macbeth essay on evil

Skip to main content
Skip to primary sidebar
Skip to footer

English Works

Sample student essay: Macbeth and the nature of evil

MACBETH SHOWS THAT NO ONE IS IMPERVIOUS TO THE EFFECTS OF EVIL

In Macbeth Shakespeare focuses on the evil consequences of one man’s thrust for power. Through their prophecies, the witches plant an evil seed in Macbeth’s mind which has numerous repercussions, not only for Macbeth but for the King, his family and the people of Scotland. Shakespeare shows that once his ambition has been inflamed, no one is immune from the consequences. Whilst both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth sacrifice their honour and pay a heavy price, many others are also killed to satisfy their thirst for power.

From the opening scene, it becomes clear that the witches are determine to use their supernatural powers to plant the seeds of evil and to undermine Macbeth’s honour. They create moral havoc by targeting his ambition. If the witches state that “fair is foul and foul is fair”, Macbeth soon finds that the prophecies “cannot be ill cannot be good”. When the witches plant the seed that Macbeth is likely to become King, Macbeth is captivated by their prophecies. “I stood rapt in the wonder of it”. It is his ambition that promotes evil thoughts that undermine his sanity and corrupt him. As Shakespeare shows, Macbeth’s ambition creates “present fears” that are linked with “deep and dark desires” and that encourage him to put aside his moral compunctions. After he commits the murders, he again seeks out the witches who give him a false sense of confidence. They predict that he will be safe from harm and Macbeth continues on his killing spree.

Lady Macbeth continues the corruption begun by the witches which has an immediate effect on Macbeth and a long-term corrosive effect on herself. Shakespeare depicts the transformative power of evil as Lady Macbeth becomes “top – full of Direst Cruelty” in order to encourage Macbeth to murder King Duncan. She manipulates him, criticises his manhood and suggests that he is cowardly. She states that she would have plucked a baby from her breast and “dash’d the brains out” had she so broken a promise as Macbeth seems to be doing. Whilst she intimidates Macbeth and convinces him that it is cowardly to thwart one’s desires, she, ironically, pays the heaviest price. Her belief that a “little water clears us of this deed” returns to haunt her as she becomes increasingly obsessed with the evil she has unleashed. She is unable to remove neither the stain nor the deaths. She is also dismayed at the tyrant that continues unabated.

Owing to both the influence of the witches and Lady Macbeth, Macbeth succumbs to evil and pays a heavy price. Foolishly, he sets aside his scepticism and renounces his honour as he contemplates the ‘deep and dark desires”. His conscience alerts him to the evil nature of murder; he is fully aware of the “even – handed justice” or “judgement” which instructs people about good and evil. He also knows that “Bloody instructions return to plague the inventor”. Most importantly, Macbeth knows that he should not commit evil deeds, because his conscience will torment him and undermine his honour. Despite all this, Macbeth wields the dagger and King Duncan becomes his first victim. He suffers the shocking consequences of Macbeth’s “overleaping” ambition that causes a “heat-oppressed brain” to turn towards evil.

Macbeth continues to pay a heavy price and does not enjoy his royal status. Owing to his conscience, Macbeth becomes paranoid and guilt gives way to hallucinations and “strange self-abuse”. Macbeth becomes suspicious of everyone. He tries to harden himself to the pangs of his conscience. He wants to fight fear and become fearless by killing more people. He states, “t’is the initiate Fear that wants hard Use”. Macbeth has become a cruel tyrant and transforms Scotland into a country “almost afraid to know itself”. He sets spies on each of his thanes and even distrusts the witches for he is determined to make ‘assurance double sure’ by slaughtering Macduff’s entire family. This propels him to the final showdown.

So the evil effects spread throughout Scotland, and even Banquo suffers from the cruel effects of evil. Banquo is honourable and rightly dismisses the witches even though they predict that his sons will be king. Because of this secret knowledge, Banquo becomes Macbeth’s second victim. Macbeth feels that “under him my genius is rebuked”. He is killed while his son Fleance escapes.

Tragically, many lives are lost because of one couple’s ambition. They both sacrifice their honour and do not enjoy their status because they become paranoid about the consequences. Once Lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to commit murder, there is no stopping him. To soften his conscience, he continues killing and changes the whole atmosphere of Scotland. No one escapes. The citizens are so sick of the tyrant that they are relieved by his death. Shakespeare shows that one man’s evil thirst for power does not pay and many other suffer a heavy price.

Return to Macbeth: Study Page

For Sponsorship and Other Enquiries

Keep in touch.

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Macbeth — Theme Of Guilt In Macbeth

Theme of Guilt in Macbeth

Categories: Macbeth

About this sample

Words: 986 |

Published: Mar 5, 2024

Words: 986 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 591 words

2 pages / 933 words

1 pages / 627 words

4 pages / 1790 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Macbeth

In William Shakespeare's iconic tragedy "Macbeth," the landscape is densely populated with characters who drive the plot's twists and unveil the gloomy fates that envelop Scotland. Amidst the chaos stirred by ambition and [...]

A. Restate the thesis statement and summarize the main points discussed in the essay. Macbeth's downfall is attributed to his ambition, moral decay, and psychological decline, leading to his tragic end.B. Final thoughts: The [...]

In the realm of Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeth stands out as a quintessential example of a character plagued by flaws that ultimately lead to his downfall. The character of Macbeth is complex and multi-faceted, with a range of [...]

In William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, deception plays a significant role as a recurring theme throughout the play. The deceptive nature of numerous characters, including Macbeth himself, Lady Macbeth, and the witches, [...]

William Shakespeare is a name recognised by many as one of the most acclaimed authors in English literature. His plays are known around the world, creating characters that you either love, hate, or pity. The play Macbeth is an [...]

How far are you willing to go to get what you want? One of the themes in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is greed. How a humble person can turn into a savage and uncontrollable beast just for wanting more. In the play [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Lesson Plans
Teacher's Guides
Media Resources

Shakespeare's Macbeth : Fear and the Motives of Evil

Macbeth and Banquo meeting the witches on the heath

Wikimedia Commons

I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er: Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

In his novel, Voyage of the Dawn Treader , C.S. Lewis chronicles an island where all dreams come true. Sounds wonderful, right? But think about it a moment. All dreams. Our fondest wishes, but also our most terrifying fears. On this island, we would meet every shadowy thing we ever imagined to be lurking in the darkness, every terrifying image we ever tried to thrust from our mind. This is the situation in Shakespeare's Macbeth . Just as the three Weird Sisters predicted, or perhaps precipitated, Macbeth's fondest wishes, his secret dreams of power, have all come true. But so too have his darkest fears.

As the play progresses, Macbeth attempts to quell those fears by means of further bloodshed. Until and unless he can murder all who appear to threaten his ill-gotten crown, he feels himself "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears" ( 3.4.24-25 ). But equanimity and peace of mind are forever lost to him, as the voice that he seems to hear while murdering Duncan has prophesied: "'Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep'" ( 2.2.34-35 ). In an increasingly desperate attempt to regain those gifts that only a good conscience can bestow, Macbeth alters from a man who, at the beginning of the play, is described as noble and brave, who suffers pangs of conscience over the murder he is premeditating, to a violent and ruthless tyrant, the "fiend of Scotland."

Characters whose shifting minds we feel compelled to follow through every twist and turn are a mark of Shakespeare's mature art and one of the reasons he is considered the great innovator in English drama. Giving students the tools to follow those shifts is the purpose of this lesson. Students will use an Internet search engine (or a printed concordance, if online resources are not accessible) to collect instances in the play of these key words: blood, fear, mind, false, and sleep . Students will then organize and analyze the passages in which these key words appear for what they reveal about Macbeth's state of mind and the motives behind his increasing evil.

Note: This lesson may be taught either as a stand-alone lesson or as a sequel to the complementary EDSITEment lesson, "Shakespeare's Macbeth : Fear and the 'Dagger of the Mind'," in which students read, discuss, and perform a wordless version of the "banquet scene" ( 3.4 ) in order to learn how Shakespeare dramatizes fear.

Guiding Questions

Why does Macbeth, who knows that his actions are evil and will be punished, continue to choose evil?

Learning Objectives

Use an online search engine (or a printed concordance) to locate passages that highlight Macbeth's response to fear and his descent into evil

Use the results of this search to analyze the motives of Macbeth's increasingly desperate and evil actions

Lesson Plan Details

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

Activity 1. Research on Macbeth's choice

Provide students with a context for their research. Begin by sharing with your students the "guiding question" for this lesson, above. Tell them that this question will help to guide the choices they make in their online searches. Also, tell them that the purpose of the research they will be doing will be to come up with plausible answers to this question. Share with them the fact that there is a crucial difference between Macbeth and every other tragic hero in Shakespeare: only Macbeth knows from the start that what he does is unequivocally evil and only Macbeth never, either to himself or others, tries to argue that his actions are somehow justified (see, for example, act 1, scene 7 ). Why then does he do what he does? To answer "ambition" is not enough. For more on the inadequacy of this answer as an explanation of Macbeth's psychology, see the essay by Ian Johnston, An Introduction to Macbeth . Behind the question of Macbeth's motivations is, of course, the larger and mysterious question of why some human beings, in possession of a sense of right and wrong, choose evil.

Activity 2. Locate key passages that suggest Macbeth's motivations

The following bulleted items provide a step-by-step description of the central activity of this lesson. Students work in small groups to locate key passages that suggest the motivations behind Macbeth's increasingly evil actions and words. A complementary set of instructions for students, providing a simplified version of the steps described below, is available as a downloadable .pdf file.

Ask each group to locate the Modified MIT text of Macbeth , prepared by Dr. Michael Best, as well as the MIT text of Macbeth. Each online text offers certain advantages and disadvantages for this exercise. The Modified Text allows you to locate scene and line numbers, but does not allow you to search the entire text as once, as is an option on the MIT text of Macbeth . Once your students get some practice, however, they will find it easy to search both texts. One strategy might be to do a global search of the whole play with the MIT text of Macbeth , then note the relevant act-and-scene numbers, then search those scenes using the Modified Text .
If for some reason you and your students are not able to search these online texts, an alternative/backup online option for searching Shakespeare's plays is available from Bartleby.com , a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library. This electronic concordance offers some distinct advantages, and you and your students may find that you prefer it.
For either the Modified Text or MIT text of Macbeth , students should use the "find on page" function on their Internet browser. (In Microsoft Internet Explorer, click "edit," followed by "find on this page.") When the "find" button takes them to a particular spot in the text, they should determine where they are in the play, and discuss whether the surrounding passage reveals anything significant about: 1) Macbeth's state of mind (fearful, angry, etc.); 2) Macbeth's motivations; or 3) the way in which other characters perceive Macbeth and his actions. Again, the crucial guide in deciding whether or not a passage is relevant is the research question; as a group, students need to decide whether or not a particular passage might plausibly help to answer the research question.
If the group decides that a passage is significant, the next step is to carefully record the act, scene, and line numbers (this is where the Modified Text , with its line numbers, is most useful). If students have access to a word-processing program (such as MS Word), they can cut and paste relevant passages to create a document. The advantage of this procedure is that it will make it easier later on for the teacher to provide a printed handout or overhead summarizing the findings of all groups.

...I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er: Strange things I have in head, that will to hand; Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

Students need to determine whether or not this passage says anything important about the motives behind Macbeth's actions. The first thing to be determined is what does Macbeth mean by this metaphor of "wading in blood"? What does it mean to say that an action must be performed before it can be thought about carefully ("scann'd")? Students need to bear in mind the context of the passage: what is happening at this point in the play? When he utters the words quoted above, how does Macbeth's situation differ from the situation he faces just before killing Duncan? Before killing Banquo? If Banquo is dead, and Fleance, for now at least, not a threat, why can't Macbeth relax and enjoy being king? What compels Macbeth continue his path of terror?

When they have finished searching the entire play, groups should select just three key passages from their results. This will involve discussing just how each passage contributes to answering the research question; a passage is considered important if it offers a crucial insight into the workings of Macbeth's psychology and his motives for evil. Accompanying their written record of each passage, groups should record reasons why that passage is significant and what it reveals about Macbeth's motives. Students should be prepared to offer reasons in a whole-class discussion for their particular selections.

Activity 3. Collate work of research groups

As a class, collate the work of the research groups. There are several ways you might do this. On the board, you could create a timeline of Macbeth's descent into evil, going through the play scene-by-scene and asking whether any of the student groups had found relevant passages in a particular scene. If students have produced electronic documents, they could exchange those documents so that each group had a copy of every other groups' documents. Each group would then be assigned a particular section of the play: their job would be to cut-and-paste passages in the order that they appeared in their section of the play. The various collations by groups could then be combined as a single master document containing a record of Macbeth's descent into evil.

Activity 4. Analyze and discuss the results of research

Analyze and discuss the results of your research:

Give students time, either in or out of class, to read the collated results of the group searches. As a class, discuss what these results contribute to an understanding of the research question: Why does Macbeth, who knows that his actions are evil and will be punished, choose evil? Suggest to students that the answer to the question may not be the same at every point in the play. The motivations for Macbeth's murder of Duncan may not be the same as the motivations for his subsequent acts of violence. The results of their work in small groups will reveal some of the shifting motives for evil in Macbeth .
If your class has also studied the complementary prequel to this lesson, " Shakespeare's Macbeth : Fear and the 'Dagger of the Mind' ," conclude class discussion by returning to some of the images and metaphors you examined in the "banquet scene" of Act 3, scene 4. Discuss how these images are repeated throughout the play. What conclusions can you draw about the relationship between Macbeth's fear and his subsequent actions?
A follow-up writing assignment is a good way to extend and reinforce the discoveries made by groups and the class as a whole. One option would be to ask students to formulate a thesis backed up by evidence in response to the research/guiding question of this lesson. You could also have students focus their attention on a single word, formulating a thesis about how Shakespeare's use of the word reveals something about the motives of Macbeth's descent into evil. But you might want to allow for more flexibility in the assignment, because as students investigate the permutations of words like sleep, they may make discoveries that lead in slightly different directions. The important thing to stress, however the assignment is formulated, is that students should have: 1) a main point that is a statement (not a question); 2) evidence that supports that statement. From the collated class document and from additional searches they can now do with online or print concordances, they should find ample material to support their main point.
There are some things the Internet does extraordinarily well. One of those things is to perform quick searches of very long texts. This lesson has focused on Macbeth , but of course you can use this as a model for searching all kinds of texts found online. There are two things that students who use this powerful technology need to keep in mind: 1) you need a direction, a guiding/research question; 2) you need to analyze your results and be selective.
As you talk about the larger sources of fear and evil in this play, your class will eventually need to come to grips with the three witches. Who or what are they? Are they embodiments of evil or, as some have suggested, projections and manifestations of Macbeth's own deepest wishes and fears? To learn more about witches and witchcraft in the seventeenth-century, visit the EDSITEment-reviewed site, Witchcraft in a Salem Village . While most of the archived materials are from late-seventeenth-century America, but the colonists conceptions about witches are inherited from English traditions that would have been familiar to Shakespeare and his patron, King James I, who was deeply interested in the subject.

EDSITEment's " A Teacher's Guide for Shakespeare "

Materials & Media

Shakespeare's "macbeth": fear and the motives of evil: worksheet 1, related on edsitement, shakespeare's "macbeth": fear and the "dagger of the mind".

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shakespear’s genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion.

—William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth completes William Shakespeare’s great tragic quartet while expanding, echoing, and altering key elements of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear into one of the most terrifying stage experiences. Like Hamlet, Macbeth treats the consequences of regicide, but from the perspective of the usurpers, not the dispossessed. Like Othello, Macbeth centers its intrigue on the intimate relations of husband and wife. Like Lear, Macbeth explores female villainy, creating in Lady Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most complex, powerful, and frightening woman characters. Different from Hamlet and Othello, in which the tragic action is reserved for their climaxes and an emphasis on cause over effect, Macbeth, like Lear, locates the tragic tipping point at the play’s outset to concentrate on inexorable consequences. Like Othello, Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, achieves an almost unbearable intensity by eliminating subplots, inessential characters, and tonal shifts to focus almost exclusively on the crime’s devastating impact on husband and wife.

What is singular about Macbeth, compared to the other three great Shakespearean tragedies, is its villain-hero. If Hamlet mainly executes rather than murders, if Othello is “more sinned against than sinning,” and if Lear is “a very foolish fond old man” buffeted by surrounding evil, Macbeth knowingly chooses evil and becomes the bloodiest and most dehumanized of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists. Macbeth treats coldblooded, premeditated murder from the killer’s perspective, anticipating the psychological dissection and guilt-ridden expressionism that Feodor Dostoevsky will employ in Crime and Punishment . Critic Harold Bloom groups the protagonist as “the culminating figure in the sequence of what might be called Shakespeare’s Grand Negations: Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth.” With Macbeth, however, Shakespeare takes us further inside a villain’s mind and imagination, while daringly engaging our sympathy and identification with a murderer. “The problem Shakespeare gave himself in Macbeth was a tremendous one,” Critic Wayne C. Booth has stated.

Take a good man, a noble man, a man admired by all who know him—and destroy him, not only physically and emotionally, as the Greeks destroyed their heroes, but also morally and intellectually. As if this were not difficult enough as a dramatic hurdle, while transforming him into one of the most despicable mortals conceivable, maintain him as a tragic hero—that is, keep him so sympathetic that, when he comes to his death, the audience will pity rather than detest him and will be relieved to see him out of his misery rather than pleased to see him destroyed.

Unlike Richard III, Iago, or Edmund, Macbeth is less a virtuoso of villainy or an amoral nihilist than a man with a conscience who succumbs to evil and obliterates the humanity that he is compelled to suppress. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s greatest psychological portrait of self-destruction and the human capacity for evil seen from inside with an intimacy that horrifies because of our forced identification with Macbeth.

Although there is no certainty in dating the composition or the first performance of Macbeth, allusions in the play to contemporary events fix the likely date of both as 1606, shortly after the completion and debut of King Lear. Scholars have suggested that Macbeth was acted before James I at Hampton Court on August 7, 1606, during the royal visit of King Christian IV of Denmark and that it may have been especially written for a royal performance. Its subject, as well as its version of Scottish history, suggest an effort both to flatter and to avoid offending the Scottish king James. Macbeth is a chronicle play in which Shakespeare took his major plot elements from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), but with significant modifications. The usurping Macbeth’s decade-long (and largely successful) reign is abbreviated with an emphasis on the internal and external destruction caused by Macbeth’s seizing the throne and trying to hold onto it. For the details of King Duncan’s death, Shakespeare used Holinshed’s account of the murder of an earlier king Duff by Donwald, who cast suspicion on drunken servants and whose ambitious wife played a significant role in the crime. Shakespeare also eliminated Banquo as the historical Macbeth’s co-conspirator in the murder to promote Banquo’s innocence and nobility in originating a kingly line from which James traced his legitimacy. Additional prominence is also given to the Weird Sisters, whom Holinshed only mentions in their initial meeting of Macbeth on the heath. The prophetic warning “beware Macduff” is attributed to “certain wizards in whose words Macbeth put great confidence.” The importance of the witches and the occult in Macbeth must have been meant to appeal to a king who produced a treatise, Daemonologie (1597), on witch-craft.

The uncanny sets the tone of moral ambiguity from the play’s outset as the three witches gather to encounter Macbeth “When the battle’s lost and won” in an inverted world in which “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Nothing in the play will be what it seems, and the tragedy results from the confusion and conflict between the fair—honor, nobility, duty—and the foul—rank ambition and bloody murder. Throughout the play nature reflects the disorder and violence of the action. Opening with thunder and lightning, the drama is set in a Scotland contending with the rebellion of the thane (feudal lord) of Cawdor, whom the fearless and courageous Macbeth has vanquished on the battlefield. The play, therefore, initially establishes Macbeth as a dutiful and trusted vassal of the king, Duncan of Scotland, deserving to be rewarded with the rebel’s title for restoring peace and order in the realm. “What he hath lost,” Duncan declares, “noble Macbeth hath won.” News of this honor reaches Macbeth through the witches, who greet him both as the thane of Cawdor and “king hereafter” and his comrade-in-arms Banquo as one who “shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Like the ghost in Hamlet , the Weird Sisters are left purposefully ambiguous and problematic. Are they agents of fate that determine Macbeth’s doom, predicting and even dictating the inevitable, or do they merely signal a latency in Macbeth’s ambitious character?

When he is greeted by the king’s emissaries as thane of Cawdor, Macbeth begins to wonder if the first predictions of the witches came true and what will come of the second of “king hereafter”:

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, 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? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.

Macbeth will be defined by his “horrible imaginings,” by his considerable intellectual and imaginative capacity both to understand what he knows to be true and right and his opposed desires and their frightful consequences. Only Hamlet has as fully a developed interior life and dramatized mental processes as Macbeth in Shakespeare’s plays. Macbeth’s ambition is initially checked by his conscience and by his fear of the unforeseen consequence of violating moral laws. Shakespeare brilliantly dramatizes Macbeth’s mental conflict in near stream of consciousness, associational fashion:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success: that but this blow Might be the be all and the end all, here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other.

Macbeth’s “spur” comes in the form of Lady Macbeth, who plays on her husband’s selfimage of courage and virility to commit to the murder. She also reveals her own shocking cancellation of gender imperatives in shaming her husband into action, in one of the most shocking passages of the play:

. . . I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this.

Horrified at his wife’s resolve and cold-blooded calculation in devising the plot, Macbeth urges his wife to “Bring forth menchildren only, / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males,” but commits “Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”

With the decision to kill the king taken, the play accelerates unrelentingly through a succession of powerful scenes: Duncan’s and Banquo’s murders, the banquet scene in which Banquo’s ghost appears, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, and Macbeth’s final battle with Macduff, Thane of Fife. Duncan’s offstage murder contrasts Macbeth’s “horrible imaginings” concerning the implications and Lady Macbeth’s chilling practicality. Macbeth’s question, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” is answered by his wife: “A little water clears us of this deed; / How easy is it then!” The knocking at the door of the castle, ominously signaling the revelation of the crime, prompts the play’s one comic respite in the Porter’s drunken foolery that he is at the door of “Hell’s Gate” controlling the entrance of the damned. With the fl ight of Duncan’s sons, who fear for their lives, causing them to be suspected as murderers, Macbeth is named king, and the play’s focus shifts to Macbeth’s keeping and consolidating the power he has seized. Having gained what the witches prophesied, Macbeth next tries to prevent their prediction that Banquo’s descendants will reign by setting assassins to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. The plan goes awry, and Fleance escapes, leaving Macbeth again at the mercy of the witches’ prophecy. His psychic breakdown is dramatized by his seeing Banquo’s ghost occupying Macbeth’s place at the banquet. Pushed to the edge of mental collapse, Macbeth steels himself to meet the witches again to learn what is in store for him: “Iam in blood,” he declares, “Stepp’d in so far that, should Iwade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The witches reassure him that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will never be vanquished until “Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.” Confident that he is invulnerable, Macbeth responds to the rebellion mounted by Duncan’s son Malcolm and Macduff, who has joined him in England, by ordering the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children. Macbeth has progressed from a murderer in fulfillment of the witches predictions to a murderer (of Banquo) in order to subvert their predictions and then to pointless butchery that serves no other purpose than as an exercise in willful destruction. Ironically, Macbeth, whom his wife feared was “too full o’ the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way” to serve his ambition, displays the same cold calculation that frightened him about his wife, while Lady Macbeth succumbs psychically to her own “horrible imaginings.” Lady Macbeth relives the murder as she sleepwalks, Shakespeare’s version of the workings of the unconscious. The blood in her tormented conscience that formerly could be removed with a little water is now a permanent noxious stain in which “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.” Women’s cries announcing her offstage death are greeted by Macbeth with detached indifference:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a nightshriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t. Ihave supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

Macbeth reveals himself here as an emotional and moral void. Confirmation that “The Queen, my lord, is dead” prompts only the bitter comment, “She should have died hereafter.” For Macbeth, life has lost all meaning, refl ected in the bleakest lines Shakespeare ever composed:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 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.

Time and the world that Macbeth had sought to rule are revealed to him as empty and futile, embodied in a metaphor from the theater with life as a histrionic, talentless actor in a tedious, pointless play.

Macbeth’s final testing comes when Malcolm orders his troops to camoufl age their movement by carrying boughs from Birnam Woods in their march toward Dunsinane and from Macduff, whom he faces in combat and reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d,” that is, born by cesarean section and therefore not “of woman born.” This revelation, the final fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies, causes Macbeth to fl ee, but he is prompted by Macduff’s taunt of cowardice and order to surrender to meet Macduff’s challenge, despite knowing the deadly outcome:

Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

Macbeth returns to the world of combat where his initial distinctions were honorably earned and tragically lost.

The play concludes with order restored to Scotland, as Macduff presents Macbeth’s severed head to Malcolm, who is hailed as king. Malcolm may assert his control and diminish Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as “this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,” but the audience knows more than that. We know what Malcolm does not, that it will not be his royal line but Banquo’s that will eventually rule Scotland, and inevitably another round of rebellion and murder is to come. We also know in horrifying human terms the making of a butcher and a fiend who refuse to be so easily dismissed as aberrations.

Macbeth Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth Ebook pdf (8MB)

[email protected]

20 January 2022 22 June 2024

Shakespeare’s epic play, Macbeth is one of his greatest works and in the eyes of some his greatest. The play deals with the very powerful theme of the struggle between good and evil, and also the complex nature of good and evil and how they can interplay with one another and that man far from being a simple creature is a complex one within whom both good and evil reside.

Macbeth as a Good Man - Act 1, Scene 2

Macbeth is first portrayed in the play as a good man.

The first reference to him in the play is when a Captain tells the king and his court news of the battle of Macbeth’s courage in a recent battle.

‘For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—’

This is important to ponder upon here. Because Macbeth is called ‘brave’. Bravery is closely connected to with being open as opposed to secretive. A warrior goes out openly in the battlefield, proclaims his allegiance to his side and fights. This is in contrast to later on in the play rather than ‘openess’ we see duplicity and deceit from Macbeth. He murders the king in secret and tries to pass the blame on to the guards. If we were to look at the ying and yang of good and evil, of light and darkness then good is connected to light here and evil to darkness.

Macbeth’s open bravery in battlefield contrasts that with his secret murder of the king. The battle is in the day, the murder of the king is in the night, a time of darkness. We also see later on in the play Hecate meet the witches during the night. Openness, honesty, bravery, good are all connected to light and deceit, cowardice, evil are all connected to the night and to darkness. Both good and evil exist in the world, both light and darkness, both day and night. How the these two pairs interplay with each other is the challenge that man faces.

Also the phrase, ‘he deserves that name’ is something we need to look at.

Does Macbeth deserve the name ‘brave’? Well the Captain certainly thinks so and the king reacts accordingly by bestowing upon Macbeth the title of the new Thane of Cawdor. However can we say Macbeth is brave? We can say that he was on that particular day, and that part of him is brave. However as we see later on there is a part of him which is cowardly including in his inability to resist the taunts of cowardice hurled against him by his arguably mentally stronger wife. We also see his cowardice and insecurity when he fears the threat of Macduff and even orders the murder of a woman and her child i.e. Lady Macduff and her children.

‘Not all that glitters is gold’, and deception and image versus reality is also another theme of Macbeth. Truth and illusion, image and reality are another duality that exist in this play.

Also the Captain makes mention of the word ‘name’. Well, this is important in the play because Macbeth is given the ‘name’ or title of Thane of Cawdor as foretold by the witches who also told him that he would gain another title (name), that of king. The play is essentially about that. What man will do for a title, for status, for name and the consequences that may have.

The Captain continues and says of Macbeth

‘ Like valor’s minion carved out his passage’

Valor’s minion here in a more contemporary form of English would mean ‘the servant of courage’ or something akin to that. Again the points we made above about Macbeth apply. Is he really a courageous man? Yes he is, but only in part and there exists within him cowardice, fear and insecurity which emerge later on. He is not a simple wholly good character but like most people, complex and composed of both good and bad. However unfortunately for ‘brave Macbeth’ (as the captain calls him) it is the evil inside him which overpowers him and causes his tragic and bloody demise.

Thus we are introduced to Macbeth as a brave man.

Before looking at that scene let us look at the scene before, the first in the play.

Act 1, Scene 1

This scene has been discussed previously when talking of the theme of the supernatural in this article, click here.

However to look at it again we see the witches utter the words:

‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair

Hover through the fog and filthy air.’

This in modern language would be akin to saying ‘Good is evil, and evil is good’. There is a confusion here, a tension.

It can also lead to asking the question, what is ‘foul’ (good) and what is ‘fair’ (evil)? For some what is good can be considered evil and vice versa, what is evil can be considered good. Is Macbeth himself good or evil? Well in the previous scene we see that he was. A brave and loyal man.

‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are labels at times, or ‘names’. Names like how in the following scene we see that the Captain say ‘ brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—’. That was the Captain’s opinion, that Macbeth deserved that name. Was it correct? Well partially not completely. That was his perception, and perceptions emanate from our experiences and information which can be limited or faulty. If the Captain Macbeth were to in the future order the murder of children those words may have never sprung from his lips. So when the witches say ‘Foul is fair, and fair is foul’. This can apply to Macbeth, he is good but he is also evil, he is evil but also good. He is a loyal and brave warrior but also a murderer of children.

This is the nature of man, both good and evil reside within him and at times depending on the external factors he is exposed to one of those two (good and evil) may come to the fore, may be more dominant than the other.

It is the witches who seek to cause the evil in Macbeth to emerge and to cause destruction, malicious and wicked creatures that they are.

In the scene after Macbeth’s bravery is described it is then that we seem him encounter the witches. We then see the genesis of his fall.

Act 1, Scene 3.

This scene has also been discussed before and to read it click here.

To quote from that earlier article.

‘ Macbeth, a relatively simple man susceptible to psychological manipulation as we shall see later, has as his first words in the entire play,

‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen.’

These words are ironic, ‘foul’ meaning bad and ‘fair’ meaning good, because on that day he receives recognition for his valiant feats as a warrior by hearing that he will be Thane of Cawdor, which is something good, but he also hears prophesies which poison him and set him on a path of continuous bloodshed spiralling more and more until the destruction of his wife and ultimately himself.

This existence of two opposing sides, this duality is representative of the play on a deeper level. Because just as one day can have both good and evil, so can one man. Macbeth has both good in him, a brave and loyal soldier, however he has within him a latent evil which if aroused or manipulated can lead to great suffering and that evil is the one of greed for power as well as his weakness in being unable to withstand the taunts of his wife who bids him to murder Duncan, the king.

However whilst Macbeth has both good and bad in him, Shakespeare squarely puts the witches as forces of evil.’

One of the most interesting things in this scene and very important to note is the sheer irony of Angus’ words to Macbeth. Angus and Ross come to the heath to deliver a message from the king himself to Macbeth. Ross informs him that he is Thane of Cawdor to which Macbeth replies ‘ The thane of Cawdor lives ‘ that there is already a Thane of Cawdor.

Angus then says:

‘ Who was the thane lives yet, But under heavy judgment bears that life Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combined With those of Norway, or did line the rebel With hidden help and vantage, or that with both He labored in his country’s wrack, I know not; But treasons capital, confessed and proved, Have overthrown him. ‘

What is ironic hear is that Angus says of the old Thane of Cawdor deserves to die, to ‘lose’ his life. What then of the man who he is saying these words to who will murder the king cowardly and treacherously whilst Duncan (the king) was asleep, in contrast to the previous Thane of Cawdor who at least openly fought like a warrior.

‘ Fair is foul, and foul is fair ‘ as the witches say. Good is evil and evil is good.

Who is worse, the former Thane of Cawdor or the new one?

Once again we see two contrasts. A contrast between an open foe (the first Thane of Cawdor) and a supposed friend, Macbeth, who murders the king. Open rebellion versus hidden treachery. Angus and Ross praise Macbeth as the Captain did, but ironically if they were to know of his future crimes they would not do so.

All through out the play we see contrasting pairs, contrasting dualities. Good versus evil. Openness versus duplicity and a little later we see another example when Macbeth says to himself about the prophecies of the witches, one of which has already come true, his getting the title of Thane of Cawdor.

‘ This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor.’

Macbeth is now in a state of conflict and confusion. Torn between the two opposing forces of morality and immorality.

The witches prophecies ‘supernatural soliciting’ cannot be bad or ‘ill’ not can they be good. He is not sure of what to make them as regards whether they – the predictions – are good or bad. If they were bad then why have they turned out to be true in terms of him becoming Thane of Cawdor, but he continues:

‘ If good, 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? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smothered in surmise, And nothing is but what is not

He says if it is good then why does he have the ‘horrid’ image of ‘murder’. This thought ‘shakes’ him to his core.

However the witches did not tell him that he would need to murder Duncan to become king. That thought comes from him. A more intelligent man would have thought that perhaps the future would unravel in such a way that Duncan might die a natural death and his son might not wish to be king and that ultimately Macbeth might become the monarch. Rather, in contrast, Macbeth does not think of any of this, nor does he think deeply but instead almost instantaneously enamoured with the prospect of becoming king, the idea of murdering Duncan comes to him.

This brave warrior who killed for the king may now kill the king.

This once valiant soldier whose violence was supposedly for noble causes, may now be for wicked causes.

However who is to decide what violence is good and what violence is bad? Macbeth has killed already.

The Thane of Cawdor will be killed, which we can be sure of will be due to the orders of Duncan.

Duncan will kill the Thane of Cawdor, and be killed by the new Thane of Cawdor.

If it is alright for Duncan to kill the previous Thane of Cawdor, why is it wrong for the new Thane of Cawdor to kill him?

Who determines right and wrong and morality?

As the witches say ‘ Fair is foul, and foul is fair’

Macbeth is torn. There is an internal conflict between the forces of good and evil inside him. He is as mentioned before in a previous article, akin to a tree swaying or shaking from side to side. There is turbulence inside him just like the turbulence of the weather that day. There is also good inside him. The good that horrifies him at the idea of murdering Duncan.

However late Macbeth does admit that he may not have to be actively involved in trying to gain the crown. He says:

‘If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me Without my stir.’

If fate wants him to be king he may not need to do anything, to ‘stir’ means to move, to act.

However rather than accept that what will be will be and if the crown of Scotland is meant for him it will be so, Macbeth’s greed has been ignited by the prophesies. We can already see that he has thoughts of murdering the king, an act at that time wrong on many different counts.

– Murder outside of war is generally wrong.

– Murder of a relative, Duncan was Macbeth’s cousin.

– Murder of the king who people believed was chosen by God to rule over them.

The opening of Macbeth is very powerful because we are shaken. We do not know what is what. Good is evil, evil is good. The witches are of this world or are they not? Are they dead or are they alive? Are they men or are they women? Should Macbeth kill or not kill Duncan? Are the prophecies of the witches good or bad? Macbeth himself is shaken.

Macbeth then says the famous words:

‘And nothing is but what is not.’

which in other words means that what seems to be is actually not. What seems to exist ‘is’, does not exist, ‘is not’.

These words are very deep and ironic. Macbeth’s loyalty to the king is actually not real, for it shall be him who is the one who kills him. The ‘glory’ of becoming king brings little but misery and an ignominious death for him at the hands of Macduff. What seems to be is, is not as it seems.

This is indeed part of the power of the play, the strong contrasts and the deep irony.

Act 1, Scene 4

In the following scene Duncan says of the old Thane of Cawdor:

‘ There’s no art To find the mind’s construction in the face. He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust. ‘

He says there is no way to know a man’s mind by looking at his face. What may appear good may be bad inside. ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ as the witches said. Macbeth is replete with irony and this is yet again another example, as Duncan’s next words after speaking of the old Thane of Cawdor’s betrayal then says to his cousin, Macbeth:

‘O worthiest cousin, The sin of my ingratitude even now Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before That swiftest wing of recompense is slow To overtake thee. ‘

This condemning of the old Thane of Cawdor who Duncan will kill and praise of the new Thane of Cawdor by whom he will be killed, shows us once again just how much things may not be as they seem.

This goes back to the two lines of the play:

‘ Fair is foul, and foul is fair ‘ and ‘ And nothing is but what is not.’

Good is evil, evil is good. What is, is not. Is a ‘good’ and ‘evil’? Is an ‘evil a ‘good’? Is Macbeth the brave soldier who fought for the king really good?

Is it really good for the king to make him Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth himself asked if the witches prophecies were good or bad, and if good why does he think evil thoughts of murder.

The world is a foggy and unclear place, not all is what it seems to be.

Macbeth himself is a confused person, torn between conflicting feelings.

Later on in this scene we see this internal conflict more clearly when he says:

‘The prince of Cumberland! That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, For in my way it lies.

Duncan’s son has become the heir to the throne who is always given the title ‘Prince of Cumberland’. Macbeth says essentially that Malcolm is an obstacle on his way to becoming king which must leap over. This shows Macbeth’s ambition and his constant coveting of the crown. It is this greed, this lust for being king which fuels his acts.

Macbeth then says:

Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.’

Macbeth’s desires are ‘black and deep’, they are shameful that he would wish for them to be hidden, for light not to be cast upon them. These desires are so evil that he wishes his eyes themselves do not see ‘wink’ what his hand does.

Once again Shakespeare is very skilful at showing the tension within Macbeth which is representative of the conflict between good and evil in the wider world, with contrasting pairs. ‘Light’ versus ‘black’ i.e. light and darkness. Seeing and not seeing. Being apparent and being hidden.

Macbeth talks of ‘light’ not seeing his ‘black’ desires which is light versus darkness. His eyes which see should not see (wink) his acts, and he talks of how the ‘eye fear’ what there could be to ‘see’.

He wants to do, but not to see. He wants the end outcomes of these actions, but is deep inside ashamed of these actions. He wants the rewards but not the required acts. He is wrought with tension, with contradictions.

In the next article we will continue to look at the theme of good and evil in Macbeth including lady Macbeth and her influence on her husband.

Useful vocabulary for students.

Duplicity – Meaning dishonest but originating from the same roots as the words ‘dual’ or ‘duo’ which mean two, duplicity means being two-faced. Macbeth is full of respect to the king in front of him but is thinking of killing him.
Valor – Bravery, courage.
Enamoured – to love something or to be deeply interested or fond it. Macbeth is enamoured with the idea of being the new king.
Covet – To desire something, often things which one should not desire or has a degree of jealousy. Macbeth covets the position of being king.
Deceit – Lying and dishonesty.
Demise – Fall or decline, or a person’s death. Macbeth’s demise can be said to be ultimately caused by the witches prophecies igniting some of the evil inside eventually resulting in his death.
Ying and Yang – originating from Chinese philosophy, the concept of two different contrasting energies. In the context of Macbeth we can see it in the form of a struggle between good and evil.

About English Made Simple

English Made Simple is a website dedicated GCSE English, IELTS Preparation and other things providing useful content to readers all across the world on how to improve their English

Evil And Ambition In Macbeth By William Shakespeare

Category: Literature
Topic: Macbeth , Macbeth Ambition , William Shakespeare

Pages: 3 (1328 words)

Downloads: -->

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Their Eyes Were Watching God Essays

The Yellow Wallpaper Essays

The Scarlet Letter Essays

The Things They Carried Essays

A Modest Proposal Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->

Sample student essay: Macbeth and the nature of evil

For Sponsorship and Other Enquiries

Theme of Guilt in Macbeth

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Macbeth

Related Topics

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

Shakespeare's Macbeth : Fear and the Motives of Evil

Guiding Questions

Learning Objectives

Lesson Plan Details

Activity 1. Research on Macbeth's choice

Activity 2. Locate key passages that suggest Macbeth's motivations

Activity 3. Collate work of research groups

Activity 4. Analyze and discuss the results of research

Materials & Media

Literary Theory and Criticism

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Share this:

Related Articles

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

[email protected]

About English Made Simple

Leave A Comment Cancel reply

Evil And Ambition In Macbeth By William Shakespeare

Related Essays