The Role Of Punishment In Macbeth

“Macbeth has murdered his king, becoming king himself and managed to escape the law. He is killed in battle but in many ways he has eluded punishment and committed the perfect crime”. Do you agree?

The play Macbeth is written by William Shakespeare. This play was set in Scotland and focuses on a mighty and ambitious warrior called Macbeth who was a commander in the Scottish army. His meeting with three witches who announces a prophecy of him becoming the king of Scotland leads him to murder the current king of Scotland. His extensive belief in more prophecies introduced by the three witches launches him into a series of cold blooded murders. As a result, Macbeth faces the consequences of these deaths by becoming mentally unstable. However,
he manages to escape the law and not receive physical punishment for the crimes his committed.

Macbeth believed in the prophecies that the witches were talking about. The witches were saying that Macbeth will become the king. “Lady Macbeth after receiving her husbands letter about the witches’ prophecies expresses her fear that he isn’t bad enough”. This can be seen when she quotes. Lady Macbeth hears that king Duncan; Macbeth see the vision of the bloody dagger leading the way. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle towards my hand?” After murdering king Duncan, Macbeth fears that he will never sleep again.

After Macbeth hears about the prophecies from the witches what happens next, this leads to murdering Banquo as well. Macbeth wants to kill Banquo because, he is scared If Banquo’s’ son would become king, so Macbeth sends some assassins to kill Banquo’s family but his son escapes. Macbeth has a meeting with the lords and after Macbeth lets the lords sit. Macbeth sees a ghost of Banquo he comes and sits on Macbeths chair where the king normally sits. After a while Banquo’s ghost leaves. “It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood”, after Banquo’s ghost has gone, Macbeth feels that his crime is pursuing him.

Macbeth then leaves to see the witches again.
The witches predict Macbeths entrance, he asks the withes to reveal the truth of their prophecies to him, to answer his questions, they summon horrible apparitions, each of which offers a prediction to allay Macbeths fear. Witches perfume a mad dance and then vanish. Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England Macbeth sends murders to capture Macduff’s castle and kill Macduff’s wife and children and Macduff gets a letter, “All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O-hell-kite! All? what, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?”, Macduff’s astonished grief at the news that Macbeth has slaughtered his family. At night the king’s palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentle woman discuss Lady Macbeths strange habit of sleepwalking. “ out, damned spot! Out, I say! One: two: why then, tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier and feard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to Lady Macbeths sleepwalking scene, memories of the might of the murder tumble out. Malcolm/ Macduff sets a war with Macbeth for what Macbeth has done to Macduff’s family and Malcolm’s father
Duncan.

Macbeth hears a woman’s cry, and Seyton appears to tell Macbeth that the queen is dead. Shocked, Macbeth speaks numbly about the passage of time and declares famously that life is “a tale/told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing”. Outside the castle, the battle commences. On the battlefield, Macbeth strikes those around him vigorously, insolent because no man born of woman can harm him Macduff emerges and searches the chaos frantically for Macbeth, whom he longs to cut down personally. On the battlefield Macbeth at last sees Macduff and they fight. When Macbeth insists that he is invincible because of the witches’ prophecy, Macduff tells Macbeth that he was not of woman born, but rather “from his mother’s womb/ untimely ripped”. Macbeth suddenly fears of his life, but he declares that he will not surrender “kiss the ground before young Malcolm feet, / And to be baited with the rabble’s curse”. The fighting end’s and Macduff emerges with Macbeths head in his hand and proclaims Malcolm king of Scotland.

Macbeth believes in the witches’ prophecies and Macbeth and lady Macbeth goes and kills the king and he doesn’t get punished because there is no one around when they did the murder.
So Macbeth becomes the king of Scotland and he kept believing the prophecies, the people that he knew like Banquo got killed by the assassins because Macbeth believed that he was a treat to Macbeth being king. Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo and this pushes him off the brink of mental stability. All though he and lady Macbeth are accountable for the deaths of Duncan and Banquo, they don’t receive proper punishment for their sins. How ever their cold blooded murders do haunt them and punish them mentally. When his wife died Macbeth felt guiltily for his wife’s death. When Macduff finally kills Macbeth he allows to escape his sins and the guilt as well as the torture Macbeth felt for all the blood he has shed. All though Macbeth was tortured mentally, he was some how able to escape formal physical punishment for what he had done allowing him to also get away with a perfect
crime.