A CRITICAL STUDY OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

Macbeth and the Theme of Vaulting Ambition

Hurstfield (1972) states that:

In Shakespeare’s England, order and degree, where they existed at all, existed much more in form than substance; and so it had been throughout the 16th century. Indeed, the real malaise was not because order and degree were in dissolution but because they were being imposed upon a society which had in many respects broken free from their rigidities.

Towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, lack of an heir to the throne of England precipitated severe political problem. The troubling socio-political climate according to, Bradbrook (1972) compelled playwrights to abandon historical plays and “turn to self-questioning, which sharpened into satiric comedy or darkened into the tragic mode”. Shakespeare turned into tragedy to probe deeply into human nature and the idea of being. Macbeth is one of the tragedies written to clarify Shakespeare’s feeling about human nature and being.

In Macbeth, we observe an intense and unparalleled display of criminality. In this tumultuous play, Macbeth’s overweening lust for the crown, compels him to commit a culpable crime of murdering King Duncan, a man who loves him dearly. Ossie Enekwe explains that Macbeth “shares full responsibility for his crime and doom”. Macbeth knows that, according to Scottish tradition, he is not to be king, even if Duncan dies naturally. This is because Duncan has children who can replace him.

Macbeth acknowledges this when he says that “to be king stands not within the prospect of belief” (Act, I Scene III). This typifies the fact that Macbeth’s heinous and bloody act is premeditated and never borne out of the influence of the witches as some critics suggest. Vaulting ambition, which means in this play, “the intention and planning of murder” (Knott 1974), propels Macbeth to think aloud of murder shortly after his encounter with the witches:

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 (Act I, Scene III).

The “horried image” of death “unfixes” Macbeth’s hair, and makes his heart knock about his “ribs”, yet “palpable dangers leave him unmoved” (Bradley 1955). Bradley rightly argues that “slumbering murder has been lurking in Macbeth’s heart, for no innocent man would have started, as he did, with a start of fear at the mere prophesy of a crown, or have conceived thereupon immediately the thought of murder”. Bradley maintains, and it is true, that “the words of the witches are fatal to the hero only because there is in him something which leaps into light at the sound of them”.

In support of this point of view, Enekwe submits that the “tragedy of Macbeth is the outcome of evil conspiracy”, for “although the witches prophesy that he will be king, they never suggest that he become one through treachery and murder”. There is sufficient evidence that Macbeth is not wanting in contemplative life that he is fully conscious of what he does. For example, in a soul-searching exercise before the killing of Duncan, Macbeth is convinced that he has no reason whatever to kill the king. To him, Duncan is:

…here in double part:

First, I am his kinsman and subject,

Strong both against the deed;

Then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself (Act I, Scene VII).

However, in spite of this conviction, and the fact that Duncan honoured Macbeth lately, having been “transfixed by the horror of his crime and the promises of power, he consciously rejects the possibility of repentance, salvation and an eternal future for the man that he has been”. He “chooses to know himself no longer, but instead, to know only the deed and the power it will bring, and so he becomes the very embodiment of his crime: the bloody usurping tyrant” (Microsoft Encarta). To confirm this, Macbeth states:

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent,

But only vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itself,

And falls on the other (Act I, Scene VIII).

So, in the person of Macbeth “false face must hide what the false heart doth know” (Act I, Scene VIII). Another criminal dimension of Macbeth’s personality is revealed in his dexterity in covering up the murder. In the first instance, before he carries out the murder, he employs the seductive power of strong drinks to lure the king’s guards to sleep, making them conscious only in the fairy world of dreams. After killing Duncan, Macbeth accepts his wife’s suggestion to make the guards appear culpable by staining them with the king’s blood, and by dropping the blood-stained daggers by their side.

He follows this up by murdering the innocent guards in the morning of the following day under the pretext that he has found incriminating evidence of the murder against them. Nevertheless, unsettled in his mind, Macbeth hatches plans to eliminate all the noble men who are likely to attribute the killing of Duncan to him. Although he succeeds in murdering Banquo on his way to his castle, Fleance, one of the sons of Banquo, escapes the operation wipe out. This reinforces the popular feeling that Macbeth is behind the cold death of the king; and this leads many thanes and friends to desert him. Consequently, Macbeth resorts to wanton killings in order to retain power. Lamenting Macbeth’s reckless killing of his perceived offenders, Macduff, the self-exile Thane of Fife, says:

Each morn

New widows howl, new orphans cry

New sorrow strikes heaven in the face that it resounds

As if it felt with Scotland and yelled out (Act IV, Scene III).

The assassination of King Duncan amounts to a terrible violation of the concept of degree and order, which the Elizabethans cherished so much. According to John Harvey “there could be no greater violation of the natural order for the Elizabethans than the murder of a King by one of his subjects”. Macduff equates the murder of King Duncan with “the breaking open of the lord’s anointed temple and stealing the life of the building” (Act II Scene III). Duncan’s gruesome death “reverberates through hell and heaven” (Elton, 1972). Even the elements acknowledge this maximum disturbance of cosmic order and balance, this vital aspect of the Scottish unwritten constitution. Lenox, one of the noble characters in the play, describes the event of that night, thus:

The night has been unruly

Where we lay

Our chimneys were blown down, and as they say

Strange screams of death

And prophesying with accent terrible

New hatched to the woeful time

Some say the earth was feverous

and did shake (Act II Scene III).

The un-naturalness of this murder is again fully explained by the conversational reports of Ross and the old man, who appear in the play, to be a “measure of human experience” (Beckerman 1970). The old man has attained “the proverbial extent of a man’s life” (84), that is, three score and ten years. He has seen “hours of dreadful, and things strange, but this sore night hath trifled former knowing” (Act II, Scene IV). Ross acquiesces that Duncan’s horses eat each other to “the amazement of” his “eyes that looked upon it” (Act II Scene IV). Both reports are indications of dislocation of natural order, and they spell doom for Scotland. As the fountain – head of Scotland, “the gashed and suffering body of King Duncan, becomes the gashed and suffering body of the whole country” (Harvey, 1960). The death of Duncan throws Scotland into a state of complete disorder, especially, as the heir-apparent is not caused to ascend the throne.

For the purposes of ensuring justice, both nature and man devise appropriate ways of redressing evil and punishing crimes. Retribution, which is the cardinal goal of punishment, finds expression in the penal codes and sentencing practices of courts, as well as in the principle of equal retaliation embedded in the mosaic law of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. It is also clearly evident in the natural law of reciprocal action, an unbendable rule that insists that, “what a man sows he will reap many times over” (Abd-ru-shin, 7). Abd-ru-shin maintains that, “just like the harvest yields a multiple of the seed, so man will always receive back greatly multiplied what in his own intuitive perceptions he awakens and sends out, according to the nature of his volition”.

He further reminds us that bearing the responsibility of one’s deeds “begins already with the making of resolution, not just with the accomplished deed, which is simply a consequence of the resolution (8). Although Lady Macbeth seeks to convince her husband that “A little water clears us of this”, retribution never waits long. It clutches at the heels of the deed without delay. The play’s sustained evil and violence are balanced by its study of the minds of its main characters. “Macbeth and his wife are repulsed and torn by their own behaviour, and they both seem to verge on hallucination and madness as they recoil from the mayhem they have created around themselves” (Microsoft Encarta).

Immediately Duncan is murdered, little noises begin to appal Macbeth, causing him great disquietude of mind. As soon as he emerges from the chamber of murder, he fearfully tells his wife:

Me thought I heard a voice cry

Sleep no more!

Macbeth doth murder sleep – the innocent sleep

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care

The death of each day’s life

Balm of hurt minds

Great nature’s second course:

Chief nourisher in life’s feast (Act II Scene II0)