seven deadly silioqueys macbeth

Kellie Minton
English Comp
Mr. Manning
April 12, 2014

“The Seven Deadly Soliloquies”

Macbeth starts his journey as being confident and somewhat of a war hero. He attains his hero status in act 1 in the battle in defense of his King’s land. This would set the stage as Macbeth becoming a hero. To understand him as a tragic hero we need to assume he has a tragic flaw. This becomes apparent as soon as he hears the witches first prophecy. This begins the battle in his mind and the beginning of his demise. His flaws are pride and arrogance accompanied with a weak mind. In “Macbeth’s Changing Character” Curry states “Macbeth has the practical nature which wants self-discipline and so fails in self-conflict. He is further represented as being the most wonderful example of the excited intellect running away, the will being powerless to stop it; his “double-character” is half-way between the mere man of thought, like Hamlet, and the ideal man of action, like Othello.”
This becomes evident in his first soliloquy when he begins to ponder the King’s death. ‘This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success, commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature? Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man. That function is smothered in sunrise, and nothing is but what it is not.’ (1.3.130-145). This further symbolizes the beginning of Macbeth’s apparent flaw and his weakness portrayed in his darker side. One must understand as we delve into his mind that Macbeth is not completely evil. He fights with good and evil and succumbs to the evil. The soliloquys will in essence show us how Macbeth fights his mortal as well as immortal demons throughout his journey. We will embrace the fact that Macbeth although compromised is not completely evil. Macbeth’s moral decay is proliferated throughout the seven deadly soliloquies. The beginning of the witches chant ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ (1.1.14) is a paradox or enigma that will set the stage and become the beginning of Macbeth’s moral depravity as well as his mental decline. The chant of the evil witches declares evil as good and good as evil, as creatures of the devil they represent the complete opposite of what is good and upright. This will set the tone for the rest of the play.
Lady Macbeth plays an important role in the demise of Macbeth. ‘All that impeded thee from the golden round, which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crowned withal.’ (1.5.27-29). Lady Macbeth is proclaiming in her soliloquy that Macbeth is too weak minded at this point in time, and she will persuade him to her side of thinking. She will in essence bring Macbeth to the “dark side.” Lady Macbeth shows her moral decline as she yearns for power. ‘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.’ (1.5.41-44).
Lady Macbeth wants to have no conscience and to be strong like a man with no remorse for what she is about to do. Her strong desire for wealth and power will lead to her eminent demise. Not only are we looking at a tragedy of Macbeth but also the impending doom of Lady Macbeth. She will influence him to follow the witch’s prophecy, and be a catalyst in propelling Macbeth further. Lady Macbeth reinforces the underlying evil spirits and gives them wings on which to fly. Macbeth is troubled and his conscience is apparent as his next soliloquy says, ‘First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed; then as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office, that this virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking-off; and pity, like a naked newborn babe, striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erlaps itself and falls on th’other.’ (1.7.13-28). Macbeth’s conflict here emerged and he realizes he is lurking every so closely to the thought of becoming the next great King. Shakespeare is always referring to spirituality within the play. Fighting a battle in the realm of the spirit world is ever present and is a battle one must face. The soliloquies represent the spirit world in all aspects of Macbeth’s journey of life. Without Shakespeare’s soliloquies one would indeed be lost.
In the dagger soliloquy it is very apparent that Macbeth has succumbed to the dark side and has become delusional. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (2.1.33-36). Macbeth realizes that his mind has gone to a delusional state and he is no longer in control. Curry states “Macbeth’s character is simple: the two dominant forces that control his actions are ambition and conscience…He is so ambitious that he is potentially capable of the worst crime. Yet from crime he is held back by the second great force is his nature namely conscience. When the two forces struggle within him for mastery, conscience is able to dominate…because it holds a whip hand over him in the form of horrid images that shake him with fear. He is psychologically reduced to the lowest terms, to the murderer and his conscience. In Macbeth: The Tragedy of Evil by J. Lyndon Shanley he states that “Nowhere can we see the essential humanity of Shakespeare more clearly than in Macbeth, as he shows that the darkest evil may well be human, and so, though horrible, understandable in terms of our own lives and therefore pitiable and terrible.” Now as we go further down the soliloquy the witchcraft or supernatural play an increasing important role. “Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder, alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf, whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, with Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time, which not suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.” (2.1.51-62). Macbeth has begun to act out the prophecies that the evil witches predicted. This is also evidence of him contemplating the murder of Duncan.
In “Mortal Thoughts” and Magical Thinking by Marina Favila, she states that, “In the end, Duncan’s murder will destroy both Macbeths wish and conscience, his present and his future. From the moment Macbeth kills the King, he is beset by anxiety, fear and guilt. His perspective on the world, without and within, splits.” This is by far the worst thing Macbeth could have done. He has sealed his fate and taken an evil prophecy and fulfilled it. His mind is severely severed and he will never again be the same.
As Macbeth enters with Malcolm and Donalbain, he seems to be talking to himself shortly after the murder of Duncan: ‘Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time, for from this instant there’s nothing serious in morality. All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead. The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of.’ (2.1.86-91). This poignant soliloquy seems to say that Macbeth is hopeless and believes he has committed the ultimate and unpardonable sin, where there is no forgiveness or turning back. In “Macbeth’s Changing Character,” Curry states that “Macbeth is man of colossal proportions who seems to be exercising an essentially noble nature in a struggle for happiness. In the beginning of the drama he is apparently provided with a definite disposition and with certain inclinations—no doubt the result In part of habitual thought and action. His will seems to be entirely untrammeled and his liberty of free choice absolute. His decision to commit regicide, however, is influenced in some way by inordinate passions, by reason impaired through disordered imagination, by his wife, and by such evil forces as are symbolized in the Weird Sisters. After the first crime, however, one cannot help observing that a change has taken place in the man.”
As we take a look at the next soliloquy Macbeth says, ‘to be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo stick deep, and in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be feared.’(3.1.48-51) Macbeth is fearing Banquo and his lineage of sons to reign as the next King. As we go further into this soliloquy Macbeth is showing us that he still has a conscience when he says, ‘If’t be so, for Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind; for them the gracious Duncan have I murdered; put rancors 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!’ (3.1.64-70). Macbeth’s conduct is expressed by his desire for worldly gain, and the means by which he needs to attain it. He is not completely evil but has taken on evil thoughts and actions. The passions of Macbeth’s flesh wage war against his soul, and thus produces the “be all to end all” as his tragic end approaches.
As Curry states, “Macbeth’s conscience also asserts boisterously the radical change in his being. The negative character of his accomplishments fills the individual with dismay: the crown attained by crime is fruitless, the royal scepter in his grip is barren, and he has put rancours in the vessel of his peace only for Banquo’s issue. The fever of an evil life so shakes him that he envies Duncan the quietness of a grave.”
The last soliloquy is the most famous and the most beautifully sad. It has meaning that reaches into our innermost being and provides us with extreme depth into Macbeth’s soul. ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by and idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ (5.5.24-28). Macbeth’s moral decay is tragically proliferated throughout the seven deadly soliloquys. Curry states “It is a profound alteration in the state of his essence, an astounding dislocation of the very center of being, which fixes itself immediately in a habit inclining to further crime. This change is progressive; while sin plucks on sin, the good in him seems to diminish, leaving his nature finally an almost completely barren waste of evil. But he is never quite completely evil. His knowledge of right and wrong flowers into the act of conscience, which witnesses through spiritual and mental suffering to the alteration in him. Since the good in him can never be quite destroyed, we experience even at the end a sort of admiration for the ultimate dignity of the human spirit.”

Works Cited
Curry, Walter Clyde. "Macbeth 's Changing Character." JSTOR. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
Favila, Marina. ""Mortal Thoughts" and Magical Thinking in "Macbeth"" Modern Philology 99.1 (2001): 1-25. Print.
Kranz, David L. "The Sounds of Supernatural Soliciting." Studies in Philology 2003, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
Shakespeare, William, and John Crowther. No Fear Shakespeare: Macbeth. NEW YORK: Spark, 2003. Print.
Shanley, J. Lyndon. "Macbeth: The Tragedy of Evil." College English 22.5 (1961): 305-11. JSTOR. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. .

Cited: Curry, Walter Clyde. "Macbeth 's Changing Character." JSTOR. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. Favila, Marina. ""Mortal Thoughts" and Magical Thinking in "Macbeth"" Modern Philology 99.1 (2001): 1-25. Print. Kranz, David L. "The Sounds of Supernatural Soliciting." Studies in Philology 2003, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014. Shakespeare, William, and John Crowther. No Fear Shakespeare: Macbeth. NEW YORK: Spark, 2003. Print. Shanley, J. Lyndon. "Macbeth: The Tragedy of Evil." College English 22.5 (1961): 305-11. JSTOR. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. .