King Duncan’s murder marks the beginning of MacBeth’s downfall Essay

Who can be held most responsible for this? In this essay I am going to be discussing who was mainly to blame for MacBeth’s downfall. I am going to be looking at Lady MacBeth, the Three Witches and MacBeth himself. Shakespeare wrote this play for King James 1. The moral of the play demonstrates respect for the King and how there would be chaos if his authority was disrupted. Shakespeare shows us this when King Duncan is murdered, even nature is upset – horses go wild and start to attack each other, owls shriek and many more strange things happen. This idea would have pleased King James because in Shakespearian times Kings and Queens believed that they were chosen by God to rule over a nation. The play illustrates that killing a King would be like disobeying God’s will. King James 1 was obsessed with witches and Shakespeare’s use of them in ‘MacBeth’ would have pleased the King further. James believed that witches caused evil and they were the work of the devil. So when they appear to MacBeth in the play, and could ultimately cause his downfall due to their predictions, the King would have approved of this, and so approved of Shakespeare’s work. I am now going to discuss in further detail, how Lady MacBeth could be to blame for MacBeth’s downfall. Lady MacBeth first appears in the play speaking a soliloquy. This has a dramatic effect on the audience in that we can see inside her mid as she speaks. We get the impression that she doesn’t think that her husband is capable of ruling over Scotland. She thinks that he is too weak by saying, ‘†¦ yet I do fear that thy nature is too full o’th’milk of human kindness’. She also thinks that if MacBeth got to be king, he could and would only get there by going good, and this is not prepared to do any evil to get there. She says, ‘What thou wouldst highly, thou wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win’. From her soliloquy we can learn that Lady MacBeth comes across as not really knowing her husband, and that she is mean and evil. The audience really get to see into her thoughts. But we start to think, ‘does she know the true MacBeth?’ as further on in the play she is not at all surprised by what her husband can do. In Act 2 Scene 2, we really begin to see the how Lady MacBeth can influence MacBeth and how unemotional she is. She finally persuades MacBeth to murder King Duncan, and after he has carried out the deed, she shows no remorse and no emotion to MacBeth when he is worried. She says that if Duncan hadn’t reminded her of her father, she would have killed him herself, ‘Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t’. However, here we see that she does have some kindness, but it wasn’t enough for her to stop Duncan from being killed. She is ultimately evil and nothing can deter her from it. In the same scene she goes on to say that MacBeth shouldn’t worry about what they have done, ‘These deeds must not be thought of after these ways; so, it will make us go mad’. This is significant in the play, as in the end, Lady MacBeth does herself go mad. She starts to sleep walk and tries to wash imaginary blood off her hands. In the end her guilt gets too much for her and she kills herself. I think that Lady MacBeth cannot be blamed for MacBeth’s downfall. She did contribute to some of it, as she emotionally blackmailed him into doing her work. The other murders that MacBeth committed, they were on his own and Lady MacBeth had nothing to do with them. We could maybe say that she started him off with the realisation that he could actually kill King Duncan when MacBeth told her about the witches. But MacBeth already had the thought of murder in his head before she said anything to him. In Shakespearian times all of the audience of ‘MacBeth’ would have believed in witches. Witches symbolised the devil. People thought that they were a source of evil, and so they were very superstitious about people acting ‘differently’. In ‘MacBeth’, Shakespeare introduces the witches as being very strange characters. He describes the, as, ‘†¦ so withered and wild in their attire, that look not like th’inhibitants o’th’earth’, ‘†¦ by each at once her choppy finger laying upon her skinny lips; you should be woman and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so’. From this we can create a picture in our minds of very wild and weird looking women. In Shakespearian times if anyone had looked like this they would have been branded as a witch and killed. When MacBeth and Banquo first meet the witches they are returning home from a victorious battle. The witches give them both predictions. To MacBeth they say, ‘All hail MacBeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis. All hail MacBeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor. All hail MacBeth, that shalt be King hereafter’. The witches don’t give MacBeth bad predictions they just tell him what will be in the future. Further on in the play, MacBeth returns to see the witches, forcing the, to tell him more predictions. They make apparitions appear to MacBeth. The first apparition, an armed head, enters and says, ‘MacBeth, MacBeth, MacBeth; Beware MacDuff, Beware the Thane of Fife’. The second apparition, a bloody child, now appears and says ‘†¦ Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm MacBeth’. Finally the third apparition appears, a child crowned with a tree in his hand, and says to MacBeth, ‘Be lion – melted, proud and take no care, who chafers, who frets, or where conspirers are. MacBeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to High Dunsinane shall come against him’. In all of the predictions that the witches and the apparitions have told him they have not actually mentioned murder. The witches cannot be blamed for the murder of King Duncan and MacBeth’s downfall. It was a personal choice of whether to act upon or ignore the predictions. Banquo chose to ignore them and never think of their evil again, whereas MacBeth decided to make sure that they came true. Shakespeare makes the witches look bad because they were what started MacBeth off with thinking he could be something greater than he already was. But the witches did seem to find great delight in MacBeth’s downfall. They could be said to be pure evil. They put thoughts into MacBeth’s head without the audience really realising it. I think that the witches planned all of this to happen. They wanted to think that they would have some part in MacBeth’s downfall. If they hadn’t of gone to him and said that he could be King, MacBeth would never have thought of it and he would never have broken down. The role of the witches was to produce temptation, choice and opportunity. Shakespeare was trying to get the message across that things shouldn’t always be thought upon. We can see this by how MacBeth was brought down from listening to the predictions, and Banquo wasn’t caught up in it all because he chose to forget about them. MacBeth, however, can be blamed for his own downfall. At the start of the play he is portrayed as being a hero by the Captain, ‘†¦ For brave MacBeth – well he deserves that name – disclaiming fortune with his brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution, like valour’s minion carved out in his passage†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢. King Duncan goes on to say, ‘O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman’. With what the Captain and the King say about MacBeth, we get the impression that we should look up to and think highly of him. When MacBeth first meets the three witches, he is confused by how they look. When they tell him their predictions he wants them to tell him more, ‘Stay, you imperfect speakers. Tell me more’. He likes what they have said to him and straight away we get to see a darker side of him, ‘My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is, but what is not’. This shows that MacBeth has an image or picture of murder in his mind. The thought of murder is already there. Ultimately MacBeth had the choice to either kill or not kill Duncan, and he chose to. He did it because he wanted to, even though there was influence. But MacBeth was a strong man and could have said no. In the end temptation took over and he acted upon it – he murdered King Duncan. MacBeth showed real evil by doing this – evil that was already inside of him, it couldn’t have been put there by somebody else, no matter how persuading they are. But Lady MacBeth and the Three Witches triggered this evil off. It made MacBeth go from a bold, valiant soldier, to a cold blooded killer. Shakespeare has put across the moral question, ‘why is there evil and suffering in the world?’. He has answered this by showing how people can just change when they are faced with temptation and opportunity – opportunity to be something bigger than they already are. He shows that most people can never be happy with what they have and that they strive to have something bigger and better – no matter what they have to do, and who they have to hurt to get there.