Macbeth Essay

• Macbeth


  Shakespeare's play (c. 1606) that explores the idea of guilt
• Elizabethan England


  • Highly religious culture at this time in which people's morality was informed by their spiritual and societal beliefs
• Macbeth's guilt


  Caused by the weight that unchecked ambition and hamartia have put on him, resulting from his devotion to the Divine Right of Kings
• Lady Macbeth's guilt


  Affected by the effect of gender and spiritual expectations in society, as seen in the use of religious connotations regarding her
• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

  Both feel the effects of society on them, however they process and express their guilty conscience in different ways
• Macbeth's hamartia


  His devastating flaw of unchecked ambition, complicated by his betrayal of the Divine Right of Kings
• Macbeth's hamartia


  Creates an all-consuming guilt that manifests in hallucinations and a relentless descent into madness
• Macbeth: '"He's here in double trust"'
• Macbeth's role as a thane

  He serves the king, and in acting out on his allotted place he is meddling with the Great Chain of Being
• Macbeth: '"Sleep no more! Macbeth hath murder sleep!"'
• Macbeth's guilt


  Will haunt him perpetually, depriving him of mental peace
• Macbeth: '"I am in blood/ Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more/ Returning were as tedious as go o'er"'
• Macbeth's guilt


  Blinds and cages him in a cycle of violence as he has betrayed his beliefs, forming a manifestation of remorse that takes its toll on his conscience
• Religious language used for Lady Macbeth


  Contrasts with her sins, highlighting the unnaturalness of her actions
• Doctor: '"More needs she the divine than the physician."'
• Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking


  An inability to sleep peacefully is seen as a product of one's guilty conscience
• Doctor: '"Unnatural deeds" and "Infected minds"'
• Lady Macbeth's change in speech


  From verse to prose portrays the unraveling nature of her subconscious behaviours as she turns mad
• Lady Macbeth's guilt


  Crushed her originally strong and assertive character, reflecting how the repression of sins due to religious beliefs, gender roles, and stereotypes has completely affected her conscience
• Shakespeare's Macbeth intricately explores the subject of guilt by depicting how societal standards influence and create an individual's remorseful conscience
• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth manifest and grapple with their guilt in distinctly different ways, illustrating the complexity between personal conscience and societal norms