...Ambition is the downfall of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, which triggers the murders that take place in Macbeth. Although, Macbeth’s tragic flaw is ambition, it is the driving force of the play which is influenced by Lady Macbeth and the three witches. Lady Macbeth plays a major role in the downfall of Macbeth. She influenced and convinced Macbeth to commit the murder about Duncan, believing that the power would bring both of them happiness. Lady Macbeth says “Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise thee with the valour of my tongue. (Shakespeare 353)” It is as though Lady Macbeth is Macbeths bad conscious. She remarks, that she will solve his dilemma by poisoning his mind with her evil plan of murdering Duncan. Unlike her husband she is made of sterner stuff and has no moral scruples because she is evil to the core and decides to convince Macbeth to murder the king. This is the first murder victim of Macbeth. After the death of King Duncan, Lady Macbeth commits suicide which it is another breaking point of his down fall. Macbeth’s quest and desire for the power caused him to become a man of no emotions. Macbeth is an easy person to persuade and convince. Since the three witches gave him his prophecies, Macbeth’s character changed gradually over the course of the play. He became obsessed with making sure the prophecies come true as well as having a strong desire for power as king. Macbeth’s emotionless journey has led him to madness and...
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...contribute to the degeneration of Macbeth of which three will be discussed. The three points which contribute greatly to Macbeth's degeneration are the prophecy which was told to him by the witches, how Lady Macbeth influenced and manipulated Macbeth's judgment, and finally Macbeth's long time ambition which drove his desire to be king. Macbeth's growing character degenerates from a noble man to violent individual. The prophecies which were told by the witches were one of the factors which contributed to the degeneration of his character. If it had not been for the witches telling him that he was to be Thane of Cawdor, Thane of Glamis, and King of Scotland, Macbeth would still be his ordinary self. As a result of the prophecies, this aroused Macbeth's curiosity of how he could be King of Scotland. As the play progresses, Macbeth slowly relies on the witches prophecies. Shakespeare uses the witches as a remedy for Macbeth's curiosity which corrupts his character. The influence of Macbeth's wife, Lady Macbeth also contributed to his degeneration of character. Lady Macbeth's character in the beginning reveals that she is a lovable person. When Lady Macbeth was ready to kill King Duncan herself, it showed that Lady Macbeth could not murder King Duncan because he reminded her of her father. This proves that Lady Macbeth has a heart deep inside her. Lady Macbeth plays an important role in this play because she provided a scheme which caused Macbeth to assassinate King Duncan...
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...Macbeth: A Tragic Hero? William Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, attains a protagonist that evidently portrays himself as a tragic hero. A tragic hero is a character that is not completely good or evil and has a tragic flaw that eventually leads to his downfall. Macbeth is the epitome of a tragic hero because he starts off as a noble man until his own actions, also influenced by others, bring him to his own death. The events that help take Macbeth to his end are the prophecies told to him by the three witches, Lady Macbeth's pressure that drives him into committing horrible actions, and his own ambition that takes over him and leaves him as nothing but a power and money hungry character. Macbeth starts off with Macbeth and Banquo being praised after battling bravely in a war against the Irish Invaders. “At the beginning of the play, he seems the epitome of a loyal subject, valiantly fighting the rebel forces to protect the king and preserve his power.” (Elaine Pilkington 1) King Duncan believed that Macbeth was tremendously heroic in the battle and decided to name him the new thane of Cawdor after executing the old one because of his betrayal. However, before hearing from the King, Macbeth and Banquo were on their way to the King's court when they were suddenly accompanied by three witches.The witches greet Macbeth as the thane of Glamis, which was his original and only title, and as the thane of Cawdor, which Macbeth was not yet informed of. The witches also tell Macbeth...
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...Joshua Berube Mr. Welsch ENG 3U1 Monday, May 9th, 2016 Macbeth’s Fate Fate is defined in many different ways. Webster's Dictionary defines fate as a power that predetermines events. Fate and destiny suggest that events are unavoidable and unchangeable. Whatever happens in life is meant to be and cannot be changed by mankind. The play Macbeth by William Shakespeare displays ambition, fate, deception and treachery. Fate is a supernatural force that controls the actions and choices of others. In Macbeth fate plays an important role in the lives of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Banquo. Macbeth’s fate is unavoidable and unchangeable. Macbeth’s fate is sealed as soon as he meets the witches’. Macbeth’s fate is tragic. Macbeth and Banquo are together...
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...Essay #1 Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have a very unstable relationship. At first, Lady Macbeth was the dominant and powerful leader in the relationship, while Macbeth was the one with less power and control. Lady Macbeth’s demeanor and power weakened drastically as Macbeth became King, where she was put aside and ignored. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seem to be very strong. Macbeth initiates this by referring to Lady Macbeth in his letter as “my dearest partner of greatness” when he was telling her about the prophecies (1.5, 13). By telling her of the witches it shows that he trusts her to the point of telling her anything. It also shows that he values her opinion. When Macbeth told her about the prophecy, Lady Macbeth immediately had ambition to be queen (1.4, 19-20). It is shown that she is willing to do anything to get the opportunity to become powerful. Their relationship shows a significant change after the murder of King Duncan. Macbeth was very hesitant on murdering the King but Lady Macbeth was very persistent on fulfilling the task. Lady Macbeth was the superior one towards the beginning with putting together the plans, while Macbeth just obeyed them. Lady Macbeth states "My hands are of your colour, but I shame, to wear a heart so white" (2.2,67-68). This shows that she is insulting Macbeth’s manliness. Macbeth had many doubts on whether or not he should complete the task, but he just followed the plans anyways to prove his manhood to his wife...
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...Duncan learns of Macbeth’s and Banquo’s trust worth and bravery in a battle against a Scottish betrayer who sided with the Norwegians. As Macbeth and Banquo return home from battle against the Norwegians, they suddenly meet three weird witches. The ugly and foreign witches predict that Macbeth will be thane of Cawdor and king of Scotland one day, and that Banquo will be the father of kings. Which gives Macbeth a lot to think about. After the meeting with three witches, Macbeth gets a new title as thane of Cawdor, as predicted. And therefore Macbeth sees an oppitunity to become king and he begins to contemplate the murder of Duncan in order to realize the witches' second prophecy. Duncan meets Macbeth and announces that he is going to visit him at his castle. Macbeth rides ahead to prepare his household for a big feast. In the meantime, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from Macbeth, which says tells her about the witches' prophesy and his new title. The news gives Lady Macbeth strength to lose her of feminine softness and values and thus prepare herself and Macbeth for the murder of Duncan. When Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth tells him about her plans of Duncan's murder. Macbeth becomes skeptic of the idea of killing Duncan, but Lady Macbeth taunts him by using his manhood against him, and tells him that he will only be a man if he kills Duncan. Macbeth struggles with the idea of murdering a man, a man who trusts him and loves him. Thereafter Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that...
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...In this scene the fate of two innocent people get determined by Macbeth. As he controls the fate of Lady Macduff and her son, he is also in the process of ruining his own fate as well. He stresses himself out to extreme about Macduff taking him over, that it pushes him to kill Lady Macduff and the boy, but he then soon plans to kill himself. Lady Macduff complains to Ross in this scene about how her husband left them unsafe and unloved. Although, that wasn’t Macduff’s plan at all, he truly felt as if they were in no danger because he didn’t sense Macbeth’s craziness. The messenger warns Lady Macduff about the murders “… be not found here, hence, with your little ones!” (4:2, Lines 68-69). She was too slow to react and soon enough the tragic fate of her son and her was inevitable. Macbeth becomes so obsessed with his own fate, through the witches prophecies that he’s willing to sacrifice everyone’s lives. “The fact is that in the play the issue is ambiguous, and an argument can be made supporting that Macbeth was controlled by fate, or that Macbeth maintained free will. At the heart of...
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...Power and Passion – Macbeth In Macbeth by William Shakespeare, two concepts, power and passion are conveyed through the downfall of the tragic play. The characters, mainly Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, show the relationship between these two concepts. Throughout the playwright, Macbeth has an ambition to gain more power, and especially when hearing the prophecy from the three witches after the victory of his battle, he becomes passionate about possessing the throne of Scotland. This essay will also discuss a particular soliloquy acted out by Macbeth where he imagines a dagger in front of him. Macbeth’s passion to be king originates from where the three witches address Macbeth as the ‘Thane of Cawdor’, ‘Thane of Glamis’, and ‘King hereafter’ when the witches chant “All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!” (Act 1 Scene 3, line 48). Macbeth believes in these prophecies as they are supernatural entities, and this drives Macbeth’s ambition to achieve higher status and reputation. When Lady Macbeth hears this from the messenger, she gains high ambitions for him and becomes seduced by the idea of becoming the queen. She speaks to herself “I may pour my spirits in thine ear” (Act 1 Scene 5, line 25), which means she will inspire Macbeth with her passion about an evil deed she thought of. However, she also knew Macbeth could not perform such evil deeds as she says that he is “too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” (Act 1 Scene 5, line 16), therefore she uses his weakness throughout...
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...Lady Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters. As she is Macbeth’s wife, her role is significant in his rise and fall from royalty. She is Macbeth’s other half. During Shakespearean times, women were regarded as weak insignificant beings that were there to give birth and look beautiful. They were not thought to be as intelligent or equal to men. Though in Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the highest influence in Macbeth’s life. Her role was so large; in fact, that she uses her position to gain power, stay strong enough to support her unstable Lord, and fails miserably while their relationship falls apart. Everything about Lady Macbeth is enough to create the perfect villain because of her ability to manipulate everyone around her. It appears that even she can’t resist the perfect crime. Lady Macbeth is a dominant character as soon as she is introduced into the play. A.C. Bradley wrote about her as “…the most commanding and perhaps the most awe-inspiring figure that Shakespeare drew” from his article titled Lecture X. She became a image known for her ambitious nature. Her thirst for power and disregard for life was shocking to the audience, as to her own husband. The moment she learns of the prophecies, she decides to stand behind Macbeth and see him to the throne. She is immediately set on her quest for more power. As it reads “Glamis thou art, and Cowador, and shalt be/ What thou art promised (1.5.13-14) This moment is...
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...Lady Macbeth’s Conscience The events of Shakespeare’s Macbeth are triggered by an innate sense of self-serving ambition, present especially within Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth himself is a dynamic man whose ambition transformed him into an entity existing without any sense of morality. This perpetual, growing ambition clashed with his conscience, a clear differentiation between right and wrong, in a way that had eradicated it. Adversely, Lady Macbeth, driven by the same determination, had never proven to possess a conscience or even the desire to cultivate one. Frederick Kiefer suggests the contrary, claiming that “[t]he book of conscience entails personal responsibility”, a responsibility that had apparently manifested itself in Lady Macbeth’s writings during her sleepwalking scene. He theorizes that her writings were confessional, thus proving the presence of conscience. Yet Lady Macbeth’s role in Duncan’s death and as a motivator to her husband’s cruelty automatically signify a lack of conscience which is not redeemed in the sleepwalking scene. Her anxious reflections are only motivated by that same self-preservation; she ruminates in fear for her reputation but not necessarily out of guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth was introduced as a ruthless woman motivated by a selfish desire for power. She was equally ambitious and evil as she persuaded Macbeth to murder King Duncan for the sake of social mobility; for this reason, she openly renounced her humanity and requested...
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...it is Macbeth's hand that does the greater evil deed against Duncan and the only evil against Banqo and MacDuff's family members; in essence the rise of the Macbeths to power is one of shared responsibility. Their downfall is played out on the same road as they travel in opposite directions to and from being responsible for their own fate. The belief in the occult is an element of the play that drives its tragedy; an element that may be lost on modern audiences looking to find motivation for Macbeth's murderous deeds. The belief in prophecy is particularly important in gaining a foothold on understanding the downfall of Macbeth and his Lady. When Macbeth first comes upon the Weird Sister and they roll out the prophecies for both Macbeth and Banquo, and by extension Duncan and his family, more is going on than just a foretelling of the future. The prophecies instill in Macbeth the realization of his dreams, of course, but they also portend that the darkest fears of Macbeth will be realized alongside his dreams. Without Macbeth's unquestioned belief in the occult and acceptance that the Weird Sisters have the power of prophecy, there would be neither a rise nor a fall. If the rise of Macbeth to king can be said to be a combination of belief in the Sisters and the manipulation of his wife, his fall comes about as the result of a fatal mistake on his part: mistakenly believing that he has the power to deny the future as foretold. Macbeth fervently believes in the power of the...
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...of confiding to Lady Macbeth about his destiny drove her to become power hungry. This mistake lead to Macbeth killing his cousin and close friend King Duncan. Macbeth’s decision to kill the king drives him mad and eventually leads to his timely demise. William Shakespeare uses Irony and Satire to show how Misplaced Ambition can lead to the rise and fall of...
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...Macbeth In Macbeth, the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth undergo drastic changes as the play unfolds. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth regress from logical and human like people, into evil characters that would be found in a horror film. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seem like two usual human beings, but after hearing about possibly becoming king and queen these characters turn to the dark side and resort to murdering the current king to take the thrown. Once the characters resort to murder, regret and guilt begin to consume their lives, resulting in death for both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play Macbeth, the elements...
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...person submits to their thoughts then they can be destroyed. A person’s actions can have a negative impact ultimately leading to their demise. Macbeth is a character who validates this statement: he has a shallow persona and he is ambitious. However, he has few redeeming qualities to back him up: at the beginning he is portrayed as a heroic man which makes his decline so tragic. Macbeth is also easily manipulated. Macbeth’s character is defined by his negative behaviour which eventually results in his downfall; he acts on his insecurities and his ambition in a violent and ruthless way and chooses to abandon his morals. Many people in life do not have the ability to look beneath the surface of a situation: they have a shallow mindset which affects their ability to see the bigger picture. The character Macbeth is one of these people; he rarely considers the “bigger picture” when dealing with a complicated situation. When the witches reveal, “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” (I, i, 70), Macbeth is threatened by the prospect of Banquo’s bloodline gaining power: When first they [witches] put the name of king upon me And bade them speak to him. Then, prophet-like, They him father to a line of kings Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown And put a barren scepter in my grip, Thence to be wrenched with an...
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...To what extent is Macbeth responsible for his own downfall? Macbeth is a universal text and is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, when we talk about Macbeth’s downfall it is both the downfall of the single state of man and the downfall of his wider social relations, these being Lady Macbeth, Duncan, Banquo, Macduff’s family and ultimately Scotland. Aristotle says that ‘tragedy is the imitation of an action’ he is talking about an action or a motive that governs the protagonist’s life. A tragedy is commonly known as a story or play that ends with a negative or unfortunate outcome that was essentially unavoidable, usually caused by a flaw in the central character’s personality. Although it is established that Macbeth is a tragedy, there are differences in audience response to tragedy. The audience of Elizabethan times saw tragedy as the destruction of the Great Chain of Being and the danger to the order and stability of the state. The Great Chain of being is conception of the hierachical order of the universe; Elizabethan audiences believed that a bond linked all things in the universe. They saw Macbeth as a tragedy because the rightful ruler of Scotland was killed which lead to Scotland being lead by an evil King. Contemporary audiences see Macbeth as a tragedy because of the psychological destruction of a man, and the crises caused by this man. Macbeth shows the journey of a tragic hero, Macbeth has the traits of a tragic hero as defined by Aristotle: nobility, hamartia...
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