Macbeth The Tyrant

Shakespeare's shortest play, Macbeth, is also, consequently, his most shocking and intense. We see the essence of tragedy: in this case, the protagonist transforms himself from a noble warrior who is loyal to his king and fights for his county to a reduced tyrant by the play's end. Macbeth's divided soul which is in turmoil is the cause of his deterioration from a respected warrior to a despised tyrant.

Initially, Macbeth's turmoil within himself is apparent from the beginning of the play when we see that even his ambition is scattered, in a sense. Our first image of Macbeth is that of a courageous and selfless warrior by the wounded captain whom he had saved from certain death on the battlefield. But Macbeth's selflessness is transformed by consuming ambition, sparked by the intriguing prophecy which the Weird Sisters relay unto him. Inner turmoil arises within Macbeth because he lacks the strength of character to check his ambition. He is dominated by his wife, Lady Macbeth, whose ambition for her husband is great. Macbeth is plastic to his wife, in a sense. He allows her to manipulate him and does with him what she will, questioning his masculinity and causing greater confusion within himself. "When you durst do it, then you were a man..." (I, vii, 49). His wife's scorn is especially harsh. She states that she could even dash the brains out of her own child if she had made a promise like her husband's. The play implies that women can be as ambitious and cruel as men, yet due to the social constraints in place, these ambitions may not be pursued.

Although the thoughts of murdering Duncan are there within him, Macbeth lacks the same kind of steely resolve which his wife possesses, but his lack of moral restraints and weak character allow him to give in to the temptation of greatness, of making a name for himself greater than just a loyal servant--King of Scotland. "Stars, hide your fires;/ Let not light see my black and deep desires" (I. iv. 50-51). He partly commits the atrocious crime out of love for his wife due to her influence over his fragmented spirit. He has no moral grounding and feels as though he must prove himself under his provocative wife that he is not a louse like the people around him. Macbeth, ultimately, appeals to his personal pride.

Macbeth's speech reflects his confused ambition through restlessness and indecision through a broken and disjointed style.

If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly: if th'assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With surcease success..." (I. vii. 1-4)

He is uneven and his motives are not concrete. It is evident that he is trying to make his motives clear and justified. He, himself, is hopelessly lost, scrambling for reasons to murder Duncan. His soul and mind are divided for the murder and although Macbeth is both a feared and revered warrior, to his enemies and to his country respectively, he is not equipped for the psychic consequences of his crimes. Macbeth is a man tormented within the states of spiritual and mental division. In his own way, he reasons that the murder of Duncan is now, after his first encounter with the Weird Sisters, a dutiful obligation, yet he is still torn at this idea because of his instinct to keep the peace.

The Weird Sisters themselves seem to represent the ambition and sin rooted within humanity--they are the supernatural embodiment of the Christian framework of sin.

Within the entanglement of his soul, the birth of evil is arising. He is ignorant of his own motives, but his ambition is fortified by Lady Macbeth's. In a sense, they are "in evil" together. She represents his dark half, almost as though she is not a person herself.

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs

Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings.

My throughout whose murder yet is but fantastical

Shakes so my single state of man that function

Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is

But what is not. (I. iii. 134-142)

It is here that we see the evil within Macbeth unleashed. Although ambitious thoughts may have creeped within him before, sparked by the damaging prophecies of the Weird Sisters, it is here that he finally resolves to commit the murder of his king. When Macbeth weighs the crime before it is committed, he concludes that he has only "vaulting ambition" to set forth the plan in motion (I, vii, 27).

Secondly, it is not simply his own disorganized ambition which leads Macbeth to tragedy and tyranny. He is fueled by a sense of ambition, but it is fear through which he secures his place as a tyrant. Macbeth is now helpless to the darkness within his soul and is harrowed by the fear of the consequences which retribution should bestow. He has no ethical system within to reason with himself and he allows fear to consume and drive him to commit the other murders. He fears punishment here as well as in the afterlife and this is what sets forth the chain of murders to follow. Macbeth's Christian beliefs, thus, help to delve him deeper into tyranny. It is interesting to see that now the roles have seemed to reverse for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. "...will these hands ne'er be clean?" (V, i, 4). Whereas she was once the driving force behind evil in the beginning of the play, she slowly goes insane with guilt while Macbeth grows stronger in evil. The fear that causes all things around him to be paralyzed causes Macbeth to become even more tyrannical. His own private disharmony is eating him alive. He is not one with himself, nor is he one with the world around him and thus the acts of bloodshed he commits after he murders Duncan are caused by his being driven by fear; a symbol of trying to align himself with his surroundings. Macbeth wants to achieve peace, even if, at its cost, "the frame of things disjoint, both the words suffer" (III. ii. 16).

Killing Duncan has not made Macbeth freer, though he may have anticipated freedom and a sense of peace. Each and every move Macbeth makes consequently is to secure his new position: "To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus..." (III, i, 46). He is slowly growing more

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