At first Macbeth was kind, noble, courageous, and loyal. At the beginning of the play the wounded soldier was saying how loyal Macbeth was, in battle when he was fighting for the King, and slaying the enemy. The solider says , ‘For brave Macbeth-well he deserves that name- Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valour's minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave; Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, And fixed his head upon our battlements’. He was respected a lot as even King Duncan praised him, ‘O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman! ’ All these titles prove that Macbeth was very popular in Scotland before he started committing the murders.
Macbeth had never thought of murdering the king until the witches’ promises put the thought in his head. Even when he knew that Duncan’s murder must happen, before he could become king he still refused in doing it as he mentions, ‘My thought whose murder is yet but fantastical shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is, but what is not.’ He also says in a different line of the play, ‘If chance will have me king, then chance may crown me.’ This line emphasises the point that he does not want to murder the king even though he wants his status.
His relationship with Lady Macbeth was very good at the beginning, but it wasn’t as strong at the end. I interpreted this as Macbeth wrote a letter to his wife to tell her what happened, he wanted her to know as he loved her and wanted to know her opinion on the matter. In the movie by Roman Polanski they are very romantic when he returns home from battle. After the murder they didn’t talk to each other much, and Macbeth started making huge decisions, without her consent or without telling her, an example of the decisions he made was when he planned to kill Banquo, and Macduff’s