Essay: Macbeth is a tool for Shakespeare’s teleogical discussion of good and evil

When Macbeth considers the betrayal he must carry out unseen to become king, it shames him greatly. As he says “Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and dark desires”, we see his shame is so potent that he wishes to conceal it from the natural and the divine. “Black and dark” is a tautology, because both words mean the same thing and this emphasises how evil he thinks himself. Again we see that his concern is not primarily with his conscience, but that his actions will inevitably be known: how he is perceived limits him once more. Nature is a motif throughout the play, like a silent witness which strives to increase Macbeth’s paranoia. The stars, which see all, are the constant watchers. Perhaps they represent God, which is likely given the weight that religion had in Shakespeare’s time. Macbeth knows he will be unable to escape His eyes.
Macbeth is seen as a kind-natured individual by his wife, Lady Macbeth. She says of him: “Yet I do fear thy nature, it is too full o’th’milk of human kindness.”; this describes how Macbeth’s goodness is also a limitation. It is a metaphor using the nurturing qualities of milk to show how Macbeth is himself a nurturing person at heart; it also uses the colour imagery of milk, as white has connotations of purity and innocence. Jan Kott looks at this, quoting Malraux’s Condition Humaine: “A man who has not killed is a virgin”; unprovoked murder is a rite of passage, it seems, that has yet to have blemished Macbeth’s purity. Macbeth has a sense of morals, and in this way is seen by Lady Macbeth as naïve and childlike, which will push him to kill, to free himself of the limitations that being good poses.
After his need for external praise and a good name has been established, Shakespeare sets about dissecting and destroying it. First Macbeth loses God’s good opinion, or at least he thinks: “I could not say ‘Amen’ when they did say ‘God bless us’” and so Macbeth’s own pretence of goodness is shattered. He knows he has done wrong so irreversible that he belongs to the world of evil now. Whether he couldn’t actually say ‘Amen’ or not, doesn’t matter: Macbeth knows he is bad, though he felt it before, and so his prerogative now is only to conceal it from everyone else. Subsequent murders have no meaning but to cover his tracks.
Afte powerful.
The final stage in the evolution of Macbeth’s public perception is post- death. Macduff refers to him as a “dead butcher”; this is effective because it shows no compassion or respect. Macbeth’s last fall is the loss of his dignity. He is dead and so powerless, and the term ‘butcher’ shows him to be unrefined and ruthless, in the way a butcher chops meat, Macbeth killed, and so without thought or justification; Macduff has stripped Macbeth of his humanity by using this term.
As mentioned previously, how he is perceived is only a small part in how Macbeth transforms. His love of his reputation is cast aside for something stronger in the first instance: his love for Lady Macbeth, as it is for her that he kills Duncan. He goes into meeting with her resolved against murder: “We will proceed no further in this business.”; Shakespeare uses the imperative to show this, but Lady Macbeth holds the real power in their relationship at this point. An adaptation that does particularly well in showing this is the 2015 film starring Michael Fassbender. His use of body language is effective, leaning into Lady Macbeth, as if physically dependent on her as well, although other adaptions also present it well. Within minutes of their conversation, Macbeth’s resolve falters and he looks to her for reassurance: “ And if we fail?”. By the end of the scene, Macbeth shows willingness parallel to Lady Macbeth’s to kill the King. When he says “ I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat”, Shakespeare is using a metaphor: he compares Macbeth to a bow and arrow. He does this using the term “bend up” meaning get ready or make tense like a bow. This is effective because it not only shows how Lady Macbeth’s influence has mentally prepared and motivated him, but it also shows Macbeth as a weapon, aimed and fired by Lady Macbeth. He is only a tool in this sense, with no real independent thought.
Having murdered, he seeks her reassurance again, desperately this time, in Act II Scene 2. The pace of the scene contributes to our understanding of his need for her help; Shakespeare uses monosyllabic words and short sentences, quick questions and answers to bring to life the panic Macbeth experiences. Having done the deed alone, he struggles to find solace from Lady Macbeth, but still accepts her instructions and still places a lot of trust in her: “These deeds must not be thought of in these ways” and “Give me the daggers”; Shakespeare uses the imperative again to show the power she has. She expects that he will do what she says, even, as in the first quotation, change how he thinks. However, the rift between them grows as Macbeth becomes jumpy and paranoid: “How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?”; Macbeth maintains his self-awareness though he can not control the part of his mind which is plaguing him with imagined noises.
Shakespeare uses a very powerful metaphor to describe how Macbeth wishes to be rid of the deed: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand? No: this my hand will rather/ The multitudinous seas incarnadine,/ Making the green one red.” The belief that he could essentially ‘stain nature’ with this one act shows the enlarged sense he has of the impact of his actions. It uses strong contrasting colour imagery, and the audience can visualise it easily. It is also an example of a literary allusion to the crucifixion of Christ. Pontius Pilate is famous for saying “I wash my hands of this” and being damned for it. Shakespeare compares Macbeth this way to Pilate in his murder of an innocent and holy being. Given the historical context of Christian Britain and the power the Church had during Shakespeare’s life, this is a very harsh criticism of Macbeth, from himself no less.
During the famous banquet scene, Macbeth one last time sought comfort from his wife, but having killed Banquo alone, was unsuccessful. He hallucinates and he is alone in his vision, unable to understand Lady Macbeth’s reactions: “When now I think you can behold such sights and keep the natural ruby of your cheeks”. Lady Macbeth struggles to control the situation, because without being able to reassure Macbeth she has no power over him. Her only option is to attempt to cover his floundering, but to no real avail as Macbeth is now completely isolated in this and no exterior presence can modify his behaviour. He says “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”; this is a metaphor and it compares his sequence of murders to an ocean of blood, his only choice, as he puts it, is to “go o’er”, to carry on. The heavy implication being that he should continue until there is no more blood to spill and reaches the shore or that he should drown in the thick sticky blood that drags him down. The metaphor is so effective because of this vivid visual. Macbeth has accepted that all he has left is murder now; he has lost Lady Macbeth in all important ways, and so he has to kill until he can kill no more because he has no more ties or limits but those of life and death.
Ultimately, Lady Macbeth dies and Macbeth responds with no feeling. There is no feeling for the audience, no sadness, either, when Macbeth says “She should have died hereafter; there would have been time for such a word”; this means that either he has no time to mourn her now or that she would have died after anyway depending on interpretation. Both ways it is clear that she no longer means anything to him. The Fassbender adaption shows this moment by having him dance with her body to show how, despite his lack of emotion, Macbeth is reminiscent of his relationship with her. I thought that this was an interesting way of presenting it, the inferred reminiscence as a product of the awareness Macbeth has of his change, although I found the presentation of it confusing on first viewing.
Macbeth’s transformation from someone essentially weak and dependent on Lady Macbeth to someone entirely indifferent and solitary means that he has in fact become a strond downs of life.
Thinking back to before Macbeth murdered, a similar simile was used but in complete contrast in message to the one used now. He says: “Two truths are told, as happy prologues to the swelling act”; Macbeth refers to the witches’ prophecies and compares them to a play in three parts, and we see from the word “swelling” he considers the third to be the big crescendo, the grand finale. From his ambition, he revelled in the excitement of the Life’s play; now, however, he sees it plain and can cut through the emotions or “sound and fury”.
Macbeth’s initial ambition is partially what draws the audience in. We know from the beginning that he has a goal, and in a way we want him to accomplish it, though probab on in the story. I enjoyed this adaptation most of all due to the unusual and in some ways more familiar setting: a thriving Michelin star restaurant owned by Duncan, though run by Head Chief Jo Macbeth.
The one aspect of Macbeth that doesn’t change is his self-awareness. From the beginning, Macbeth shows shame over his thoughts (“Stars hide your fires”) and acknowledges that he intends to do wrong with no motive besides self-interest: “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’er leaps itself and falls on th’other”; it is very relevant that Shakespeare uses personification of ambition here as it gives the sense that Macbeth’s inner compulsion to go through with his plan against his morals is a separate entity, pushing Macbeth to kill Duncan. Even after he has killed, Macbeth’s recognition is constant. He knows that he shouldn’t kill, wishes he hadn’t, but also knows that he must. We can call to mind the quotation used before: “I am in blood, stepped in so far that should I wade no more returning were as tedious as go o’er”; Jan Kott uses this to talk about nightmare, the operative mechanism in the play, and it seems the knowledge of it doesn’t escape Macbeth’s awareness. This destroys him; he has a sense that there is a world where he hasn’t killed, that he can wake up to, that this one is a write off and hence the nihilism near the end.
To summarise, Macbeth is a tool for Shakespeare’s teleogical discussion of good and evil, and how a fixation on ourselves and our own desires can lead us to do terrible things. Macbeth isn’t a thriller, and