Macbeth not only is the shortest of William Shakespeare’s great tragedies but also is anomalous in some structural respects.
Like Othello, the Moor of Venice and only a very few other Shakespearean plays, Macbeth is without the complications of a subplot. Consequently, the action moves forward in a swift and inexorable rush. More significantly, the climax—the murder of Duncan—takes place very early in the play. As a result, attention is focused on the various consequences of the crime rather than on the ambiguities or moral dilemmas that had preceded and occasioned it. In this, the play differs from Othello, where the hero commits murder only after long plotting, and from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, where the hero spends most of the play in moral indecision. Macbeth is more like King Lear , where destructive action flows from the central premise of the division of the kingdom.
However, Macbeth differs from that play, too, in that it does not raise the monumental, cosmic questions of good and evil in nature. Instead, it explores the moral and psychological effects of evil in the life of one man. For all the power and prominence of Lady Macbeth, the drama remains essentially the story of the lord who commits regicide and thereby enmeshes himself in a complex web of consequences. When Macbeth first enters, he is far from the villain whose experiences the play subsequently describes. He has just returned from a glorious military success in defence of the Crown. He is rewarded by the grateful Duncan, with preferment as thane of Cawdor.
This honor, which initially qualifies him for the role of hero, ironically intensifies the horror of the murder Macbeth soon commits. Macbeth’s fall is rapid, and his crime is more clearly a sin than is usually the case in tragedy. It is not mitigated by mixed motives or insufficient knowledge. Moreover, the sin is regicide, an action viewed during the Renaissance as exceptionally foul, since it struck at God’s representative on Earth.
The sin is so boldly offensive that many have tried to find extenuation in the impetus given Macbeth by the witches. However, the witches do not control behavior in the play. They are symbolic of evil and prescient of crimes that are to come, but they neither encourage nor facilitate Macbeth’s actions. They are merely a poignant external symbol of the ambition that is already within Macbeth. Indeed, when he discusses the witches’ prophecy with Lady Macbeth, it is clear that the possibility has been discussed before. The responsibility cannot be shifted to Lady Macbeth, despite her goading.
In a way, she is merely acting out the role of the good wife, encouraging her husband to do what she believes to be in his best interests. She is a catalyst and supporter, but she does not make the grim decision, and Macbeth never tries to lay the blame on her. When Macbeth proceeds on his bloody course, there is little extenuation in his brief failure of nerve. He is an ambitious man overpowered by his high aspirations, yet Shakespeare is able to elicit feelings of sympathy for him from the audience. Despite the evil of his actions, he does not arouse the distaste audiences reserve for such villains as Iago and Cornwall. This may be because Macbeth is not evil incarnate but a human being who has sinned.
Moreover, audiences are as much affected by what Macbeth says about his actions as by the deeds themselves. Both substance and setting emphasize the great evil, but Macbeth does not go about his foul business easily. He knows what he is doing, and his agonizing reflections show a person increasingly losing control over his own moral destiny. Although Lady Macbeth demonstrated greater courage and resolution at the time of the murder of Duncan, it is she who falls victim to the physical manifestations of remorse and literally dies of guilt. Macbeth, who starts more tentatively, becomes stronger, or perhaps more inured, as he faces the consequences of his initial crime.
The play examines the effects of evil on Macbeth’s character and on his subsequent moral behavior. The later murders flow naturally out of the first. Evil breeds evil because Macbeth, to protect himself and consolidate his position, is forced to murder again. Successively, he kills Banquo, attempts to murder Fleance, and brutally exterminates Macduff’s family.
As his crimes increase, Macbeth’s freedom seems to decrease, but his moral responsibility does not. His actions become more cold-blooded as his options disappear.
