How does Macbeth change during the course of the play?
Macbeth dramatically changes throughout the play, especially his behaviour;
In the beginning of the play, Macbeth knows the right from wrong, even when he does wrong he can’t justify to himself why he is doing wrong.
When the witches tell Macbeth about him becoming the King of Scotland he was interested in this idea but he never thought of killing the king to make the witches idea true, Macbeth couldn’t think about such wrong doing, he always had to get advice and be told by somebody else what to do, so he wrote to Lady Macbeth and she suggested to him to kill the king. Macbeth was very reliant on his wife in the beginning almost like a young child towards a teacher.
Lady Macbeth is a very dominating character and can easily persuade Macbeth to do what she says – this dramatically changes throughout the play.
Macbeth takes a lot of persuading to do the killing of the King, he asks Lady Macbeth to the deeds but Lady Macbeth called him a coward, in those days the men was meant to be the stronger one, Macbeth couldn’t have that name so he took the courage and killed the king.
After the killing Macbeth was very anxious of what he had done, he didn’t want to do it he was pressured into it, he was nervous and frightened– he couldn’t pluck up the courage to put the dagger back, this suggests that Macbeth couldn’t face what he had done, he felt so terrible and scared– this shows that Macbeth was fearful about what he had done and had a lot of guilt.
‘No ocean will wash this blood from my hands’ – Macbeth quotes this after the killing, this shows remorse for his actions, he suggests that he will never get over the killing and will never live with it. Every time he looks at his hands he will always see the Duncan’s blood smothered in them.
‘No ocean’ – The Ocean is the whole world wide sea this truly shows that nothing will ever change how he feels about the murder and the guilt.