Essay: Uncover the Impact of Imagination on Macbeth: An Analysis of the Tragic Hero’s Inner Battle

Sir Francis Bacon, who, in his work The Division of Poesy, divides the human science into three sections that respectively relate to one feature of the human mind, assigns poetry to imagination.
What follows now is a short philosophical-intellectual history outline of the conceptual history, whereby the main focus is directed at the Elizabethan era in England (1558-1603). In this time, a period within the Renaissance, imagination was generally perceived as rather negative, even dangerous – as a possible ‘enemy’ of reason – and possibly fatal. “The conception of imagination suggested by [various] passages in Shakespeare is but the expression in literature of a notion one finds everywhere in psychological treatises.” (Anderson, p.28, l.5-7). Therefore, imagination is “the Source of all our Evils, our Confusions and Disorders, our Passions and Troubles; […]“ (Charron, p.179, l.26-28).
There clearly has to be more behind it.
The driving force in his inner battle lies in his insuppressible imagination which, along with its impacts on Macbeth as well as on the plot of the drama, shall be primarily discussed within this paper. Like often mentioned, in Macbeth the felon becomes the hero in the context of an alarming depiction of human temptation and hunger for power, though here “it is not the victims of wickedness and sin that the play is concerned with, but wickedness and sin itself” (Mehl, p.106, l.1-2).
He merely possesses a certain sense of honor or a hint of nobler instincts as he certainly feels the ignominy of the murder of his guest Duncan and, in all inner weakness, does not descend into contemptibleness by, for instance, accusing his wife of having beguiled him. Nevertheless, this still does not account for humanity if one only considers the inhumane and gruesome murder of Banquo in the third scene of the third act (see Schücking, p.68, l.22-25; p.78, ll.13-20). Therefore, as for Macbeth, one cannot talk of a conscience – which entails today’s common or rather generally customary connotations, namely a clear capacity to differentiate between good and evil or between the morally right and the reprehensible – but rather of conscience-like emotional impulses inside of him.
To that, he lets himself be led by a product of his imagination in the shape of an imaginary dagger, which shows him the way to Duncan’s bed chamber. Though he is initially confused by this vision, his determination grows additionally at the same time when drops of blood suddenly appear on the handle and blade and he thus sees his immediately following crime already in mental anticipation before his eyes.
Banquo is now the only one posing a possible threat to Macbeth, due to the jointly experienced prophecy – which was, on the one hand, also addressed to him as an ancestor of an entire royal dynasty and, on the other hand, he has to be considered a confidant of Duncan’s murder who, though he cannot definitely know about Macbeth’s crime, certainly has to suspect it – and due to the fact that he declined Macbeth’s offers of joint ‘collaboration’ twice (see Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, l.152-158 and Act 2, Scene 1, l.25-30), knowing that it involves nothing honorable, whereby he certainly has a completely different conception of the term ‘honor’ than Macbeth.
Fundamentally, it is to be determined that initially all of Macbeth’s actions depend on his conviction that – due to the kingship prophesied to him by the witches – he has to personally obtain this power position at all costs. His entire further actions are subsequently to be understood as a direct consequence to his murder of Duncan, in order to cover up the deed and to concurrently secure his usurped reign. In addition, especially with the murder of Banquo, his fear plays a significant role which afterwards turns into a mad psychopathic defiance during the bloodbath of Macduff’s family. Thus first directly, then indirectly, his entire action and, therefore, also the entire plot of the drama depends on his erratic productive imagination.
While it does empower him to be a visionary concerning the future, it also never lets his spirit rest, pushes him into a paranoid madness and makes him – as a result of his negative development – degenerate from an honorable subordinate of the king into a ruthless and almost arbitrarily murdering, psychopathic tyrant.
Precisely there lies one of the tragic moments of the play: that, of all things, one of Macbeth’s advantages – by which Max Deutschbein primarily means his power of imagination, which usually without doubt constitutes one of the most valuable gifts of human nature – would seal his fate; one need only think of his vision of the blood-spattered apparition in the shape of the murdered Banquo in the already mentioned banquet scene (see Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4 / see Deutschbein, p.247, l.2-5).
Moreover, his imagination causes a constant inner unfreedom and glumness, which courses through the entire plot and comes up repeatedly;
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, / Against the use of nature?” (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3, l.135-139 / Deutschbein, p. 243, l.14-19).
As a result of the prophecies his mind develops a psychomachia, a war of the soul in which his positive features fight against the demonic forces in him, but are already defeated in the end of the first act (see Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7, l. 80-83). Even though Macbeth is ultimately driven to murder by his “vaulting ambition”, a power stored in the demonic part if his mind, he innerly rebels against the deed, as becomes evident in his monologue in act one, scene seven.