Who is responsible for the fall of Macbeth from "Noble Macbeth" to the "Dead Butcher"

Dominic Wheldrick

Who is responsible for the fall of Macbeth from

“Noble Macbeth” to the

“Dead Butcherer”

In the play Macbeth, the audience may notice that there are three main contributors to the fall of, Great Macbeth, to the dead butcherer. These three are, the three witches, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. Although they all have their vital roles to play, it is Macbeth who the audience would more easily see is the main contributor.

Although Macbeth is the main contributor the witches and Lady Macbeth both play a significant part in this play. To start with the audience can see that the witches are very important as they are the first people on stage during this play. Straight away the audience can immediately clearly see that the witches are evil through each language as “Where shall we three meet again/In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” and “Fair is foul and foul is fair;/Hover through the fog and filthy air.” These two quotations give a picture of the witches and that is that they are evil. Pathetic fallacy is used in the stage directions, they say “Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches/” This sets the scene as quit dark and for the witches to start as their devious plan to trick Macbeth. As the audience sees so far the witches are obviously not the kind of people you may find your average lord or lady associating with, this makes you suspicious of them, and of Macbeth. The answer to this questions is no, as in a later scene where as Macbeth is drawn in and intrigued by the witches, his friend Banquo revisits their temptations and ignores their suggestions. In scene I the audience evidence of their evil ways as it is clear that they are plotting or even casting a spell on Macbeth. All the way through the play the audience will pick up on the witches use of language, description and their activities they are doing. They constantly use very descriptive language, this can be seen in this quotation, “Round about the cauldron go;/In the poisoned entrails throw.” The language used here is o dead beings and it is descriptive through words such as “entrails” and “poisoned”. The audience can clearly see that the witches are participating in some kind of spell. The audience may also see that the queen of the witches – Hacate, lures Macbeth into a false sense of security through equivocation in the form of ambiguous prophecies. This later leads to the death of Macbeth as he realizes he has been deceived by the witches. The three prophecies Hecate gives to Macbeth are; “Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me”, the second “The power of man for none of woman born/shall harm Macbeth” and the third, “Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until/Great Birnam wood to Dunstance hill/shall come against him.” It is not until near the end of the play that the last two prophecies come into the play. When they do and Macbeth realizes there double meaning it is too late as he is already trapped. Although the witches are evil and they do trick Macbeth it is inevitable that Macbeth would have fell.

The other main character who the audience would clearly notice helping and encouraging Macbeth is Lady Macbeth. The audience may see that she is eager to help Macbeth to achieve his ambition of being King. Early on in the play Lady Macbeth prays to the devil spirits to come and remove her female emotion, this can be seen in this quotation “Come you spirits/That tend as mental thoughts, unsex me here,/And fill me from the crows to the tow top-full/Of direct cruelty;” The audience can see here that Lady Macbeth is willing to sell herself to the devil to ...

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Another thing which adds to Lady Macbeth ‘s character is how when she is planning or plotting she uses witch like language and speaks in rhyme. This can be seen in several places. It makes her sound almost as one of the three witches and as if she shouldn’t be a noble’s wife.

Even though Macbeth actually kills Duncan he is not the one who makes the plan to do so. It is his wife, Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, after being desensitized by the devil spirits seems almost oblivious to the fact that she is planning to kill someone. She thinks of everything and is very confident that the plan will not fail. To make the plan even safer she prays for a dark night, this is equivocation, on one level it means a night with no stars and clouds but in another way she is praying no-one will see them carrying out the murder.

One other way that the audience sees Lady Macbeth encouraging Macbeth to still go through with the plan of murdering Duncan is when he is reconsidering. She does this through firstly sexual blackmail by saying “from this time. such I account thy love” by questioning his manhood “When you durst do it, then you were a man;” this would dampen his ego and he would want to counter that. She definitely tricks him with this all the way through the play.

After the murder of Duncan when Macbeth returns with the daggers and she sees he is nervous she calms him down and she takes the daggers back to the murder scene so he can calm down. When Duncan’s body is discovered the morning after, to cover up for Macbeth again Lady Macbeth faints so that she and her husband appears completely innocent and had nothing to do with the murder.

The last time we see Lady Macbeth covering up for Macbeth is at the banquet after Macbeth has been made King. When he believes to be seeing Banquo’s dead ghosts she makes excuses for him and tells the guests, “Sit, worthy friends. My Lord is often thus.” Implying that Macbeth has a mental disorder and acts in unusual ways. Although Lady Macbeth plays a significant role in the play, if she wasn’t in the play Macbeth still would have managed to kill Duncan it would probably just have taken him longer to think up the plan and go through with it because inevitably it is Macbeth ‘s raw ambition which powers the whole play.

There are many points in the play where Lady Macbeth and the witches are clearly responsible for the downfall of Macbeth, but for every reason they are responsible for the downfall the audience can pick out two for Macbeth. Right at the beginning of the play the audience can see that Macbeth is naturally bloodthirsty in battle, as he is seen brutally slaying his fellow countrymen in a civil war. In the play Macbeth says “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” which is very similar to what the witches says this suggests that they may already have some power of him, but it could be coincidence. When Macbeth first meets the witches he is intrigued by their prophecies and demands they “Stay you imperfect speakers, tell me more/” When the witches tell Macbeth that he will be King hereafter, he demands they tell him more, this may put a thought into the audiences mind that he has considered Kingship before, this idea is further promoted by the fact that Macbeth doe not ridicule the idea of himself being King. Not long after receiving the prophecies from the witches Macbeth has already pondered in his mind the though of murdering the King. Macbeth is deceitful in the way that he convinces Banquo he has forgotten about the meeting with the three witches but then says:

This upon what hath chanced, and/At more time,/The interim having weighted it, lest not speak/Our free hearts each to other.

Macbeth is so eager to tell his wife of his encounter of the witches that he writes to her so to inform her as quickly as possible. This implies that he has thought further into the idea of dethroning the King. To show how desperate Macbeth was to get home Shakespeare writes, “One on my fellows had the speed of him/Who almost dead for breath, had scarcely more/Than would make up his messages.” After Macbeth has murdered Duncan he becomes insecure because he fears all of his nobles, whereas he let Lady Macbeth organize the murder of Duncan he plans the murder of Banquo and Florence and this shows a rise in confidence. This also shows that Lady Macbeth is becoming less significant and more innocent. To find out more about his future Macbeth initiates the second meeting with the witches and demands they speak and tell him more. When Macbeth begins to become more confident he pledges to himself not to think about his future plan as this may endanger the outcome. The audience can clearly see this compulsive action when Macbeth decides to kill Macduff and his family and immediately does so. “He has killed me mother” says Macduff’s son.

Almost all of the Shakespeare tragedies end with somebody dying, usually the main character. This is normally due to a tragic flaw they have developed through the play. E.g. Athello has a very active mind, is very jealous of his wife as she thinks he is having an affair, this eventually drives him to kill her ‘lover’. In Macbeth it is his raw ambition, that is what drives him throughout the whole play. Lady Macbeth and the witches are just catalysts which speed up the play. It is not inevitable that Macbeth would have fallen, but it is almost certain he would have because of his tragic flaw, his ambition. All of the reasons that Lady Macbeth and the witches had to do with his downfall are just things that help him on his way.

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