Macbeth Is His Own Destruction English Literature Essay

The Shakespearean play, “Macbeth”, is set in the 11th century in Scotland and therefore before the “United Kingdom”. I believe that the statement “Macbeth alone is the architect of his own destruction” is only partly true because while I do believe that the lead character, Macbeth, is a very ambitious and ultimately quite a ruthless person capable of a vicious and sinister act, he does need the encouragement and the influence of others, notably the three witches and his wife, who are complicit in transforming Macbeth into the tyrant he becomes and certainly his wife is the leader in the plot to carry out the first act of despicable treachery and brutal murder. The play is quite a dark story of ambition and greed played against a background of the supernatural, although, I do think that this aspect can be open to interpretation, as I will discuss later.

The play opens with a very brief introduction to the three witches who are plotting, “when will we three meet again, in thunder, lightning or rain?” with the plan to meet up again after the battle; “upon the heath, there to meet Macbeth”. We are therefore alerted to the fact that Macbeth’s fate is tied up with the witches, for good or bad, and from the beginning demonstrates that he is not acting alone. The action moves onto the battlefield, with King Duncan being advised about the battle that has just taken place and the war lords describing Macbeth’s performance on the battlefield and being lauded as a true war hero, “For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name” -Sergeant; “O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!” – (Duncan) and defeater of the rebel MacDonald. In this quote, Duncan, the King of Scotland, tells the audience how highly he thinks of Macbeth and therefore how we the audience should expect Macbeth to live up to his brave and “worthy” commendation from the King. To confirm this, within the first couple of lines, the King is bestowing the title of “Thane of Cawdor” on Macbeth in his absence. At this early point in the play, Macbeth’s character has the ability to remain a hero and a loyal subject of the King, but not King, or follow the witches’ prophecies and ruthlessly aim to be not only Thane of Cawdor, which the King has by now granted him, but also to follow a ruthlessly ambitious path to become King, by assassinating Duncan. At this point in the play, the audience are uncertain as to whether Macbeth is actually a hero, as described by Sergeant and Duncan, or if he is actually in league with the witches and will follow the path of evil by fulfilling their prophecies. Equally, to highlight the treachery and as the first themed character description, Duncan is portrayed in a very noble light and so if Macbeth were to murder him, it makes the act all the more treacherous and undeserved. This is also the case for Banquo, Macbeth’s longstanding friend and partner in battle, he is a good and trusting friend of Macbeth, willing to share confidences (“I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters”, Banquo seeks to open up a discussion about the witches) to which Macbeth replies by lying and says that he has not thought of the witches; Banquo is also portrayed as a good and loving father and so when he is murdered, again the audience sees this as a tragic murder. As the action moves on with Macbeth and Banquo, sheltering from the rain in a small cave in the otherwise deserted Scottish countryside, the two soldiers meet up with three witches, “the weird sisters”, who greet Macbeth as “Thane of Glamis”, “Thane of Cawdor”, “All hail, Macbeth! That shalt be King hereafter”, and Banquo as “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none”. The language and tone used by the witches is (in hindsight) mocking as they greet Macbeth as if he is their superior (“All Hail”) but Macbeth views this as them being reverential to him; this changes when Macbeth is not around and the witches are actually quite mocking of him – “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”. The language that Macbeth uses when addressing the witches is very dismissive as if he feels that they are beneath him and actually that they disgust him (“Stay you imperfect speakers”, “How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!”). Macbeth is shown to be very interested in the witches’ prophecies but Banquo tries to make light of the experience and attempts to make Macbeth treat the experience less seriously by the use of dramatic irony, “and oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest confidence”. I believe that Macbeth needs the witches’ prophecies to move him on from being just a bit jealous of Duncan’s son Malcolm, the Prince of Cumberland, being nominated as his father’s true heir, to not only plot the murder of Duncan but actually committing the act. The fight of good versus evil, particularly as applied to Macbeth’s conscience, is an on-going theme from this early stage in the play (“This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good; if ill, why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in a truth…if good, why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my unseated heart knock at my ribs”). In fact, this soliloquy shows that Macbeth is confused about what he is considering and is the first hint we have of Macbeth’s potentially dark side. We also understand by the imagery used, that is by making his hair stand on end and having his heart beat almost out of his chest, that Macbeth is deeply uncomfortable about even thinking such dark thoughts; we also feel that Macbeth is repulsed by his thoughts “The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’er-leap, for in my way it lies. Stars hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires; the eye wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see”. This quote reinforces the fact that Macbeth’s inner turmoil of good versus evil is being won over by the evil side and soon Macbeth is embroiled in desperately trying to plot a means of removing Malcolm as Duncan’s heir; Macbeth believes that he needs to become a lot more devious and in league with the dark forces in order to make this happen. There is a clever use of imagery here (“the eye wink at the hand”) because it is a foretaste of what Macbeth and his wife are like in their treatment of Duncan when he stays at their home; they are very hospitable and welcoming on the surface but absolutely treacherous in their actions. This is probably the point in the play when Macbeth is on the cusp of leading a good and just life and remaining a trusted soldier in Duncan’s command or choosing to make the witches prophecies come true by considering the removal of Malcolm with the aim of becoming Duncan’s heir. The witches actually have a very small but significant part in the play and their role can be interpreted in different ways. They can be viewed as having true magical and supernatural powers, which in the 17th century, would have been seen as believable and actually quite scary for the audiences of the Jacobean period; in this way, there would be more appeal for Macbeth to be seen as being powerless in the grip of dark forces of witchcraft or even seen as a plaything of the witches, similar to the stories the witches were discussing at the beginning of the play about a poor sailor that they played with because his wife had annoyed one of them – “I’ll drain him dry as hay: hang upon his pent-house lid; he shall live a man forbid. Weary sev’n nights nine times nine shall he dwindle, peak and pine”. However, another way of looking at this is that Macbeth either imagined the prophecies or made a lot more out of them because this suited his purposes in the way that many rulers throughout time have used either “God’s will” for their own benefit (for example Henry VIII justified the many evil acts that he had carried out under the rationale that God would have wanted that, although the difference with Macbeth is that he is being guided by evil forces, not God’s will) or many other rulers consulting soothsayers and fortune-tellers to justify either acts of war or other “difficult” decisions; A final way of looking at the prophecies are that the witches were actually warning Macbeth (or at least giving him the chance to decide his fate) that if he would only be in trouble from someone who was not born of woman, “for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” or “Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him” and instead of Macbeth choosing to see that this would make him invincible, he could or should have thought that these were signs that he should be looking out for. This kind of wordplay or false guarantees are known as equivocations and demonstrated by the witches telling Macbeth the prophecies in a certain way to deliberately mislead and manipulate him without actually telling lies. The actual set-up of the witches allowing Macbeth to choose his destiny is what makes the play a tragedy – Macbeth is at first viewed as a good man, indeed a hero, but is allowed to choose a path of good and righteous behaviour or follow a road of greed, deceit and murder. If Macbeth was introduced as an evil character from the outset, we, the audience would be cheering when he meets his comeuppance; however, we are left feeling sorry for Macbeth and even for his wife as they are left with nothing, not even each other. After all, Lady Macbeth is portrayed as being cold, calculating and capable of a heinous murder but in doing so, she is also portrayed as being the ultimate supportive and loving wife – the audience is left with the opinion that there would be nothing she wouldn’t do to further her husband’s career : “All that impedes thee from the golden round, which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crown’d withal”, which underlines her determination to use any force, dark or otherwise, to ensure that Macbeth achieves the glory that he deserves. While there are many other stories that have this kind of “selling your soul to the devil” type of plot, an interesting modern version of this is the film “Devil’s Advocate” where Al Pacino plays the Devil and allows a young lawyer (Keanu Reeves) the chance to “have it all” and when Reeves finally decides not to accept the Devil’s “deal”, Pacino restarts the film with another “offer he can’t refuse” – it would be an interesting debate to see if the witches would have offered “fall back temptations” for Macbeth if he had resisted the first “prophecies” and then play could be considered to be about whether any mortal can fight their fate, rather than the fight of “good against evil”; again this adds to the argument of Macbeth being powerless in his fate or destruction.

As Macbeth and Banquo meet up with the King and the other Thanes and Lords of the Scottish Royal Court, Macbeth is officially awarded the title of Thane of Cawdor and he immediately thinks back to the witches’ prophecies and tries not to discuss it with Banquo whom he sees as not taking him seriously. He immediately writes to his wife, Lady Macbeth (whom he obviously loves dearly and trusts) with the full story, “This I have thought good to deliver to thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee”. As soon as Lady Macbeth receives the letter in the play, her mind is set alight with plotting and planning the means of making her husband King, although she is very aware of his softer side, “Yet I do fear thy nature; it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness”. Lady Macbeth speaks of her husband in a truly loving way and demonstrates that she thinks he is a really good and decent person (which reinforces for the audience that Macbeth is essentially a good character and will struggle with his conscience over something as treacherous). However, by demonstrating what a good person Macbeth is, Lady Macbeth shows that Macbeth is not the sole architect of his own destruction as it would be quite hard to see him even thinking through, far less carrying out, the murder and cover-up of the murder of Duncan without her help and insistence. In fact, Macbeth had only thought about killing Malcolm, Duncan’s son, and therefore becoming Duncan’s heir, before speaking to Lady Macbeth. She however is quite ruthless and wishes to be even more ruthless by saying, “Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, stop the access and passage to remorse” and has already plotted Duncan’s murder by the time Macbeth returns home. She says to her husband when she is asking him to be strong and prepare to murder Duncan, “I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me : I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this” – this is actually a very gruesome image and shows Lady Macbeth to be quite unfeminine as one of the worst murders to consider is a mother killing her baby. The language used by Lady Macbeth is actually very dark and similar to the kind of chants that witches would use – she appears to be appealing to the dark forces of nature and the audience may assume that she is actually used to this kind of dark power (the audience could think that she also is a witch). However, although Macbeth is obviously a strong and respected soldier and whilst he has probably killed a lot of men in battle, it is his sense of honour and respect for his King that he is struggling with in the murder of Duncan and the openly regretful Macbeth says, “We will proceed no further in this business : he hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, which would be worn now in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon”. Macbeth scolds his wife during this conversation and, sensing that she is losing the argument, Lady Macbeth needs to be very dramatic and graphic to bring Macbeth into the plot of killing, “What beast was’t, then that made you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man. Lady Macbeth is very manipulative with her husband and uses pleading language that appeals to his manliness by suggesting that he cannot be much of a man if he doesn’t do what he’s promised. Although Lady Macbeth starts off being the stronger of the two and the more focussed in actually making the murder happen, she never really recovers from the night of the murder and is shown as going mad through sleepwalking and talking in her sleep. Lady Macbeth’s babbling shown in the first scene of Act 5″Out damned spot! Out I say! One; two : why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky!”, demonstrates that she is losing her mind and the short staccato utterances highlight her sadness in reliving the night of Duncan’s murder in her wretched sleep obsessing about not being able to get rid of his blood from her hands. I do feel that Lady Macbeth had a major part to play in Macbeth’s downfall – if she had been a more caring and less ambitious wife, she could have persuaded Macbeth to remain the titled and well thought of Lord that he was and to ignore the witches. But although she was ambitious for her husband, she did not help him to live a long and happy life and indeed pushed him into Duncan’s murder; this created a domino effect in Macbeth’s life whereby he became distrustful of everyone and ruled by fear and greed. Therefore, I do think that Lady Macbeth could rightly be blamed for Macbeth’s destruction.

Shakespeare’s plays often have an element of coincidence and chance meetings and while Macbeth, probably has less than others, the chance meeting, from Macbeth’s point of view, of Macbeth and the witches initially is key to the plot, especially given the timing of them being first to call him “Thane of Cawdor” and then him finding out so soon afterwards by Duncan’s generals Ross and Angus ; however, the second meeting with the witches was actually Macbeth seeking them out to find out more about his future, “I conjure you, by that which you profess, however you come to know it – answer me”. It could also be viewed that by having Duncan choosing to stay with Lord and Lady Macbeth the night of the battle was fate, but actually this choice of lodgings would make sense from Duncan’s point of view – he was really pleased with one of his top war lords, Macbeth, has just honoured him, and he needed a place to stay and Macbeth’s castle was within riding distance. Although, to suit their purposes, especially Lady Macbeth’s thinking and fiendish plan, the Macbeths see this as fate, Lady Macbeth, thinking about Duncan coming to her home, “The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan”, this is another example of Lady Macbeth seeking signs to justify or signal her evil plans.

One of the main themes of the tragedy that is “Macbeth” is the gradual decay of Macbeth and his wife, especially if viewed from the perspective of the witches – the play is one of the great tragedies and this is down to the story of the once great hero Macbeth, having been lured to become greedy for power by evil forces (the witches) who, similar to Greek tragedies / fables where the Greek Gods of earlier times, were seen to “play” with and manipulate mortals for fun. Firstly, Macbeth replaces evil with good by being appointed Thane of Cawdor from the previous evil holder of the title, then succumbing to evil himself and finally becoming a tyrant among the people whom he once fought along side. It is interesting because most tragedies, including this one, follow the classical, ‘Greek’ model: a hero’s tragic flaw brings him greatness, and then downfall. There are various ironic threads running throughout the play, the first being Macbeth the hero and having the evil Thane of Cawdor’s title bestowed on him and then becoming an evil Thane of Cawdor himself; being a true and close friend of Banquo and then having him killed as he was frightened that Banquo’s sons would be future kings (“For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered put rancours in the vessel of my peace only for them; and mine eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man to make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!” this shows Macbeth’s desperation and despair that he has carried out such evil deeds to have nothing actually in the long term), but probably the saddest irony is, that Lady Macbeth was steeling herself to become ruthless and without remorse but it she who is turned mad with remorse and grief much before Macbeth. Act 5, Scene 1 has Lady Macbeth troubled and going mad with conscience and being unable to remove the “smell or feel of blood from her hands – “Here’s the smell of blood still : all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!”. However, Macbeth is shown to be troubled before, during and after Duncan’s murder and his imagination causes him to have troublesome visions (for example, “is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle before my hand?” just before he goes into kill Duncan and then in the form of the ghost of Banquo, “Thou canst not say I did it : never shake thy gory locks at me” , which demonstrates that he has ghostly visions of Banquo’s corpse after he has had him killed). Macbeth moves from being a hero, to a greedy, power hungry killer, to a man so filled with remorse to someone who barely registers the fact that the wife he loved dearly and trusted wholeheartedly has killed herself – “she should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word.” In his final scenes, Macbeth shows that he still has his original courage and fights on his own, to the end, “Why should I play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes do better upon them”. With this quote, Macbeth knows that he is nearing the end of his life but is still convinced that he cannot lose (the witches promised him!). In Act 5 Scene 3, Macbeth’s mood changes towards the people around him, he is much more confident about the fact that Macduff is bringing an army to defeat him. He openly mocks his servant who brings him the news about the sight of Macduff’s army, he quotes “go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, thou lily-liver’d boy”. The idea that Shakespeare quotes “go, prick thy face” is to hide the whiteness of the servants cheeks and cover them up with blood, the image that Shakespeare creates here is that the servant is so scared, that his actual skin has turned white, also, the term “lily-liver’d” is a term that was a common at the time of Shakespeare (implying that the person was a coward and had no back bone). This was very insulting because at this time, men were supposed to be very brave and any man shown to be a coward would have been considered very weak and not manly. Macbeth’s soliloquy, in Act 5 Scene 5, demonstrates his feelings on what his life has become, namely that he is ready to die because life has become monotonous for him. “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day”, this quotation shows us that Macbeth is fed up with his life, the fact that it has no meaning, no purpose, just a “petty pace”. When Macbeth is fighting Young Siward, there are many solders around him to create the “bear baiting” effect, Macbeth even quotes “They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, but bear like I must fight the cause”. Shakespeare tries to demonstrate just how trapped Macbeth has become and with, “I cannot fly” conveys the idea of a trapped bird being unable to fly away and be free, which is how Macbeth views himself. Macbeth reviews his past with many different thoughts during the approach of Macduff’s army. When he first finds out, he regrets everything he has done, and he is feels sorrow that he will never have the qualities of a loved king, like for example, Duncan. “Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf; and that which should be accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends”, this contrasts all that King Duncan had and all the qualities that Macbeth will never obtain. If anything, this part of the play shows that Macbeth actually accepts the blame for everything that has gone wrong and indeed, that he is in fact “the architect for his own destruction”. Also the image of a “yellow leaf”, this gives us the picture of an old, decrepit thing that is going to die, this relates to Macbeth and his state of mind in this scene. I think that by this point in the play, Macbeth feels that is very much responsible for his own destruction and he blames no-one else for all that has happened.

In the final scenes, Macbeth has lost everything that he struggled so hard to win; everything that the witches promised him, that his wife argued that he deserved and manipulated him to achieve, plotted with him and fought hard to establish and in the end, although he was not alone in the journey, nor in the planning of his ascent and then destruction, he is alone at the end. Therefore, as can be shown above, Macbeth is at least an equal partner in his ultimate destruction and was certainly not alone.

I think that Shakespeare had shown a lot of links, culturally and historically, to the time of Macbeth and to the times that the play was written. The idea of cowardice comes up a lot, this was due to the fact that at the time of Macbeth and in the 1600’s, the manner in which a man acted, especially with regard to bravery, demonstrated to the world how manly you were (this is shown by Lady Macbeth calling Macbeth a coward and the fact that he is not a man if he does not kill Duncan). Also this is shown when Siward had found out that his son had been killed in battle, he quotes “at least he dies by giving the soldier’s debt”, giving a father some compensation for losing his son. The subtext of witchcraft and dark forces run throughout this play and indeed many commentators have said that they felt that Lady Macbeth was also a witch – similarly, Henry VIII’s second wife Anne was labelled a witch, and similar to old fairy stories and now shown as exaggerated caricatures in modern-day pantomimes, such as Snow White and Cinderella, with the wicked step-mothers dabbling in witchcraft to further their ambitions. Another link to Henry VIII, would be the link of powerful men and kings who have turned into tyrants by power, for example, Henry VIII, started off being a righteous king, abused his power to satisfy his personal life and justifying marrying who he wanted and then used his power to split the church.

In conclusion therefore, I think that in the play, “Macbeth”, the lead character was partly to blame for his own destruction but would not have even considered such an ambitious career without the witches’ prophecies nor without such outright encouragement and almost emotional blackmail by his wife. Overall, I think that Lady Macbeth planned and started work on Macbeth’s destruction, and Macbeth had carried out the work, therefore it could be seen that Lady Macbeth was the architect and Macbeth was the builder.