Macbeth believes that the more evil tasks you perform, the easier they become to do:
“Bad begun, make strong themselves by ill.”
Macbeth visits the witches to find out what he should do next and they tell him to beware of Macduff, so when he finds out that he has fled from England he kills his entire family:
“The castle of Macduff I will surprise.”
His reactions are also different both times to the witches, the first time he seems almost scared of them but we can still tell that he is interested in them because he says, “Stay you imperfect speaker. Tell me more.” When he asks them to stay we can tell straight off that he is interested in what the witches have to tell him. He wants them to stay and he asks them kindly to stay but the next time he meets them his character has changed.
The second time he meets the witches he is almost into a pure madness stage of his character and he goes to see them to find out about his future, “I will be satisfied. Deny me this, and an eternal curse fall on you.” From this reply we can tell he has got a lot more confidence in himself as most men wouldn’t dare to curse a witch. I think he feels that he is indestructible and he doesn’t care anymore what harm the witches will cause.
Witches
The influences of the Witches' prophecies on Macbeth's actions in the tragedy are introduced right at the beginning of the play. They recount to Macbeth three prophecies. That Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor, Thane of Glamis and King. These prophecies introduce Macbeth to ideas of greatness. Macbeth will eventually follow through on killing King Duncan, a destruction of the natural order; it was sometimes thought that the witches had the ability to reverse the natural order of things. This brings into the play idea of fate and the role with which it has in the play. It makes you wonder if Macbeth ever had a chance of doing what was right after he met with the witches.
It is however, more realistic to believe that Macbeth was responsible for his own actions throughout the play as in the end it was he who made the final decisions.
Banquo says in line 24, "The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's / In deepest consequence." He thinks and says bad things of the witches. He calls them instruments of darkness and the devil. He might believe that these prophecies would only bring harm even before anything begins to happen. So Macbeth is warned by his best friend before he makes any decisions that the witches are evil, and what they suggest is evil.
The witches could foretell the future, they can add temptation, and influence Macbeth, because they had told Macbeth that he would be King he became impatient and tried to hurry it as quickly as he could. but they can not control his destiny. Macbeth creates his own misery when he is driven by his own sense of guilt. This causes him to become insecure as to the reasons for his actions, which in turn causes, him to commit more murders. The witches offer great enticement, but it is in the end, each individuals decision to fall for the temptation, or to be strong enough to resist their captivation. The three Witches are only responsible for the introduction of these ideas and for further forming ideas in Macbeth head, but they are not responsible for his actions throughout the play.
Lady Macbeth is shown early in the play as an ambitious woman with a single purpose. She can manipulate Macbeth easily. This is shown in the line "That I may pour my spirits in thine ear." (I,V, 26) She is selfless, and wants what is best for her husband. Before the speech that Lady Macbeth gives in act one, scene five, Macbeth is resolved not to go through with the killing of the King. However, Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth's self-esteem by playing on his manliness and his bravery. This then convinces Macbeth to commit regicide. It is like a child who is easily guided. Lady Macbeth knows this and acts on it accordingly.
Although Macbeth has the final say in whether or not to go through with the initial killing, he loves Lady Macbeth and wants to make her happy. Lady Macbeth is the dominating individual in the relationship, which is shown in her soliloquy in Act 1 Scene. It seems that she can convince him to do anything as long as she pushes the right buttons in. (I, VII, 39) She says " Art thou afeard/ To be the same in thine own act and valour, As thou art in desire?"
On the other hand, as the play progresses, and Duncan is killed, there is a reversal of natural order, and Macbeth becomes the dominating partner again. Lady Macbeth becomes subservient. She becomes pathetic and only a shadow of her former self. Ambition plays a large role in this tragedy. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have "vaulting ambition" that drives them. Lady Macbeth's ambition drives her to manipulate Macbeth into committing regicide. Macbeth's fierce ambition is present before the witches' prophesies. He would never have thought seriously about killing Duncan without the witches. Yet the combination of both his ambitious nature and the initial prophecies leads him to kill the king. It is Lady Macbeth who states "Thou wouldst be great/ Art not without ambition." Macbeth states that it is "his besetting sin: I have no spur/ to prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition." Macbeth's continued ambition is present in his wanting to have a succession of kings after him. Macbeth's ambition is deep within him and because of this, both the witches and Lady Macbeth is able to sway him to evil. It is this ambition that gets him into so much trouble initially.
Once Macbeth kills for the first time, he has no choice but to continue to cover up his wrong doings, or risk losing everything he has worked so hard for. In the end, it all comes to Macbeth himself.
Everyone is responsible for his own destiny. This is an essential theme in this tragedy. Macbeth chooses to gamble with his soul and when he does this it is only him who chooses to lose it. He is responsible for anything he does and must take total accountability for his actions. Macbeth is the one who made the final decision to carry out his actions. He made these final decisions and continued with the killings to cover that of King Duncan. However where as some facts show that the results were all of his own doing, in act IV he returns to the witches voluntarily to find out his fate in order to see what actions he should take. This shows that maybe the witches did have a great influence on his actions.
The killing of Duncan starts an unstoppable chain of events in the play that ends with the murder of Macbeth and the suicide of Lady Macbeth. Macbeth chooses to murder Duncan. Macbeth, in the beginning had all of the qualities of an honourable gentleman who could become anything. This is all shattered when his ambition overrides his sense of morality. Although Macbeth is warned as to the validity of the witches prophesies, he is tempted and refuses to listen to reason from Banquo. When the second set of prophecies Macbeth receives begin to show their faults Macbeth blames the witches for deceiving him with half-truths. While the witches are not totally responsible for the actions of Macbeth, they are responsible for introducing the ideas to Macbeth, which in turn fired up Macbeth's ambition and led to a disastrous and unnecessary chain of events.
We first encounter the character of Lady Macbeth in Act 1 Scene 5 while she is reading the letter sent to her by Macbeth describing his first encounter with the three witches. From then on she shows herself to be ambitious and strong mentally yet weak in her actions (she found herself unable to kill Duncan herself, and gave the excuse that he looked too much like her father as he slept).
As soon as she reads the letter, she decides that Macbeth will be the next Scottish King and fulfil the witches prophecy no matter the method. This proves that Lady Macbeth was a driving force behind Dunce’s murder, but the question remains - was she the true driving force behind the event? To answer this question, I need to look at all the influences involved, and to do this I first need to ask, “What is it that started both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth thinking of kingships and murder?” The answer is the wyrd sisters of the blasted heath – the three witches.
The witches were used in the play for two main reasons. First and foremost, they were used as a catalyst to start the chain of events resulting in Duncan’s murder, the suicide of Lady Macbeth, and the fall of Dunsinane to the revolutionary forces of MacDuff. Secondly, they were used as a personification of evil for the audiences. This was a symbolic character they could relate with, since the play was written especially for King James I of England, who was also King James VI of Scotland and a staunch believer in and hater of witchcraft. As the king believed that witches were evil and in league with the devil, so too did the common people of England. Therefore, they would quite readily believe that a witch could cast spells, see into the future, tie wind into three knots, and become your mortal enemy if you refused to give them food, among other things. The general view of the people was that witches were the emissaries of the devil, and since at that time, religion played a major part in the lives of people, these witches were seen as pure evil. Witches were the most evil things on earth, and these three witches were no exception to that rule.
The witches, through three sentences helped the imaginations of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to start forming ideas of murder. These statements took the forms of prophecy – “ ‘All hail Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!’ ‘All hail Macbeth! hail to thee Thane of Cawdor!’ ‘All hail Macbeth! Thou shalt be king hereafter.’” Without these predictions, the seeds of grim imagination they planted in the minds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth would never have taken seed to result in the death of Duncan. There is a chance that if it wasn’t for these three witches, the Macbeth’s would never have even contemplated murder.
None of the events involving the witches would have happened though if they had been unable to convince Macbeth of the authenticity of their statements. To do this they did things like addressing him by name, although he had never met them before; also, they made him believe the predictions through the first two statements. The witches’ first statement, “…hail to thee, Thane of Glamis” convinced Macbeth that these ‘weÏrd sisters’ knew him, and maybe had supernatural powers. The second statement, “…hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor” convinced Macbeth that the witches could see into the future, since he himself only found out he was Thane of Cawdor after the witches had disappeared. These convinced Macbeth that “they [the witches] have more in them than mortal knowledge.” The final convincing event came at the witches’ exit, when they “made themselves air”
The witches may have planted the seeds in Macbeth’s brain, but it was his own ambition that helped these seeds to grow into thoughts of murder. Macbeth was the first character to think of murder. This is indicated in his first soliloquy by phrases such as “why do I yield to that suggestion, whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature?” and refer to these murderous thoughts as “horrible imaginings.” His use of the word ‘yield’ indicates that Macbeth does not want to be thinking these treacherous thoughts. Despite his aspirations and ambitions, he decides against murder, using the line “if chance will crown me king, why chance may crown me without a stir.” Macbeth has decided to leave the future to chance, but his thoughts of murder by this time have already weakened any resolve he had to stick by this decision. He is left impressionable, and so to persuade him to do the very thing he decided against would take less effort than it probably would usually.
Macbeth’s deliberation about leaving things to chance is called into question though in Act 1 Scene 4, in which Duncan pronounces Malcolm his successor. “The Prince of Cumberland: that is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, for in my way it stands.” Macbeth says in this quote “or else o’erleap”, which suggests that he is again thinking of alternative methods of achieving the kingship. These thoughts could have come originally from his own ambition, or it could have come from the witches making him more susceptible to these suggestions. This could be the case because Macbeth’s first lines – “So fair and foul a day I have not seen” emulates the witches line in Act 1 Scene 1, “Fair is foul and foul is fair.”
The character of Macbeth is courageous and a good general. He has a reputation for being one of the king’s elite soldiers. He regularly receives praise from everyone, from the captain who acts as a messenger and describes Macbeth as “Brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name”, up to the Thane of Ross, describing him as “most worthy Thane.” His praise even comes from the King himself, calling him “valiant cousin, worthy gentleman.” He seems to all intents and purposes as the perfectly loyal soldier, commanding the king’s armies against their enemy, the Norwegians, and winning. The perfect soldier he seems, yet he has three main downfalls: his ambition, his imagination, and his love for his wife. These three things combined made him susceptible to the pressure put on him by Lady Macbeth.
Macbeth’s ambition gave him a part of his mind that, although he was fighting the thought of murder, kept re-suggesting it. No matter how much the idea repulsed him, this part of him still wanted to be sat on the Stone of Scone, regardless of the cost to his own morality. His imagination introduced the concept of murder in the first place, before he even sent the letter to his wife. His love for his wife is the main downfall though, since it is his wife who pushes him into the act. She did this by challenging his masculinity, accusing him of cowardice and saying he has no determination when Macbeth resolves not to go through with the deed.
All the pressure, guilt, and mental and emotional stress finally get to him just before the murder, making him hallucinate. He sees a floating dagger leading him towards Duncan’s chamber. “Is this a dagger I see before me,” he says, allowing the audience to know he is hallucinating.
He didn’t find the murder itself easy, since after he entered, he began having auditory hallucinations. He thought he heard one of the kings bodyguards say “ ‘God bless us’ and ‘Amen’ the other”, yet he found himself unable to say ‘Amen’. This was probably his subconscious mind telling him that he was going against God; this is because at the time the play was written, the people believed that the monarch was appointed by God, and so to go against the monarch was not only to go against God, but disrupt the cosmological order in the nation.
Macbeth was so overcome with guilt after the murder that he went into shock, unable to go back to the scene of the murder to return the daggers which he, in a state of horror and repulsion at what he had done, had forgotten to leave behind. He remarked “Will all great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood clean from my hands?” while he tries to wash away the royal blood. He was racked with guilt about his actions. Looking at Macbeth in this state, we realise he could never have murdered Duncan on his own, with only his ambition driving him. Lady Macbeth must have played a part in the outcomes of that evening.
Lady Macbeth knew her husband very well. She understood his strengths and weaknesses probably better than he did, and this is why she had so little trouble persuading him to kill Duncan. She knew how to use these strengths and weaknesses to her own advantage while suggesting murder to Macbeth. One of Macbeth’s weaknesses would seem to be his pride in his masculinity, and his inability to back down from a challenge or argument. You can see how Lady Macbeth exploits this weakness with phrases like “art thou afeared to be the same in act and valour as thou art in desire?” and “would thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem?” These two quotes ask Macbeth if he is afraid to do what he set out to do, and asking him if he thinks he can achieve the crown without doing anything to make it come about through his actions; “like the poor cat i’th’adage.” This refers to a proverb, or adage, where a cat wants to catch a fish, but isn’t willing to get his feet wet. Therefore the fish got away from the cat as the crown would get away from Macbeth. You can see from Lady Macbeth’s actions that she is pushing Macbeth towards murder, showing herself to be a driving force.
Lady Macbeth is ambitious for her husband. She shows this by showing no indication of doubt, suspicion, or hesitation in her reaction to reading of the witches prophecy. She doesn’t just decide that her husband should become king, but starts believing that he will be king without any doubt that it will happen. Her one concern is Macbeth’s ability to fulfil the prophecy, fearing he is 2too full of the milk of human kindness” to be able to do what it takes to become king. However, she believes she can win him over with the “valour of my tongue”, which she eventually does, re-suggesting murder to her husband, encouraging him, even pressuring him to do it.
Lady Macbeth, for all her faults does have her feminine qualities. She is a loving wife, caring for the well being of her husband, and only forcing his hand when she knows he can’t do it himself. She is described as “honoured hostess” in Act 1 Scene 7. She could however be doing exactly as she had said in this scene – “look like th’innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t”, and probably is. She has to force herself to be strong and ruthless, perhaps too much. While Macbeth is having “horrible imaginings” of the future beyond the murder in his soliloquy at the beginning of Act 1 Scene 7, Lady Macbeth forbids herself this. She becomes entirely focused on the murder, not even contemplating failure. Her absoluteness of purpose, her total discipline, and her full control of the situation are immaculate. She succeeds in morally paralysing Macbeth with her willpower. Eventually, her rigid self-discipline plays a part in her later insanity.
Macbeth eventually came to realise the precarious nature of his position. Lady Macbeth hasn’t done this, for the rigid self-discipline she has crafted will not allow her. This results in a build up of gilt, which causes her eventual insanity. She forces herself to be strong and cruel, but doesn’t accept that the “sovereign sway of masterdom” she expected has not materialised.
Her character is very strong and, as I have said before, excelling in self-discipline. Her mentality is stronger than her will physically. She can persuade Macbeth to murder Duncan in his sleep, but she cannot do it herself because he “resembled my father as he slept.” In Act 1 Scene 7, she, while persuading Macbeth to commit the act, outlines her plan, something that she alone devised. Through doing this, she proves that she has been thinking about the murder, maybe non-stop, since the characters first discussion in Act 1 Scene 5. She plans the whole thing out for Macbeth, just leaving him to do it. She does all the thinking, but she didn’t play a part in the actual murder, she didn’t help carry the deed out, she just planned it. In her plan, she outlines ways of diverting the blame from them – using the guard’s daggers, then leaving them with the drugged guards covered with blood. She tells Macbeth while he is trying to wash the blood from his hands “a little water clears us of this deed.”
She seems to feel no immediate guilt after the murder, no remorse, just satisfaction that her husband will be king- that is if she can keep him from making everyone suspect them. Near the end of the play however, her guilt catches up with her, and she starts sleepwalking, saying things like “who would have thought the old had so much blood in him”, obviously talking of Duncan. She denies her conscience until she cannot anymore, then apparently goes mad.
One question remains – Why did Shakespeare use Lady Macbeth as a cause for the murder of Duncan? To answer this, we need to look at the history of Scotland.
The real Macbeth was born around 1005, son of the second daughter of the King, Malcolm II. His wife’s name was Gruoch. Her brother and her first husband both died at the hands of Malcolm’s followers, who were headed by the son of Malcolm’s first daughter, the man who became his successor, King Duncan I of Scotland. Avenging his wife and disputing the throne, Macbeth, Thane of Cromarty and Moray, brought Duncan’s rule to an abrupt end: on 14 August 1040, Duncan was mortally wounded in a battle at Pitgaveny after six years as King. Macbeth reigned for a further seventeen years before he was killed in a skirmish at Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire.
The vengeance of his wife’s brother and first husband were the reason Macbeth killed Duncan, and it may have been his wife who persuaded him to take vengeance. Therefore, we can assume that Shakespeare originally had Lady Macbeth as the real driving force, but added the witches for the benefit of King James I, and the ambition of Macbeth for the audience and for the story.
Looking at the evidence I have shown in this essay, I can determine that Lady Macbeth was a major driving force behind the assassination, but Macbeth’s ambition and the witches prophecies played an important part in the final outcome. Without the witches’ prophetic statements the chain reaction ending in the death of Duncan may never have started. Without Macbeth’s ambition, Lady Macbeth may not have been able to persuade Macbeth to commit murder for a crown. Without Lady Macbeth’s ruthless determination, Duncan would most probably not have been murdered. I can therefore determine that Lady Macbeth was a Driving force behind the murder of Duncan.
