Macbeth Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare. It is considered as one of his most powerful and darkest tragedies. The play dramatizes the corrosive psychological and political effects when evil is chosen as a way to fulfill the ambition for power. The tragedy of Macbeth tells a story about two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banqou, who are met by three witches after a victorious battle against an army of rebels. Macbeth receives a prophecy from these foretellers that one day he will be king of Scotland and Banqou the father of many kings. Macbeth is powerfully influenced by their words, and the encouragement given by his wife’s actions, he is persuaded to murder King Duncan and take the throne for himself. Macbeth is now the most powerful man in the kingdom, but he feels his position insecure, and suspects those around him. This leads him to the murder of Banqou, whose ghost haunts him. He is then tormented with guilt and paranoia, and soon he becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders in order to protect himself from suspicion and enmity. During Macbeth’s and the witches’ second encounter, the witches warn him against the nobleman Macduff, but nevertheless persuade him to go on by telling him that “none of woman born” can defeat him. Macduff has meanwhile gone to England to help in collecting an army to attack Macbeth, and in his absence, his family is murdered by order of Macbeth. In the meantime Lady Macbeth, who was so ambitious, suffers now from bouts of sleepwalking, and speaks again her part in the crimes she has committed. Lady Macbeth’s cry of death is heard in the castle, while an English army led on by Duncan’s son Malcolm is besieging Macbeth’s castle. By then the king realizes that his position is threatening, but never loses courage, even when he become conscious of the witches’ deceptive words. As Macbeth and Macduff fight, Macduff reveals that he was not “of woman born” but was “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb. Macduff kills him and decapitates him. Malcom is then proclaimed the new king of Scotland.

Macbeth’s famous soliloquy at the beginning of second act contains an important theme, which recurs throughout the play, visions and hallucinations caused by guilt. The dagger scene gives a clear view of his character development and the current status, as the scene conveys the first major change in Macbeth’s character. Leading up to this soliloquy, Lady Macbeth has persuaded Macbeth to kill King Duncan, telling him that she will get the king’s two servants drunk so that they will memorize nothing and while Duncan is unguarded they will murder him and blame it on the servants. She tells him that they will have to be courageous and that nobody shall suspect them because they will act as thought they are grieving. The dagger scene occurs when Macbeth is alone, “Is this a dagger which I see before me, Come let me clutch thee” (Act II, scene i, 33), the hallucination suggest Macbeth’s insecurity and hesitation, showing that he is still staying loyal to the King. The hallucination that he sees is not supernatural or ghostly, but rather a manifestation of the inner struggle that Macbeth feels because he contemplates the regicide. The dagger is in fact the first in a series of Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s guilty imagination that Macbeth and his wife experience. But if this is the case, some would also wonder if the witches created some paranormal forces that allow them to control Macbeth’s fevered mind. The fact that they merely give voice to the Macbeth’s dormant ambitions would seem to be a confirmable idea, but the idea is being countered by the fact that Banqou also sees the witches and hears them speak. This shows that that their prophecies words are planted in Macbeth’s mind and have continued to grow into an obsession. The fact that he is visualizing a dagger, makes himself feel better about the decision that he has long fought his conscience over. He notifies the dagger that it looks as real as the one he is drawing out now, leading him toward the bloody deed he has resolved to commit “Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going”(Act II, scene i, 42). This proves that his decision to murder the king is already set in motion, and the idea of it is driving him mad. “Wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep” signifying that he has been losing sleep over the fact that he has an internal struggle between killing Duncan and to fulfill the ambition for power. Sleep symbolizes innocence, purity and peace of mind and due to his overwhelming sense guilt later will prevent innocent sleep from giving Macbeth relief from his tormented conscience. While he has sent Duncan to eternal rest, he himself and his wife live now in eternal anxiety. Macbeth mentions, “Pale Hecate’s offerings; and withered Murder/ Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf, / whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,/moves like a ghost.”(Act II, scene i, 52-58) In his imagination, Macbeth sees Murder as a withered man who is called to action by his sentinel, the wolf. Usually, a sentinel would keep an eye out for danger and call out a warning, but Murder’s sentinel keeps an eye out for the opportunity to kill, and his howl is his announcement that another victim has been found for Murder. At this point it is important to notice “thus with his stealthy pace,” it’s clear that Macbeth refers to himself, pacing like Murder, like the murderous rapist Tarquin, “like a ghost”. He asks the earth to be deaf to his steps, and not chatter about his whereabouts, because the present silence of the night goes well with the horror of what he’s about to do. Thus we now see in Macbeth a man who wants to be a silent and fatal deadly of horror. Macbeth then finishes the soliloquy saying, “Whiles I threat, he lives/ Words to the heat of deeds too old breath gives.”(Act II, scene i, 62-63) In other words, while he’s saying all these threatening things, King Duncan still lives, and his words haven’t yet inspires him to actually do the deed. He then leaves to kill the king at the ring of a bell from Lady Macbeth, finally moving from horrifying words to a horrible deed only when his wife’s bell tells him its time. In the scenes that follow, Lady Macbeth remains the voice of scheming reason, as she tells Macbeth that blood can be washed away with a little water. Eventually Lady Macbeth realizes the guilt that the blood symbolizes needs more than water to be cleansed away. Later in the play, in which she goes mad, trying to scrub away blood on her hands that only she can see. In the meanwhile Macbeth suffers more frightening apparitions.