Macbeth - Values

By DaRabbit, Student

Examples and explainations of the values within Macbeth

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

The play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, was first printed in 1623, and is a play that is confrontational and disturbing to the values of the audience. Values such as truth, masculinity, security and goodness are all implied in the play, as their opposites are shown to be destructive and life shattering.

Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth is the one most obsessively concerned with evil. It is dark, brooding and bloodthirsty; by way of illustration, the only function of the messenger to Lady MacDuff is to prepare the audience for bloodshed. Blood in itself is considered an evil image and it aids in character development, as seen in the description of Macbeth at the start. According to Duncan, gutting someone like a fish is worthy of praise such as “Oh valiant cousin, Oh worthy Gentleman!” To the people of the age, being able to kill someone with such skill is a good thing… of course, it does mean that Macbeth has the potential to snap. The evil imagery in the play also helps with the rising tension – the old man’s description of the horses devouring each other is a prime example of this.

Macbeth himself is essentially evil as well; when he knows he is going to die, instead of taking the honorable way out by committing suicide he decides to take as many people with him as he can. It is somewhat ironic therefore that “Macbeth” means “son of life”.

The evil that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth create within themselves means that the audience is made to experience the psychological emptiness involved in committing a murder. Evil is inevitably destructive, but it is also self-destructive. By murdering Duncan, Macbeth is destroying himself; his “single state of man” is shaken by his inner conflict.
Macbeth steeled himself to murder only by repressing everything that gave him worth as a human being so that he “moves like a ghost”. Eventually his repressed feelings strike back violently with the hallucination of the dagger and the uncontrollable self-accusations, due to which he completely disintegrates. He is totally alienated from himself – “To know my deed, ‘twere best not to know myself”. His moral feelings are no longer under control because he has expelled them from his consciousness, and they continue to haunt him in his dreams and with the ghost of Banquo that forces him to betray himself. However much he represses it, his self-condemnation is implanted deeply in his mind, as Merteith says:
“Who then shall blame
His pestered senses to recoil and start,
When all that is within him does condemn
Itself for being there?”
For most of the last half of the play Macbeth is in a neurotic state, alternating between black melancholy and outbursts of “valiant fury”.
“Some say he’s mad. Others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury…”
These lead him to totally irrational actions, such as the massacre of MacDuff’s family and the suicidal act of abandoning the defenses of the castle.

Most of these impromptu actions are to keep him from thinking: “This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool”. But when he is trapped in the castle all his feverish activity cannot prevent him from sinking into periods of desolate reflection that show his awareness of his actual situation: he is evil. We realise that he is still haunted by the values that he consciously removed, and his despair at their loss gives them a reality that makes us feel some sort of sympathy towards this doer of evil.

Shakespeare’s portrayal of the downward spiral of a man once called “worthy gentleman” and now “fiendish hell-hound” is obviously meant to endorse the emerging Romantic values of the time of doing good to others and being charitable to all. The images of bloody murder and evil beings are so foregrounded in the play to warn his intended audience off the evil actions that are portrayed, and indeed his intentions still ring home today. Through Macbeth’s emotional reactions to what he and others have done we can see into the mind of a killer, and learn in the most gruesome fashion that it is not a nice place to be.

Shakespeare’s descriptions of his characters give real descriptions of living beings, not just actors on a stage. Macbeth is able to show the masculinity of men as well as women, as masculinity is not just for men; some women are just like men in their quest for ambition.

Lady Macbeth seems like a man trapped in a woman’s body, as she is filled with greed, envy and hate (masculine characteristics to the audience of the 17th century), and she will use any person or any thing until she gets what she wants or accomplishes her goals. And yet, strangely enough, all the evil thoughts she had, and all the wickedness which she from time to time mustered, arose from a typically feminine characteristic – her love of and admiration for her husband. It is true that she was ambitious, but her ambition lay more in seeing great things for her husband that great things for herself.

It was because of her wish to see Macbeth achieve Kingship that she was so influenced by his letter (Act 1 Scene 5), but she knew at once that she would have to use her own strong nature to convince him to do a deed from which his conscience would normally restrain him. So that her own femininity would not keep her from doing evil deeds she called on demons to enter her body
“And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.”

Then, when Macbeth wavered in whether or not he could carry out the murder, she ridiculed his masculinity to get him to kill Duncan, even though she could not do it because Duncan looked like her father.
“What, quite unmanned in folly?”
Lady Macbeth uses Macbeth for her own purpose of making him great – she is in effect the mettle behind the man, and is the one who wears the pants in the relationship.

To die without fear was considered a high accomplishment in the time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth. When young Seyward dies, his father is worried about how he was killed, and where the wounds on his body are. When Ross tells the elder Seyward that his son had wounds, his father is proud of his death, as “God’s soldier be he”. To be happy at the death of your son seems odd to us today, but in the context of the play it was a great achievement to die valiantly.

Throughout Macbeth things are not always as they seem. Deception in the play is always present, especially with the two main characters – Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is the most skilled at persuading others into believing things that are not true:
“Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent underneath.”
This shows exactly how manipulative and deceptive she can be, as she is telling Macbeth to look and act pure, but to be evil inside.

Although Lady Macbeth is the most skilled deceiver, Macbeth is also guilty of deception. He learns the skill from his wife, and then in turn proceeds to deceive many others.
“Do not Muse at me, my most worthy friends:
I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing
To those who know me. Come, love and health to all!
Then I’ll sit down. Give me some wine; fill full!
I drink to the General joy o’the whole table,
And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss.
Would he were here!”
Macbeth, after recovering from the pure and utter horror of seeing the ghost of the friend he had murdered, attempts to and succeeds to deceive his guests about the reasons for his strange behavior.

Lady Macbeth and Macbeth also attempt to use denial and rationalization to deceive themselves. This self-deception leads to many serious circumstances for them both. Lady Macbeth is so occupied with trying to mislead others that she does not notice how intensely the guilt is building within her. She is finally so caught up in deception that she cannot take the stress any more. She starts to worry that people are no longer falling for their deceptive ways, and states this in one of her mad speeches in front of the doctor:
“What need we fear who knows it,
When none can call our power to accompt?”
Although she is trying to be bold in the face of disclosure, the statement confirms that she does fear being detected. In the end, Lady Macbeth’s guilt over all of the lies sends her mad; sleepwalking and rambling about the murders:
“Wash your hands; put on your nightgown; look not
So pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot
Come out on’s grave.”
The deception once foregrounded as an advantageous quality has now lead to this self-deception, craziness, and Lady Macbeth’s eventual suicide.

Macbeth’s state of mind is also not that of a normal person, as he is trying to go against his nature to convince himself that deception is the only way to be King. The deceit does take its toll: “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!” and Macbeth’s conscience is imprisoned by the build up of denial and self-deception. The illusions such as the ghost and the knife show that the inner struggle within his mind is trying to come out, and because his mind is in such a state he can no longer control his behavior. Like his wife, Macbeth’s own self-deception has sent him crazy. He goes from a being a noble warrior with true, honest ambitions to someone who cannot even control his own thoughts anymore; all of which is due to deception.

This amazing transformation in the two main characters suggests that Shakespeare was endorsing the value of truth and honesty. The deceptions the Macbeths perform destroy their minds and their lives, and eventually kills them both. The vivid, horrific images of the bloody ghost of Banquo and the eerie hallucination of the knife serve to scare the audience into accepting this endorsed value, and the consequences shown that will occur with deception.

From time after the banquet to the end of play, Macbeth was living in a false sense of security. When he and Lady Macbeth were alone after the banquet, he was determined to seek aid from the weird sisters, and from then on he lived in a false sense of security – a sense, however, disturbed every now and then by his own distorted mind.

Macbeth knows that his success is being bought by his own damnation, and he does not care. All he cares about is “security” in what he does, and if he has it then his own moral status does not matter. But what is “security”? Hecat reminds us that
“…you all know security
Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.”

The witches soothingly tell Macbeth when he comes for comfort that he has nothing to fear:
“Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man; for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.”
The witches then disappear, leaving Macbeth more alone than ever, clutching to the witches’ promise – his “charm” as Macduff calls it – and depending on it… because he has nothing else to depend upon. This dependence on the fact that “none of woman born” will harm him makes him reckless, and Macbeth is eventually killed over the fact he believes only a demon can kill him when MacDuff’s army arrives at Dunsinane.
“Then live Macduff; what need I fear of thee?”

Macbeth will not even trust his own wife in his quest for security, as shown when he covers up the fact he has sent murderers to kill Banquo while he is riding:
“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.”

The people of Shakespeare’s time would have accepted this dependence as a value of not trusting witches. However, it can also be seen that the text is endorsing the importance of not assuming things to be what you think they are: Macbeth assumes that no man can kill him… and a man kills him.

Macbeth is a play that is confrontational and disturbing to the values of the audience. Life-destroying deeds such as murder and deception are foregrounded in vivid descriptions and actions, endorsing to the audience values of trust, security and the truth; ideals that still ring true today.