Macbeth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Macbeth - Essay Example It is under this contemporary socio-political ambience that one has to re-read William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth. Its relevance is in our own socio-political scenario. It shows that though there is enough goodness in the society, the evil forces often dominate. The rulers are more concerned about their self achievements and gains than the collective progress of the society. This leads to the dominance of the evil over the goodness around. But Shakespeare predicts the failure of the evil and final victory for the good. It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384BC -322 BC) who defined the dramatic form of Tragedy in his great work â€Å"Poetics†. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero should never be perfect. The fall of a completely virtuous person from a height will create only moral anger among the audience. The fall of a villainous person will only satisfy the moral sense among the audience for the appropriate punishment for the villain .Thus Aristotle in sists that the best tragic hero exists in between such extremes. â€Å"A person who is neither perfect in virtue and justice nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity, but rather one who succumbs through some miscalculation† (Poetics, Chapter 13). According to the Aristotelian standards Shakespeare’s Macbeth falls into one of the best tragic heroes possible. ... Macbeth is a Scottish general who is depicted as a courageous soldier. Macbeth appears in the play first as wounded captain who narrates his courageous acts in the battle field. So the initial impression created is that he is a brave and efficient soldier. Such a man is not, by natural logic prone to commit evil deeds. But this perspective about him gets upset once he interacts with the three witches who prophecies that he is to be the future king. With this prophecy, his physical courage gives away as a mask to the hunger for more and more power and advancement in the power structure. This forces him to commit evil deeds. Just the prediction that he will become the king was enough to trigger these inner self full of ambitions. Ambitions also lead him to self doubts too. Thus the character of Macbeth is a battle field of three strong attributes of his character – Physical strength and courage, ambition for more power, and self doubt. All these attributes are so strong that thr ough out the play they battle with each other for supremacy. Finally his ambitions take over leading to a sense of guilt too. What emerges out is a man of very weak character. Thus Macbeth turns out to be not a Shakespearean villain, but a tragic hero, who perishes by his own doings. The villains of Shakespeare like Edmund in King Lear or Iago in Othello or Richard the third in the play by the same name are mere villains and not tragic heroes, because they have the inner strength to subdue any sort of sense of guilt and self doubt. They are sure characters who knew what they are doing. Macbeth on the other hand is not equipped mentally to face the after effects of the crimes he commits. His courage and strength are more