Written around the year 1606, "The Tragedy of Macbeth" is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, but it abounds in vile murder, instances of evil witchcraft, baleful omens, regicide, rebellion, and revenge. The only thing it does not have is a love story, thank God! Havoc is unleashed When Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, runs into three witches after a victorious battle against troops led by a traitor (the first omen!), And When These Three ladies prophesy his becoming the Thane of Cawdor, and later even his rise to The Throne. The first part of the witches 'prophecy becoming true shortly afterwards, Macbeth tells his wife about the witches' Promising words. Lady Macbeth, being of a rather impatient temper, makes up her mind to speed matters up a bit and prevails on her husband to kill his kinsman, the king, Duncan spends the night When in Macbeth's castle. Proclaiming himself the new king, Macbeth Establishes a realm of tyranny, securing and Confirming his power WITH FURTHER bloody deeds, until finally the noble Macduff leads to upheaval against Macbeth, THUS restoring order.
All this may seem dull in its simplicity, and yet, for all its gore and sensationalism, Macbeth is a play that invites us to a variety of Approaches. It can be read as a classical revenge tragedy, where cosmic order is destroyed by a man, and a woman, unable to bridle Their passions, Their unchecked lust for power and ready to stoop to the most atrocious of all crimes - killing a man who Came into Their house, full of trust. The disturbance of social and political order is duly mirrored in the macrocosm through occurrence of natural catastrophes or the birth of freaky animals. God is CLEARLY not amused with Macbeth's career - and it is only in the nature of Things That in the end the Thane is going to get a jolly good thrashing.
A more interesting approach is Offered by A Closer Look into Macbeth and his wife's Souls. The Lady, though not very likeable, is, to me, one of the most interesting female characters Shakespeare ever invented. Well aware of the subservient position society allotted to her, she cries out, "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull / Of direst cruelty", and then, for quite a while, it is she who dominates her silently doubtful and wavering husband and Whose malignant determination fills us with awe. Later, HOWEVER, When Macbeth's ambition and cruelty are completely Call unleashed and can no longer be slaked, Lady Macbeth, overwhelmed with the sense of guilt she Brought upon herself, slowly absconds into madness, Which is superbly Expressed in her preoccupation with washing hands ago. The futility of her attempts at cleansing herself, HOWEVER, has already been hinted at before by Macbeth's question "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?" All in all, this leaves a lot of space for discussions on guilt, remorse, and on Whether it is Advisable for a husband to talk shop with his wife.
Macbeth, though undecided at first, soon surpasses his wife in terms of cruelty and criminal excess. Just look at the Following lines he utters shortly before he is run down:
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, Out, Brief Candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. "
Is this not rather the creed of the modern nihilist? Once more, Shakespeare Proves more aware of the limits of his own age than his contemporaries might have been able to sense. It would be a rewarding enterprise, I think, to look at "Macbeth" with the question of where a policy might lead to completely Call That has lost touch with values: such as responsibility and moderation. Most egocentric politicians of our age are comparatively harmless, but could we not fare better after all? Macbeth, in his blind vanity, is insensible to the deeper meaning of the witches' words, and we live in to age, where the writing of many disasters, ecological or economic They be, is on the wall, and many short-sighted statesmen are too vain to put Their glasses on.
I take it all this makes you see how much blood this old man from Stratford has shut him in. "The Scottish Play" even made it into popular culture,: such as the first season of "Blackadder" or various episodes of "The Simpsons", and it even contains some wisdom for the writing of customer reviews, as the Following quotation, with Which I mean to conclude my ramblings, wants to prove:
"If it were done when 'tis done, then' twere well / If it were done quickly."