Focus on the text: Macbeth

(Thomson, Maglioni, Literary Hyperlinks, CIDEB, vol. 1 pp. 257-258

The plot

The play begins with two of the king's generals, Macbeth (who is the Thane of Glamis) and Banquo, returning victorious from battle against the combined forces of Norway and Ireland. Seemingly by chance they meet three witches (in reality the witches have planned the encounter), who greet them with the prophecies that Macbeth will become first Thane of Cawdor and then king and that Banquo will be the father of a line of kings. When the first of these prophecies is fulfilled (Macbeth is made Thane of Cawdor), Macbeth's ambition to take the crown grows. Encouraged by his even more ambitious wife, Macbeth resolves to kill King Duncan when he visits his castle. Following the murder of Duncan in his sleep, the King's sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, flee the country and Macbeth is made king. But now Macbeth begins to fear the witches's prophecy about Banquo being the father of a line of kings and so he arranges to have Banquo and bis son murdered while they are out riding. Banquo is killed but his son Fleance escapes. Haunted by the ghost of Banquo, who appears to him at his dinner table, Macbeth consults the witches, who tell him to beware of Macduff, the Thane of Fife, but also reassure him that “no man of woman born” can harm him and that his kingdom will survive until Birnam Wood moves to the hill of Dunsinane castle. Learning that Macduff is in England, where he is trying to raise an army with Malcolm, Macbeth has his soldiers attack Macduffs castle and kill his wife and children. Meanwhile, plagued by the horror of what they have done, Lady Macbeth goes mad and kills herself. Macduff and Malcolm's army attack Macbeth's castle at Dunsinane, their soldiers disguising themselves with boughs of trees cut from Birnam Wood (realising in this way the witches' third prophecy). Macbeth and Macduff confront each other. Macbeth believes he is safe until Macduff surprises the tyrant king with the news that he was born by caesarian section (and so, in a certain sense, “not of woman born”). Macduff kills him and Malcolm becomes king of Scotland.

Features of the play

Macbeth is often considered a tragedy of character in which a defect in the hero character (in Macbeth's case his ambition) eventually causes his downfall. In reality, however, the play is much more complex. Macbeth is, in fact, a play about the nature of power and the idea of the fatality of history. The witches are the motor of the whole plot: they are the figures who along with the play's author, `know how the story goes'. Macbeth's response to their prophecies is strangely contradictory. In one sense he begins to `believe' what they predict, but at the same time he is convinced that it is he who is writing his own story and that if some prophecies are realised, others can be avoided. He doesn't understand that the witches' prophecies are like a contract (similar to the Mephistophelean pact made by Faust) and that, when he agrees to this contract, everything the witches prophesied will happen. After the first murder, Macbeth becomes caught up in the paranoid machine of despotic power (no one can be trusted, everyone is a potential enemy or rival) from which there is no escape. The more he tries to secure his position by eliminating those around him, the more fragile it becomes.

Macbeth is also a deeply philosophical play which reflects on the nature and limits of human agency (our capacity to take action and affect the course of events) and of evil. Macbeth is a character who reflects upon his actions and who sees his acts in some way separated from himself He is at first surprised and horrified by what he is capable of but his first act of murder entraps him in a spiralling logic in which he piles horror upon horror. As his world begins to crumble he becomes aware of an essential meaninglessness and absurdity at the heart of life which he famously describes at one point as “ tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Equally important, however, is the role of Lady Macbeth, who questions her husband's masculinity when he at first refuses to kill Duncan and says that she herself must abandon her female nature in order to rise to the challenge of the murderous plot. And while Macbeth is tortured by remorse after killing Duncan she is more ruthless: she acts to hide his guilt and confesses her shame at feeling no shame.