“Man is not the creature of
circumstances
Circumstances are the creatures of man.”
Macbeth,
throughout the play, is presented as one much above the ordinary beings, and,
as such, he fulfils the basic -requirements of being a tragic hero.
Shakespeare, introduces him as a brave general, a bold, resolute man of action
who through as also referred to “Valor’s minion”, “Bellona’s bridegroom’’, the
king’s ‘’valiant cousin’’, a very “eagle’’ among ‘’sparrows’’, a ‘’lion’’ among
‘’hares’’. It is a play, which is
depicting a complete destruction, wrestling with creation. It is a study of the
disintegration and damnation of a man. And yet, Macbeth is a ‘tragic hero’.
Here presents, the hero’s complete symbolic life-journey in a reflective
pattern to ensure the only operation of evil in this world.
‘Macbeth: “Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not,fatal
vision,sensible
To feeling as to sight?” ‘
In the third scene
of the first act of the play though the hero accepts evil overtly, there is a
suggestion that, even before the commencement of action of the play, he has
fallen under the influence of evil.
‘Banquo : ..“Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives
way to repose.” ‘
The Witches,
merely prophecy certain things for Macbeth. They do not influence him in any
concrete manner, but the effect of the prophecy is to make Macbeth, start as if
he were already guilty of harboring dangerous ideas. It is a fact that his
ambition impels him towards “the swelling act of the imperial theme”, though
his conscience fills him with horror at the idea that has come to him about how
to gain the throne.
‘Macbeth:
“Come what come may,
Time
and the hour runs through the roughest day.” ‘
Macbeth, is the
starkest and the least discursive of Shakespeare’s tragedies as
Granville-Barker has pointed out. The
deterioration of Macbeth’s character illustrates the theme of conscience and
its decline. From a brave soldier and noble person Macbeth reaches a state when
he is a soulless man, a beast chained to a stake like a beast!
‘Second Witch: “By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes;
Open locks, whoever knocks.” ‘
The forces of evil are
always ready to ensnare man; but they have their limitations. They do not,
indeed cannot, force man into evil; they can merely tempt man to choose to
follow evil ways. Macbeth, deliberately choose- not once, but several times
in the play-the evil path. At every stage of Macbeth’s degeneration we witness
the choice being made deliberately, at the same time there is a sense of
inevitability, about Macbeth’s choices.
‘Macbeth: “How
now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is’t you do?
All
the Witches: A deed without a name.”
‘
Much more, than the
other elements, the Witches introduce an element of supernatural mystery and
fear into Macbeth. According to Charles Lamb,” They are foul anomalies, of whom
we know not whence they are sprung, or whether they have beginning or ending.
As they are without human passions, they seem to be without human relations.
They come with thunder and lightning and vanish to airy music.”It is
significant that the play opens with a brief meeting of the Three Witches.
‘Old Man: “Threeescore and ten I can
remember well;
Within the volume of which time, I
have seen
Hours dreadful and things
strange, but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.” ‘
The opening scene, in fact is important, in
that which makes a complete sense of mystery, strikes the keynote of the play:
..’ Second Witch: “When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost,
and won.
Third Witch: That will be
the ere the set of sun.
First Witch: Where the
place?
Second Witch: Upon the
heath.
Third Witch: There to meet
with Macbeth.’’ ‘
When we meet the Witches
again in Act I, Sc.iii, we get to know of their physical aspects. They are
withered and not dressed like earthly beings; their fingers are choppy and lips
skinny. They look like women, and yet they are bearded. They can at will vanish
into air, can foresee the future, and possess more than mortal knowledge. They
are by no means the ordinary witches of popular super -station; they are more
powerful beings, resembling rather the “Goddesses of Devine “as Holinshed calls
them. Shakespeare has endowed they may have power over Nature, but that power
is not -absolute.
They may have power over a man’s soul but that power is not absolute either.
It is when a mortal mind is tainted that they can have an influence on it.
Their prophecy only gives a definite shape to the dark thoughts that have
already been smoldering in Macbeth’s mind. The thought of assassinating Duncan
occurs to him independently of ‘them’-without any hint from ‘them’. Macbeth
reads into the prophecies a “supernatural soliciting”, to murder and, Lady
Macbeth looks upon them as “metaphysical aid.” The Witches in Macbeth never
solicit nor aid- this is nothing -but a wishful thinking.
‘Macbeth: ‘’Why sinks that cauldron? And what noise
is this? “ ‘
The most- distinct
suggestion, of the supernatural in Macbeth comes from Banquo’s Ghost. There
is no doubt that we can see with Macbeth the uncanny apparition, the blood
blotched ghost. Banquo’s Ghost plays an important role in the action of
tragedy. The horror of its sight compels Macbeth to make many a comprising
disclosure. As Coleridge points out them, “as true a creation of Shakespeare’s
as his Ariel and Caliban” and “wholly different from the representation of
Witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient of witches
in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external
resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice, to act immediately on the
audience.”
‘All
the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire
burn and cauldron bubble.” ‘
Though the Witches
here do not have a direct share in its action they are a very important part of
the play. The play from its very beginning continues under their evil shadows
until the shadows are finally lifted in the last scene with Macduff’s
entry with “the usurper’s cursed head.”
The tragedy would lose all its magnificence without its strange
atmosphere and the atmosphere would amount to nothing without the presence of
the Witches.
‘All the Witches: “Fair is foul, and
foul is fair,
Hover
through the fog and filthy air.”
Lenox describes the
‘unruly’ night in some detail:
“Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they
say
Lamentings heard i’ th’ air;
strange screams of death,
And, prophesying with accents
terrible
Of dire combustion, and confused
events,
New hatch’d to th’ woeful time, the obscure bird
Clamour’d
the live long night; some say,
the earth
Was feverous, and did shake.”
In the next scene,
Ross and the Old Man discuss of similar events that have taken place during the
fateful night:
‘Old Man: ‘On Tuesday last
A falcon tow’ring in her pride of place,
Was by
a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.”
‘
The portents
suggest a topsy-turvy situation in Nature and emphasize the naturalness of
Macbeth’s heinous deed in murdering Duncan who is at once his king, kinsman and
guest.
Ross: “And Duncan’s horses, a thing
most strange and certain,
Beauteous and swift, the minions of
their race,
Turn’d
wild in nature, broke
their stalls, flung out,
Contending ‘gainst obedience as
they would
Making war with mankind.” ‘
The accounts
of these supernatural happenings hence are helping towards the atmosphere of
horror in the play. -
‘An owl shrieks
Lady Macbeth: ..’’It was the owl that
shriek’d, the fatal bellman
Which gives the stern’st
good-night.” ‘
King
Edward, the Confessor was thought to be inspired with a gift of prophecy and
also to possess the gift of healing infirmities and some incurable
diseases. Though one motive of the
references may have been to flatter James I, another valid justification on
dramatic grounds, is that the good supernatural described here is a contrast to
the evil supernatural of the witches. Man’s actions are, therefore, not
isolated but closely connected to various forces operating in the universe. At
the same time, it is made to clear that effect would be different if Man did
not succumb to the evil within him.
‘Lady Macbeth: “Come, you spirits
That
tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the
toe topfull
Of
direst cruelty.” ‘
It is
noticeable that Macbeth himself never blames the Witches for his sinister
actions. The supernatural elements contribute to the play a rich texture, raise
the tragedy to a cosmic dimension to a sense of Fate, operating in man’s life
in Macbeth. Macbeth’s failure to utter the
word ‘Amen’ is also accepted only as a psychologic. The air-drawn dagger is not
strictly a part of the supernatural. The visionary dagger that Macbeth
perceives just before committing Duncan’s murder has been interpreted more as a
projection of Macbeth’s heated mind than as a concrete reality to be felt and
known. It is he who makes it possible for Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane
Castle shutting himself up inside. It is he who senselessly murdering
Macduff’s family rouses Macduff who is “none of woman born”- to revenge. Before
his end, he simply blames the juggling fiends as they, “keep the word of
promise to our ear and break it to our hope.”
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“Roses
have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both
moon and sun.”
- Shakespeare’s Art, therefore, is evolving
from a Deep Understanding of the Complexity of Human Nature!
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(References,
words, sentences, ideas.settings from ‘William Shakespeare’s Macbeth- A
critical evaluation, Dr. S. Sen.)
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