macbeth

let's quickly recap what went down. while the scottish general macbeth is returning victorious from battle, he runs into three witches. the witches tell this bloody hero with the sword that any day now he'll rise to great heights, that his fortune shows door after door opening for him, that he should wash his little cup and set it aside good and proper. macbeth, with butterflies fluttering in his stomach, goes skipping across the meadow. and what do you know, before long word comes and one of the doors the witches pointed to by reading the coffee grounds swings open, the door of government, and our man mako becomes a lord. once the first prophecy comes true, lord macbeth gets in the mood and is certain the next prophecy will come true as well, that history is crying out his name, keeping the beat with mac beth lord, mac beth lord.

lady macbeth, one of the greatest manipulators the world has ever seen, learns of the situation and works lord macbeth over but good. in the end macbeth lays king duncan down and slaughters him like a sacrificial offering. they pin the crime on others and slip away clean, and macbeth becomes king. but, oh boy, from this moment on fate starts weaving its webs with fine thessaloniki craftsmanship, and the road to macbeth's tragic end is paved with these webs.

macbeth proved himself on the battlefield and became a great commander with the sharpness of his sword. but here's the thing, there's also a peacetime side to this. (a duality also found in king richard.) in peacetime he's always hesitant, always pensive, and open to influence (especially his wife's influence). macbeth is a man of action, and while he's at ease when face to face with death, in civilian life, meaning in the period where thoughts take the place of action, when he has the time to listen to his inner voice, he falters. in this respect he reminds me a bit of hamlet, if you ask me. because of this duality he's generally struck me as a character somewhere between richard and hamlet.

hamlet's weakness of not being able to move from thinking to action is seen in peacetime macbeth too. the guilt he feels after killing the king brings macbeth down from his invincible-hero position and weakens him, blinds him. he gets scared. because of his troubled conscience he starts seeing ghosts. he wants to be sure he's invincible. he goes to the witches and confirms he's invincible, but he's actually fallen into an ironic situation. meanwhile, since he's reached the point of being able to fill a pool with the blood of the people he's had killed, a great coalition has formed against him. in the end he's killed in an ironic way, in keeping with the very prophecy that declared his invincibility. macduff, who kills macbeth, is unlike macbeth someone who never strays from virtue, someone who figures he'd have nightmares not because he killed but because he failed to kill. since he carries the sword of justice, the slaughter he's about to commit will be justified (the verdict is the viewer's now).

macbeth, and even lady macbeth, who goes mad and dies, are straightforwardly bad people. openly evil, that is. but they underline a nice point. while being a death machine in wartime is normal, in peacetime it isn't. with intrigues, assassinations, massacres and so on coming one after another, the heroic warrior of old becomes a vile murderer in an instant. the transition from good to evil is an interesting subject. everything about good and evil is expressed through morality and conscience. this is one of the interesting sides of the play. evil knows it's evil, and while this troubles it, it becomes even more evil.

macbeth is one of the products of shakespeare's pessimistic period. even though order is restored and justice is served at the end of the play by paragons of virtue, when you think about everything that happened, seeing the level evil can reach out of the good-evil pair inside a person must have really changed the man's view of humanity.