Ahmed Ayman 10E 31/10/2009
Deterioration of Macbeth
Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare, it’s one of the powerful and emotional plays. Macbeth was written in 1606, it’s mainly about a Scottish king how receives a prophecy from three witches that included that he will be the king of Cawdor on day, due to his dreams and ambitions he becomes a murderer and his character deteriorate in w significant manner.
At the beginning of the novel, Macbeth was presented as a brave warrior in King Duncan’s army; he was fighting in a battle against the Irish aggressors lead by King Macdonald. A wounded warrior arrived to King Duncan with reports that mainly mentioned Macbeth and the way he dealt with the battle and how courageous he is. “The merciless Macdonwald- worthy to be a rebel, for to that. The multiplying villains of nature……” (Act 1, scene 2, lines 9-23).
In this quote the injured sergeant was responding King Duncan’s questions about the battle, the sergeant replied that everything was balanced until King Macdonald got some reinforcements, but the fearless Macbeth continued the battle cutting off his enemies heads.
After the witches’ foretelling, Macbeths’ desire and ambitionin becoming the king appeared, he wanted to know more about the prophecies. “Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more: by Sinel’s death I know I am thane of Glamis; but how of Cawdor? The thane of Cawdor lives….” (Act 1, Scene 3, lines70-78) in this quote Macbeth tries to know more from the witches, he wants to know how will he be the thane of Cawdor, and the king, he describes the prophecies to be impossible.
When Ross and Angus tell Macbeth that the King ordered them to call him the “Thane of Cawdor”, and he knew that the first prophecy turned to be true he then started thinking about the second one and his desire in being the king started increasing, “thane of Glamis and thane of Cawdor! The greatest is yet to come “ (Act 1, scene 3, lines 116-117) in this quote Macbeth believes that the second prophecy that he will be the king will come true and his desire and ambition increased, he describes becoming the king as the greatest thing, which foreshadows that he will sacrifice some of his virtues in order to obtain this greatest thing.
Macbeth’s desire turned from just being a wish to a way of thinking and planning. Macbeth started to notice the obstacles between him and the crown, “The prince of Cumberland! That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o’er leap” (Act 1, scene 4, lines 49-50) Macbeth describes Malcolm as an obstacle between him and being the king, and he says that he needs to rise over him before he brings him down. And this foretells that Macbeth will be using wrong ways, as he lost his sense of right and wrong.
When Macbeth shares everything with Lady Macbeth his declining continues, his weak personality was easily affected by his wife’s opinions, she started taking control over him, she convinced him to go in the wrong direction and to turn to a bloody murderer by killing King Duncan. Lady Macbeth becomes the one that plans everything and Macbeth just listen to her orders, “only look up clear: to alter favour ever is to fear: leave all the rest to me” (Act 1, scene 5, lines70-72).
After killing king Duncan Macbeth characteristics all changed, he lost his good qualities due to the prophecy, his wife’s encouragements, and his desire and ambition. After this main event, killing was just like drinking water, Macbeth felt some guilt after murdering the king but he just forgot as soon as he was the new king and he killed his friend Banquo, he ordered murders to kill him and he tricked them and encouraged the with hate towards Banquo to easily obey his orders, “Have you considered of my speeches?…..”(act3,scene 1, lines 75-83).
To conclude, Shakespeare used considerable stylistic devices to describe his characters to help his audience reveal the themes of his writings easily. The character of Macbeth was declining obviously throughout the play, it deteriorated in a logical manner.