William Shakespeare - Macbeth

lingue

Author: William Shakespeare

Title: "Macbeth"

Main characters:

1. Macbeth is a general of the king of Scotland, Duncan. During the course of the play he commits three heinous crimes: the murder of the king, of his best friend and of Macduff's wife and child. But Macbeth isn't only a bad character, in fact before meeting the witches, he is  a hero, a loyal warrior; but after this meeting he decides to accelerate the weird sisters' prophecy and, at the thought of the sin entailed in the act of killing his king, he is marked by pangs of guilt. Many times in order to mask his crimes he calls on nature. As a man of action , he is convinced that if only he can hide his crimes he will be never detected and his ill feelings will naturally dissipate. Than only when Fleance escapes the fate that Macbeth has planned for him he begins to be frightened. These doubts and fears lead Macbeth back to the witches and toward still more evil deeds. When their new prophecy takes place, He is made a victim of his own self sureness. In his soliloquy on the meaninglessness of life after Lady Macbeth's death, he reaches tragic heights and he displays his mettle after his de 848j92i struction. Only in his final encounter with Macduff he sinks into a slaugh of evil, his mind becomes disordered and his warrior's instinct returns to him.
2. Banquo once was Macbeth's comarade in arms, and he notes before him the bad potential that the witches' prophecy heralds and he tries to warn his friend of the dangers. He is a highly sympathetic character and often provokes guitly visions in Macbeth's mind.
3. The three witches are very famous for their incantations, they desire to exercise power over the natural world and they embody evil. Their prophecies are the turning point of the story. They stand for Shakespeare's supernatural idea.
4. Duncan is the king of Scotland, he is a standard strong ruler who defeats and punishes his enemies while generously rewarding his supporters.
5. Malcom and Donalbain are Duncan's sons they are positive characters and Malcom is fit to be a king.
6. Macduff is the real hero of the play, in fact he recognises that behind the death of Duncan and Banquo there's Macbeth. He decides to fight to head the legitimate cause of the king's eldest son, Malcom. He deals with the guilt that he feels over his indirect role in causing the slaughter of his innocent family. He first remonstrates with himself acknowledging that he has been sinful in the sense that his family was slain for his opposition to Macbeth, than he agrees on the need to take revenge upon Macbeth. He is able to move toward the final confrontation with Macbeth refusing to strike down the reluctant soldiers in Macbeth's force and seeking his revenge alone.
7. Lady Macbeth has come to represent feminine treachery. Her ambition, her duplicity and the outright rejection of such female values as compassion and nurturance mark her as a  heartless villain, more monster than woman. Lady Macbeth spawns the plot to kill king Duncan, who determines the setting and the specific actions through which this bloody deed will take place. But this appraisal of Lady Macbeth's evil character requires qualification if not some revisions. There is her affection toward Macbeth, a distorted bond of love holding the two together. She is humanized by her own decline into guilt-ridden madness. In fact she seems to be invincible and inhuman but in act V she has been reduced to a wretched state. Than she seems caught in the routine of assuring Macbeth that he has no cause for fear, but the union between Lady Macbeth and her husband has disintegrated under the weight of the evil that they have done.