to his evil deeds he realises that one part of the prophecy meant that Banquo’s children would be king this doesn’t please Macbeth that he should take all the risk of killing the king and not have his heir follow on to be king, so he orders Banquo’s murder. In this deed he doesn’t tell his wife or indeed ask his wife for council, for it seems as though he no longer needs her emotionally to usher him into doing what is essential in order to remain undiscovered as a tyrant and a murderer, and to have his desires met through what he does, his wife’s role has changed significantly since Macbeth sent her the letter about the prophecy. Back then he was guided by her to do what they both desired, she used attacks at his manhood and appeals to his ambition to get what she wanted and what he also wanted by using these two factors through her evident good knowledge of his personality she leads him to do the deeds, the first deed comes about due to a direct attempt by her to persuade Macbeth to kill, but the in the second instance it seems to me that her words have stayed with him all this time like seeds implanted in his mind by her evil words before. Another reason Macbeth could have chosen not to involve his wife in the murder of Banquo is because he saw how the murder of the King affected her and he knew if she was involved in this killing then she’d lose her mind completely due to the fact she was closer to Banquo than the king and she’d be hurt even worse.
At Macbeth’s first public occasion as king Macbeth hopes to keep up good appearances he comes face to face with Banquo’s ghost and the realisation that he’s not able to carry out a bad deed without moral support from his wife. Macbeth doesn’t believe it at first when he says “Which of you have done this” and descends into madness forcing his wife to pretend he usually has breakdowns like that, “My lord is often thus”, as she knows nothing about the murder of Banquo she believes he has broken down due to the guilt of the murder of king Duncan. Macbeth’s first public appearance as king ends in failure and people question his integrity Macbeth responds by seeking council from the witches and not his wife.
As Macbeth approaches the a witch speaks “something wicked this way comes” I believe this refers to Macbeth the witches apparently know that Macbeth’s been up to no good and this means they believe Macbeth is now wicked and or evil, they voice their thoughts though out of Macbeth’s earshot. Macbeth is now branded evil by the witches and suggests he has become evil through his actions between his first meeting with the witches and now. Macbeth has now reached his full potential of evil for he has killed his noble king and close friend and both for his own glory.
Lady Macbeth is a very complex character and when she receives a letter from her husband concerning the prophecy she calls on the devil “the raven” and asks of it to “unsex her” this is asked so she will not feel any remorse over what she wishes to do(kill the king)here we see Lady Macbeth’s first reaction towards half of the prophecy coming true she wants the king dead so Macbeth can take his place as quickly as possible and she can become queen and decides this is what she shall tell her husband. Macbeth however thinks long and hard about killing the king and when he tells her “we will proceed no further in this business” she shows unprecedented control over her husband for the period of history this play was written in, and whilst most wives of the period wouldn’t even tell them their view and convince their husband to buy fish instead of chicken, let alone convincing them to kill the king, Lady Macbeth uses everything she knows about her husband against him attacking his manhood and appealing to his underlying ambition-Macbeth very nearly gave in to his ambition to become king in his earlier soliloquy, thus it wouldn’t take much for him to be convinced by that means especially by his wife. This conversation shows that Lady Macbeth shares her husband’s trait of ambition but doesn’t have the same sense of honour that her husband might have gained through war on the battlefield here she is the source of evil because she convinces him to kill.
Later in the play Macbeth no longer seeks his wife for council when he chooses to kill his best friend, however she was the one who planted the seeds of evil in his mind when she convinced him that killing for the throne was worth it and so she also has a substantial amount of blame to take from her husband’s actions here.
Nearing the end of the play Lady Macbeth appears maddened by her apparent guilt she washes her hands ferociously and mumbles to herself in her sleep (walking) this shows that she couldn’t handle the guilt of the deed especially after having to see the dead body of the king whilst planting weapons on the guards this shows she didn’t have the heart to become evil, however this being so she can still be though to have been one of the main reasons for the evil in Macbeth the man and the play.
The witches are the third party that I will investigate they are in this list because they start the whole thing by telling Macbeth he would become king caused him to think about killing the king, tell his wife and ultimately kill the king, but were these their intentions, I will try and figure that out through this essay, and finally determine who is responsible for the evil in Macbeth.
The witches are quite responsible for the evil in Macbeth because I believe when Macbeth comes back and they refer to him as “wicked” I believe this means they believe he has now become evil/wicked during his time away from them through his actions, and though there was no mention of evil at their first meeting I believe that the witches might have foreseen that Macbeth had the capacity for evil and so acting on this, is a sign of evil on the witches part. However be that as it may Macbeth chose to do the things that he did, the prophecy didn’t say kill king Duncan and you shall be king it simply said you “shall be king hereafter” but if the witches knew that he was to become a king and possibly knew of Macbeth’s capacity for evil through his ambition as I mentioned then they need not tell him about his future because they would know that doing this would drive him to try and speed up his fate, initially this is not so and Macbeth stops himself from doing it and takes the view that if it is going to happen that it will happen without him having to do anything, but then Lady Macbeth convinces him The witches however may have foreseen Macbeth’s unworthy rule may have acted on this knowledge not because of their evil but they to set actions in motion that could lead to Macbeth’s premature death, by telling Macbeth that he can’t be killed by “any man of woman born” this gives Macbeth a feeling of invincibility and this feeling is strengthened by the notion that a sign of his death will come in the form of a moving forest but when the prophecy of the moving forest is proved right Macbeth feels uneasy and even more so when the man who’s family he killed (Macduff) challenges him and reveals that he was born prematurely by sezerian at which point Macbeth falters and is killed by Macduff, I think that the witches may have devised a plan to kill off Macbeth from the beginning building on the primary prophecy that he would become king and devised a plan that would end in Macbeth’s death and although this is in a way good since Macbeth is destined for evil, despite this it would seem that Macbeth tries not to be taken over by his ambitious attributes right from the beginning when he says “Chance may crown me without my stir”.
After this point Macbeth almost stops himself from taking action in his soliloquy after he was proclaimed Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth has tried hard not to give in, but the reassurance of another person (Lady Macbeth) pushes him over the edge and causes him to do the deed. For this reason I believe Lady Macbeth is mainly responsible for the evil in this play this is because she is the one who gives the final action that causes Macbeth to kill for the throne this sets the ball rolling for Macbeth to kill his best friend to cover his tracks. The witches I believe are the second most to blame for the evil in the play because they more than likely knew that Macbeth was capable of evil and so gave him a prophecy that probably wouldn’t have been true if he did not know about it, in all probability it was only true that Macbeth would become thane of Cawdor if the witches hadn’t told him that he’d be king he wouldn’t have even thought about killing the king and sent a message to lady Macbeth.
