Macbeth - Crime

Macbeth – Crime Essay

Macbeth by William Shakespeare’s tells of Macbeth, a courageous warrior who is initially held in high esteem by many noblemen, and his gradual decline into evil after he is given a prophecy which foretells him becoming king, resulting in his killing of the king to satisfy his ambition. Shakespeare utilises a number of dramatic techniques in order to portray the issue of crime as being counter-productive though the decline of Macbeth’s character, and the various effects it has on other aspects of his life, including Scotland’s public opinion of him and the negative effects it has on his wife, Lady Macbeth.
The audience’s initial impression of Macbeth, before he commits the crime of regicide, is that of a brave and loyal warrior. When bringing the King of Scotland news of Macbeth’s heroic victories in battle, a Captain states, “For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name,” showing that Macbeth is thought of as a valiant and strong man, who has earned a good reputation with high-up noblemen because of his strength in battle. He is also described as “Bellona’s bridegroom,” a metaphor which compares Macbeth’s unmatched skill on the battlefield to that of a partner to the Roman goddess of war. Duncan, the King of Scotland, refers to Macbeth as a “noble” and “worthy gentleman.” He is obviously held in high esteem by many noblemen, and the audience is given the impression that he will be a steadfast and respectable character throughout the play.
The decision to kill Duncan follows a battle between Macbeth’s morality and ambition, which shows that he recognises the negative consequences of the crime he is about to commit. He considers what is perhaps the most important factor for him, that his life will forever after be endangered by committing such a crime: “We’d jump the life to come.” Here Macbeth shows knowledge of the fact that the possibility of an afterlife for him would be compromised, yet still he allows his ambitious nature to guide him towards killing Duncan. To the audience, this seems rather unwise, but it gives us an idea of how ambitious he really is; Macbeth is willing to destroy any chance of going to heaven, just to secure his place on the throne.
He is also aware that by committing evil, he is inviting evil things to be committed against him: “This even-handed justice / commends th’ingredience of our poisoned chalice / To our own lips.” The “chalice,” mentioned here, is a metaphorical goblet which, by passing to those he wishes to poison, will eventually make its way back to Macbeth and he will be forced to take the poison himself. We can understand from this that Macbeth is concerned that by associating himself by evil and committing such an evil crime, in the end he will have to accept that any danger he experiences afterwards will his own fault. This statement is particularly insightful, and foretells Macbeth’s downfall.
However, in addition to understanding the consequences of his actions, Macbeth recognises that his sole reason for killing Duncan is his ambition. After considering what his fate will be after killing the king, he adds that he has, “no spur / to prick the sides of [his] intent, but only / Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’other.” He has no viable reason for commiting regicide; no “spur” to encourage himself with. Continuing this horse metaphor, he goes on to say that he can only count on his desire to become king to guide his toward committing such disgraceful crims; his “vaulting ambition”, which extends even beyond its own intrinsic limits; “o’erleaps itself.” The fact that Macbeth recognises that he has no principled reasons for killing the kings, and understands the immorality of the crime he is about to commit is rather surprising. Although at this point she doesn’t realise the true extent of the repercussions of the murder, he does understand that he will associate himself with evil and its surrounding danger: the fact that he still goes ahead with it shows that his ambition is greater than any of these worries.
The theme of evil is counter productive is revealed immediately after Duncan’s murder, as Macbeth is visibly shaken and obviously distraught at what he has done. One of his concerns is that is that he has cut himself off from religion, as he expresses his anxiety after being unable to utter a prayer: “I could not say ‘Amen’ / When they did say ‘God bless us.’” The murder has taken him beyond the comforts of religion; he has committed an evil crime and is now directly responsible for its repercussions.
Similarly, Macbeth realises that by committing the murder, he has lost all of his innocence – and because of the terrible nature of his crime, he will forever he plagued by guilt and an inability to rest peacefully: “Sleep no more: / Macbeth does murder sleep.” Sleep is personified here, as it is shown that the ‘character’ of sleep was murdered by Macbeth alongside Duncan. In killing, he has committed such extreme evil that it has destroyed the very thing that he needs most – the repairing, soothing and nurturing process that is sleep.
Macbeth is full of horror as he realises that the evil he has marked himself by killing Duncan will stay with him forever. “Will all great Neptune’s oceans wash this blood Clean from my hand? No: this m hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine Making the green one red.”
Throughout the play, blood symbolises guilt. Here, Macbeth feels that even with all of the water in the world, he will never be able to clean his Duncan’s blood from his hands, and in trying to he would turn all of the oceans red in colour; the audience understands that this is a metaphor for the unmoving guilt he now possesses, and that he feels that if he were to try to rid himself of the guilt, he would ruin everything left in the world that is pure and innocent, and would still remain guilty at the end.
At the very end of the scene, Macbeth reveals the most concerning thing about the murder - he wishes that Duncan were still alive: “Wake Duncan with thy knocking : I would thou / couldst.” His “vaulting ambition” is eclipsed by his regret at killing an honourable and good king, and this final, honest statement shows that he feels miserable about what he has done, and wishes he had never gone ahead with it.
In addition to the effects the murder has had on Macbeth, the natural world has been thrown into turmoil. The people of Shakespeare’s time believed that the universe had a specific order, and within it all things were ranked by their superiority. By murdering Duncan, Macbeth has disrupted this order, and creatures are able to take control over others in a way that is considered unnatural and unusual: “A falcon tow’ring in her pride of place / Was by a mousing owl haw’d at and kill’d.” The falcon, a large bird of prey which is strong and considered high up in this order, has been killed by a “mousing owl,” a bird which primarily preys on smaller rodents, and would normally be unable to kill a falcon. With these qualities, the audience is able to compare the birds to Macbeth and Duncan; Macbeth having killed a man which is far higher up in the order of the universe than him, and without the force of evil, he would have been unable to do it.
However, this disruption of the universe extends far deeper than just effecting creatures as a group. We learn that Duncan’s horses had broken out of there stables and that “’Tis said, they eat each other.” Before Duncan’s murder, the horses lived peacefully together – it is likely that there was some social structure within their held by which they all abided, and it allowed them to view themselves as part of a group, rather than individual horses which had to fight to survive. This, too, can be applied to Macbeth’s situation. Before murdering Duncan, he was very loyal and fought bravely and willingly for his king, not against him. However, he allowed himself to become isolated from the rest of the noblemen by thinking that he had a place on the throne, and by killing Duncan he has started a chain of killing, which will end with one person taking control of the country. The audience begins to see the effects that killing Duncan has had on Macbeth’s character. After some time of being king, we see an interaction between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in which he shows that even after killing Duncan and becoming king, he still envies Duncan, suggesting that the initial jealously he felt, which the audience attributed to a general jealousy of the king, in far deeper set, and has not been satisfied because Macbeth has realised that he will never be the respected and well-loved king that Duncan was: “Duncan is in his grave. / After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.” The audience understands that Macbeth is now jealous of Duncan because he is dead and done not have to deal with the guilt and horror Macbeth does.
These feelings of guilt and horror, with the additional pressure of being an inadequate king compared to his predecessor, have put a strain on his relationship with Lady Macbeth, and they are no longer the powerful couple they were before the murder, with Macbeth keeping secrets from her: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck.” Macbeth conceals from Lady Macbeth his plans to murder Banquo, a fellow nobleman who he feels is a threat to his position. The word “innocent” has a double meaning here: firstly, that Macbeth wishes his wife to be completely unaware of his murderous plans, and, in addition to this, that he wishes her to still possess the innocence that he has lost though evil. We can see that Macbeth still loves Lady Macbeth, but he cannot confide in her in the way that he did before murdering Duncan because he doesn’t want to evil that he is now forever bound to, to become attached to her. Macbeth is now acting alone - the stability he previously sought in his wife is gone, and we can expect for him to count on his less stable instincts to guide him in the future.
The disintegration of Macbeth’s character is made clear in Act Three, in which a banquet is held for the noblemen in Macbeth’s castle. He is unable to control his emotions when he receives news of Banquo’s son, who he had planned to have murdered as well, escaping: “now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.” The prophecy he received at the beginning at the play which foretold him becoming king also gave mention of Banquo’s son, Fleance, becoming king after him – Macbeth has no heir to follow him, so he wishes to remove the possibility of the throne going to someone else’s son. On realising that he is unable to do so, Macbeth becomes unstable and paranoid about his future and feels as if his fears are closing in on him, as for once he is unable to control someone which may have an effect on him in the future.
The pressure of this additional worry has a magnified effect on Macbeth, and his worries are embodied by the appearance of the ghost of Banquo. The poor façade which he tries to maintain in front of the noblemen ,of being a good king, finally dwindles and collapses, as he tries to redeem himself to Banquo’s ghost by insisting that because he didn’t do the murder himself, he isn’t responsible for it: “Thou canst not say I did it; never shake / Thy gory lock at me.” This is counterproductive and self-defeating – he is humiliating himself, as the ghost can only be seen by him, and the noblemen can only assume that he is hallucinating, and has gone mad. The banquet is Macbeth’s first chance to enjoy himself, but he is unable to escape the memory of the murders he has committed, and his guilt returns to cause him trouble. However, it becomes clear that Macbeth’s actions have not only had a direct effect on his character, but have now destroyed the noblemen’s opinion of him, and Scotland’s public opinion of him. His tyrannical rein has highlighted how different a person he is from Duncan - the noblemen grieve for the comparatively peaceful times they had when he was king, and recognise that the throne is not rightfully Macbeth’s: “The son of Duncan, / From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth.” Although at this point the noblemen are not able to speak their thoughts about Macbeth freely, for fear of him murdering them too, throughout a conversation between Lennox, a thane of Scotland, and another lord, there are hints that they know Macbeth’s rise to becoming king was not completely honest.
At the end of this conversation, we learn that Scotland has become chaotic and full of fear under Macbeth’s rule as the noblemen recount the things they could do before Macbeth became king: “we may again / Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights, / Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives.” The noblemen recall times when they could eat, sleep and enjoy themselves without the threat of murder, which highlights by how much the evil that Macbeth first associated himself with by killing Duncan, is affecting the country he now rules. The insecurity caused by his crime of regicide leads Macbeth to commit more evil, and him becoming ever more divorced from the character he once was. Even after receiving another prophecy which makes him think that he is immortal and cannot be killed, his concern about threats from other noblemen leads him to wanting to kill, even when he believes that it is unnecessary: “Then live, Macduff, what need I fear of thee? / But yet I’ll make assurance double sure.” The confidence he has been given by the prophecy can not override his now inbuilt fear of being killed. He has realised that he can not escape the evil he is now attached to, but instead of continuing to make an attempt at distancing himself from it, he now kills unnecessarily, and commits more evil. This is an ever-increasing contrast from the noble and brave soldier he was at the start of the play.
We see same the reason for his distress at hearing that his planned murder of Fleance had escaped again: he can not allow himself to leave anything to chance. This time, Macbeth decides to act upon his fears, and he trusts his instincts - unable to kill Macduff himself as he has fled to Scotland, he sends murderers to his castle to kill all of his family and his servants, the only justification he is able to give is that he has decided to act upon every idea he has immediately, to ensure their success: “The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand.” He is ruthless, uncaring, and a king extremely disliked by his people, because of his frequent, heartless murders. However, we learn that it is not only Macbeth who is negatively affected by the evil crimes which have been committed, and that the once strong character of Lady Macbeth is crumbling. Her weakness is shown through her attachment to light, which shows her desire for the evil she has been involved with to be warded off, through light being a symbol for purity and religion: “She has light by her continually, ‘tis / her command.” Lady Macbeth always wants light near her, as it signifies the warding off of evil and, for her, the guilt that surrounds it. This is ironic, as the guilt inside Lady Macbeth cannot be kept away by an external light – it is now a permanent part of her. It also shows her fear of her self-knowledge; she encouraged Macbeth to commit the murder at the beginning of the play, but once the chain of murders begun and she realised all of the ramifications that are brought with evil, she tries to run away from it.
Her horror at all of the murders are emphasised as she expresses her feelings of guilt about the murder of Lady Macduff, who she may have been friends with, as they were both the wives of noblemen: “The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” Almost the entirety of Macbeth is written in iambic pentameter, but Lady Macbeth’s speech here is one of the few parts which are written in prose. This fragmented talk shows that her mind is disjointed and disintegrating, and she is experiencing a mental breakdown as she realises all of the terrible deeds for which she is partly responsible. She isn’t as strong as she perhaps thought she was, and has the realisation that she criticised Macbeth’s weaknesses sharply, but was wrong about her own character.
Tragically, in Act 5 it is clear that Macbeth realises the error of his ways and that his decision to commit evil crimes has lead him to a lonely, isolated position in society. He recognises that his prolonged association with evil and the confidence he was given by the prophecy has caused him to lack morality, and has become almost inhuman in the way that he doesn’t feel any fear to the approaching battle from Macduff and an army from England: “I have almost forgot the taste of fears; / The time has been, my senses would have cool’d.” He explains this fundamental change in his personality: at the beginning of the play he felt concern when the comfort and peacefulness of his life was threatened, which encouraged him to be loyal to his king, and fight for what was right, to protect it. After allowing himself to become evil, he no longer has peace or comfort in his life so he has nothing to protect, and he is constantly at risk of being killed, so the constancy of the fear he denatured him.
He seems to be bored with the concept of life itself, as he compares life to a bad quality actor who is never really appreciated, and forgotten quickly: “Life’s but a waling shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more.” He feels that life is like a bad actor in the way that when someone is in the spotlight, they feel as if their actions are significant, but in the end everyone is unimportant and eventually forgotten. Macbeth has sadly lost any value he had for his own life, and seems to regret his own existence.
Macbeth is cynical about every aspect of existence, both his own, and the concept of life in general: “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing.” He is clearly depressed, and fed up with everything. This speech on disillusionment displays his final verdict is that there is no value in anything. And finally, perhaps the most convincing point in the argument that crime is counterproductive: committing crimes leads to Macbeth’s death. The prophecies he leaned upon so heavily turned out to be ambiguous and subtly telling his things that were not completely true, in order to trick him and lead him to his death. His evil crimes turned his own people against him, and turned him into a cold, emotionless character who lost all value for everything.

The theme of crime is counterproductive is extremely convincing in ‘Macbeth’ by William Shakespeare. It is obvious to the audience that although Macbeth’s fate was affected by things which were outwith his control, ultimately, he made the decision to involve himself with evil, which brought about his downfall, through the destruction of his character and his country’s opinion of him, the natural world and his wife.