Macbeth

A detailed Summary of Macbeth

Macbeth is pushed in his conduct mainly by an extreme desire for worldly honors; his delight lies primarily in buying golden opinions from all sorts of people. For example, his fighting in Duncan's service is magnificent and courageous, and his evident joy in it is traceable in art to the natural pleasure which accompanies the explosive outgo of immense physical energy, and the relaxation which follows. He also rejoices no doubt in the success that crowns his efforts in battle - and so on. He may even conceived of the proper motive that should energize back of his great deed:

The service and the loyalty I owe,

But while he destroys the king's enemies, such motives work but dimly at best and are hidden in his consciousness by more vigorous urges. In the main, as we have said, his nature violently demands rewards: he fights valiantly in order that he may be reported in such terms a "valour's minion" and "Bellona's bridegroom"' he values success because it brings spectacular fame and new titles and royal favor heaped upon him in public. Now so long as these alterable goods are at all comparable with his unreasonable desires - and such is the case, up until he receives the kingship - Macbeth rem

The substance of Macbeth's personality is that out of which tragic heroes are fashioned. The dramatist endows it with an astonishing abundance and variety of potentialities. And it is upon the development of these potentialities that the artist lavishes the full energies of his creative powers. Under the influence of swiftly altering environment which continually furnishes or elects new experiences. Under the impact of passions constantly shifting, and mounting in intensity. The dramatic individual grows, expands, developes to the point where, at the end of the drama, he looms upon the mind as a titanic personality infinitely richer that at the beginning. This dramatic personality in its manifold stages of incentive is an artistic creation. In essence Macbeth, like all other men, is inevitably bound to his humanity. The reason of order, as we have seen, determines his inescapable relationship to the natural and eternal law, compels inclination toward his proper act and end but provides him with a will capable of free choice, and obliges his perception of good and evil.

This spectacle of spiritual deterioration carried to the point of imminent dissolution arouses in us, however, a curious feeling of glory. For even after the external and internal forces of evil have done their worst, Macbeth remains essentially human and his conscience continues to witness the diminishing of his being. That is to say, there is still left necessarily some natural good in him; sin cannot completely deprive him of his rational nature, which is the root of his inescapable fondness to virtue. We do not need Hecate to tell us that he is but a wayward son, spiteful and wrathful, who, as other do, loves for his own ends. This is apparent throughout the drama; he never sins because, like the Weird Sisters, he loves evil for its own sake; and whatever he does is inevitably in pursuance of some apparent good, even though that apparent good is only temporal of nothing more that escape from a present evil. At the end, in spite of shattered nerves and extreme distraction of mind, the individual passes out still adhering admirably to his code of personal courage, and the man's conscience still clearly warns that he has done evil.

Moreover, he never quite loses completely the liberty of free choice, which is the supreme nature of mankind. But since a whole free act is one in accordance with reason, in proportion as his reason is more and more blinded by inordinate apprehension of the imagination, and passions of the sensitive appetite, his violations become less and less free. And this accounts for our fe

Some common words found in the essay are:
Weird Sisters-suggest, , Zeus Greek, Weird Sisters, free choice, essentially human, macbeth remains, liberty free choice, natural law, apprehension imagination, imagination passions, deposited nature, bond pale, demonic forces, liberty free,

Approximate Word count = 1748
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts