When Macbeth hears that Malcolm will inherit the throne, he has to confront his deepest and darkest desires. He thinks this is the point where I either become king or fail, ‘On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap’. He also wants the stars not to shine bright so they hide his ‘black and deep desires’. This contrast between the light and dark imagery here suggests that Macbeth is already becoming evil and as the play progresses he becomes darker. But he is not ready to deal with his ambition yet, at this point they are only dark thoughts, but with encouragement he can fulfil his desires.
In Elizabethan society the role of superstition and the idea of witches and black magic were very real and many people believed in it. King James I himself wrote a book about demonic powers and witchcraft called ‘Demonology’. This would explain why Macbeth truly believes in the witches prophecies. But the fact that he has a fascination and allegiance with the witches (and the way he seeks them out later on in the play) would have disturbed an Elizabethan audience. If Macbeth was a true ‘war hero’ he would not have aligned himself with the witches and the powers of darkness so closely.
In Macbeth the witches use a lot of rhyming couplets, which adds a mystical and spell like quality to their prophecies. The witches also use equivocal language, in which they say one thing but could have a completely different meaning, and this causes Macbeth to misinterpret their prophecies. The witches are responsible for a big part of Macbeth’s transformation, but they do not tell him to murder. They simply awakened the ambition that lay dormant inside Macbeth and they also give him a motive for his actions.
I think that Lady Macbeth is as ambitious as her husband because they are both going for the same goal, to be king and queen. But I think Lady Macbeth is stronger in how she goes about achieving her goal, she is willing to kill without any encouragement. Lady Macbeth has concerns that Macbeth will not go through with the murder of King Duncan so she attacks his ego. She calls him a coward ‘And live a coward’ and she knew this would really affect Macbeth as his bravery is what he is respected for, a solider can’t stand being called a coward. This is quite manipulative on Lady Macbeth’s part as she takes Macbeth’s bravery and masculinity and puts it into question. "Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valour, as thou art in desire?" At this point Macbeth cannot refuse if his bravery is on the line, ‘I dare do all that may become a man:’
Before the murder Lady Macbeth prays for the strength and will to carry out this murder. She wishes to be ‘unsexed’ and have the ‘limitations’ of a women taken away from her. She wants to be brave and in control and be able to shed blood. She wishes to become so inhuman she would be capable of killing a baby,’ have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash’d the brains out,’ This is quite a ruthless and violent image here and it shows how far Lady Macbeth will go to achieve their goal.
When the murder is done Macbeth comes to her with the bloody daggers still in his hands, when he was supposed to leave them on the guard’s bodies. This shows a more indecisive Macbeth now and how the murder has changed him. He cannot go back to the murder scene and plant the daggers. Macbeth was a ruthless and brave solider who had killed countless men but it is now that he can’t look at a dead body. Macbeth also says that he has ‘murdered sleep’ and that he will be haunted by nightmares forever. Another quote to support this point would be, ‘Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly.’ At this point we see that Macbeth’s conscience has not been totally eradicated. He is aware that his actions are callous. He has first murdered a man who ‘hath borne his faculties so meek’ and who has been ‘so clear in his great office’. He fears that the ‘sightless couriers of the air shall blow the horrid deed in enemy eye’ and the tears that fall will ‘drown the wind’. Macbeth comments on the need to wash the blood from his hands and says, ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No: this my hand will ratter/ The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.’ This image effectively shows how Macbeth has subverted nature, making the sea, which is naturally green, a blood red. Macbeth states that it would be no use to try and wash the blood off in the sea; he would only infect it with his misdeeds. The word ‘multitudinous’ shows the vastness of the deed that has been carried out.
Macbeth is so torn up with guilt and fear that he thinks he would be better off dead than living a lie, ‘Better be with the dead...Than on the torture of the mind to lie.’ Macbeth also actually envies Duncan because he’s dead, ‘Duncan is in his grave. After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.’ It is quite ironic here that a dead man can sleep better than Macbeth. Alliteration is also used here in the line ‘fitful fever’ to emphasise his despair. Macbeth also prays to have his true intentions disguised from the public eye, ‘And make our faces vizards to our hearts, disguising what they are.’ Metaphors are also used to emphasise how Macbeth feels, ‘O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’ Scorpions were viewed as foreign ‘evil’ creatures, and the imagery of scorpions here isn’t a welcoming one, and suggests the witches have left dark and evil thoughts in Macbeth’s head. Animal imagery is also used again where Macbeth mentions ‘bats’ and ‘beetles’. Again these creatures are associated with evil and witchcraft, and this show again how deeply connected Macbeth is to the witches and evil.
Another example of light versus dark imagery is in the quote, ‘Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day and with thy bloody invisible hand,’ Comparing the sun, which is a life giving source, with night’s bloody hand, which takes away life, shows how far Macbeth has come, from a ‘war hero’ to an ‘evil murderer’
I think Lady Macbeth is one of the most influential factors in the downfall of Macbeth because she actually encourages him to murder the king, and she was reason why Macbeth had the courage to kill, although she is not responsible for all the murders in the play. Throughout the play Macbeth send his men to murder anyone that compromises his place on the throne. First it was Banquo and his son, although his son escaped. When the murderers approach and Macbeth says, ‘There's blood upon thy face,’ and ‘Tis better thee without than he within.’ Macbeth's last statement, ‘Tis . . . within’, means that
Banquo's blood is better on the murderer than in Banquo, showing that
Macbeth is, in truth, happy that Banquo has been killed and shows no remorse.
And next it was Mac Duff’s wife and children. At this point I think Macbeth has fully made the transformation of a ‘war hero’ turned ‘evil murderer’. The murder of Mac Duff’s wife and children seems to serve no real purpose at all.
This mindless brutality marks the lowest ebb in Macbeth’s moral decline.
At this point he doesn’t need the encouragement of Lady Macbeth anymore and has become evil enough to give orders to kill people on his own. Macbeth now has a disturbing relationship with the witches and is eager to listen to their prophecies and their words. He seeks out the witches on his own and has a deep faith in their evil and supernatural prophecies. This is another indicator of how far Macbeth has come since the start of the play. At the start of the play he doesn’t believe the witches at all but the further he descends into evil the more eager he is to listen to them. He also demands information from them, and truly believes in what they say, ‘Howe’er you come to know it, answer me.’ Other people view him differently now saying he is a ‘fiend of Scotland’ and a ‘tyrant’, and this again is very a different view of Macbeth from the beginning of the play, as he was formally known as ‘brave Macbeth’ and ‘valour’s minion’. It shows how much Macbeth has changed throughout the play, and how other people now view him.
At the end of the play Macbeth knows it’s his end and he goes into battle anyway as a soldier and asks for his armour, ’I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh b hack’d. Give me my armour.’ This behaviour of a brave solider that we saw at the start of the play starts to remerge here, when Macbeth wants to die a soldier’s death. He also shows some mercy towards Macduff, he could have easily killed him but Macbeth here has reached the limits of how evil he can be, he can’t bear to spill any more blood, ‘But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d with blood of thine already.’
In conclusion I think that the witches’ equivocations acted as the initial stimulus to Macbeth. They were the ones who first planted those dark thoughts into Macbeth’s head, but the witches didn’t tell him to murder, they only told him that he would become king. Lady Macbeth then acted as a catalyst as she manipulated Macbeth into actually killing King Duncan, and used his ego against him. There are many factors that led to Macbeth’s downfall, but Macbeth’s fatal flaw was his ambition, and he would not have preformed any murder if he didn’t have the drive and ambition to become king.
