The Ambitious Male in Macbeth :: Macbeth essays

The Ambitious Male in Macbeth      Ã‚   The tragedy Macbeth by William Shakespeare brings to center stage an interesting, guilty, ambitious usurper named Macbeth, on whose character this essay will focus.    Charles Lamb in On the Tragedies of Shakespeare explains the impact of Macbeth's initial murder:    The state of sublime emotion into which we are elevated by those images of night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn prelude with which he entertains the time till the bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan, - when we no longer read it in a book, when we have given up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses over seing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before our eyes actually preparing to commit a muder, if the acting be true and impressive as I have witnessed it in Mr. K's performance of that part, the painful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing semblance of reality,give a pain and an uneasiness [. . .]. (134)    In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack shows how Macbeth complements his wife:    Her fall is instantaneous, even eager, like Eve's in Paradise Lost; his is gradual and reluctant, like Adam's. She needs only her husband's letter about the weyard sisters' prophecy to precipitate her resolve to kill Duncan. Within an instant she is inviting murderous spirits to unsex her, fill her with cruelty, thicken her blood, convert her mother's milk to gall, and darken the world "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes" (1.5.50). Macbeth, in contrast, vacillates. The images of the deed that possess him simultaneously repel him (1.3.130, 1.7.1) When she proposes Duncan's murder, he temporizes: "We will speak further" (1.5.69). (189)    Lily B. Campbell in her volume of criticism, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion, explores the workings of Macbeth's mind as he plots the destruction of Banquo and son :    If the witches have spoken as truly to Banquo as to him, Macbeth sees that he wears a "fruitless crown" and carries a "barren sceptre" in his hand; he has indeed given peace and immortality to make the race of Banquo kings. And he proceeds to his interview with the murderers, plotting what he dare not do openly, for the fear that comes when we are rivals for a thing and cannot both have it makes it seem to Macbeth: The Ambitious Male in Macbeth :: Macbeth essays The Ambitious Male in Macbeth      Ã‚   The tragedy Macbeth by William Shakespeare brings to center stage an interesting, guilty, ambitious usurper named Macbeth, on whose character this essay will focus.    Charles Lamb in On the Tragedies of Shakespeare explains the impact of Macbeth's initial murder:    The state of sublime emotion into which we are elevated by those images of night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn prelude with which he entertains the time till the bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan, - when we no longer read it in a book, when we have given up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses over seing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before our eyes actually preparing to commit a muder, if the acting be true and impressive as I have witnessed it in Mr. K's performance of that part, the painful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing semblance of reality,give a pain and an uneasiness [. . .]. (134)    In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack shows how Macbeth complements his wife:    Her fall is instantaneous, even eager, like Eve's in Paradise Lost; his is gradual and reluctant, like Adam's. She needs only her husband's letter about the weyard sisters' prophecy to precipitate her resolve to kill Duncan. Within an instant she is inviting murderous spirits to unsex her, fill her with cruelty, thicken her blood, convert her mother's milk to gall, and darken the world "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes" (1.5.50). Macbeth, in contrast, vacillates. The images of the deed that possess him simultaneously repel him (1.3.130, 1.7.1) When she proposes Duncan's murder, he temporizes: "We will speak further" (1.5.69). (189)    Lily B. Campbell in her volume of criticism, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion, explores the workings of Macbeth's mind as he plots the destruction of Banquo and son :    If the witches have spoken as truly to Banquo as to him, Macbeth sees that he wears a "fruitless crown" and carries a "barren sceptre" in his hand; he has indeed given peace and immortality to make the race of Banquo kings. And he proceeds to his interview with the murderers, plotting what he dare not do openly, for the fear that comes when we are rivals for a thing and cannot both have it makes it seem to Macbeth: