Macbeth Essay

In William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’- Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are presented as flawed characters in challenging environments. In order to fully appreciate the nature of the challenging environment and what about it a character finds challenging, two questions must be posed: Is the character’s internal flaw a result of a problematic environment, or is what inhibits appropriate behaviour inherent-and what makes the environment challenging a result of this quality.
Macbeth is a character in a challenging environment who appears to be very flawed, and my first belief is that it was the environment that caused this character to become flawed. When the audience is first introduced to Macbeth in this text, he is described by The Sergeant and King Duncan as ‘brave’, a ‘valour minion’ and a ‘Valiant cousin and worthy gentleman’, so from the audience’s point of view Macbeth is a humble warrior, a virtuous man and a flawless being. When Macbeth meets the witches, the audience can almost sense a change in his character, and discover that the Witches (the challenging environment) cause Macbeth to be easily manipulated and he becomes driven by greed because of their prophecy, he becomes willing to murder. If Macbeth hadn’t been placed in this problematic situation then he probably would not be seen as flawed, since his character would not have known what his future may have had in store for him. So it seems that Macbeth’s internal flaws were a result of a challenging environment. As the story unravels, the environment becomes more challenging as the characters are faced with more problems and as a result the characters become increasingly flawed. The flaws seem to be created from the environment. Before Macbeth kills Duncan, he contemplates whether he should do the deed or not, and as he is making a decision he speaks to Lady Macbeth, saying ‘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,