Important Questions and Answers

Q.1 “Macbeth is a hero turned villain, yet we sympathise with him.” Elaborate.

Ans. A tragedy shows the punishment of evil-doers at its conclusion. Macbeth, when
he kills, he foresees the outcome. He feels that something will come about
through the workings of even-handed justice.

Midway in the play, he determines to toughen himself in villainous practice; he

has seen the ghost of Banquo because he is still a novice in crime. A little later,
he determines that his course must be bloodier. Malcolm and other patriotic men
are distressed to hear that Macbeth has made plenty of widows and orphans. He
is now a butcher, a tyrant, a hell-hound.

If Macbeth is contrasted with his opponents, we find a vast difference between

the two. Firstly, he allies with the witches, while the rightful heir will work with
God’s grace. Macbeth knows that Duncan will suitably reward him, yet he turns
against the source of his growth and kills Duncan. Macbeth’s action is contrary to
nature. The witches’ solicitation unfixed his hair and makes his heart throb,
unnaturally.

At the outset of the play we meet the Weird Sisters. They have come to meet
Macbeth. He might not have yielded to the witches’ hints but, certainly, he
harbours within him the desire to be the most powerful man of the kingdom.

Many questions crop up in our minds, viz.

(a) Is it his bad luck that the witches wait for him?
(b) Is there something within himself that has attracted them? The debate is futile
because the play does not provide unequivocal answers.

There are many instances of equivocation. The Porter soliloquizes about an

equivocator. For the weird sisters “Fair is foul”. There are second meanings too:
“Look like the innocent flower. But be the serpent under ‘t” and again. “Away, and
mock the time with fairest show! False face must hide what the false heart doth
know.”

It is time we looked more closely at Macbeth’s double nature. Very early in the
play we get a report of his loyalty and courage. He is ‘brave’, ‘valiant’, ‘worthy’
and ‘noble’, and by his deeds against rebels and foreign invaders he has earned
these words. His first appearance does not quite confirm this report, but it
engages our sympathetic interest; he starts and seems “to fear/ Things that do
sound so fair”. He starts because he already has criminal impulses that respond
to the witches’ words. When we first hear of Macbeth, we hear of a man of noble
and unambiguous action; when we first see him, we see a man of uncertainty. He
recoils at his over-murderous thoughts. He suffers even before he commits his
first criminal action. Immediately after killing Duncan, he is afflicted with doubts
and has a premonition of the sleeplessness that will ensue. Lady Macbeth takes
a simpler view. She seems as black as the evil angel but she too reveals inner
depths in the sleep-walking scene.

Macbeth becomes isolated from his fellows. The soldier who fought along with
his countrymen, becomes in the last Act, a man without any friends. His soldiers
and nobles either desert him or pay lip service to him. We can also realize the
distance between him and his wife. While she has been his “dearest partner of
greatness”, now he seems almost insensible to her death, “She should have died
hereafter.”

The death of Macbeth has a complex effect on us. When his severed head is
brought in, we see a parallel between him and the treacherous Macdonwald;
between Macbeth and the Thane of Cawdor: and then again between Macbeth
and Young Siward, who died as ‘God’s soldier’. But, perhaps, we feel that there
is something of the soldierly Macbeth in his final contest.

Macbeth is certainly the most villainous of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes and yet
he enlists some sympathy from the readers. When he first thinks of murder, there
is no doubt of the horror with which he regards it. He tries to consider the
situation in practical terms- “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown
me./Without my stir.”- but his moral awareness continually finds expression in the
images that come from the less conscious levels of his mind. He refers to
Duncan’s virtues and his own duties to the king. He is also moved by the horror
himself. He pretends to reach his decision on merely practical grounds.

This conflict between the explicit statement and the imagery through which it is
expressed mirrors that conflict in Macbeth’s mind. He suffers from a sort of
madness as he tries to repress the moral side of his nature. The unity of his
personality was already shaken when he heard the prophecies of the witches
and from that moment he is torn by the contradictory impulses as his wife says-
he would not play false, and yet would wrongly win. Macbeth must
manipulate his corporal faculties as if they were detached from himself. That is
how he goes to murder Duncan. After the murder his disintegration is complete.
Neither his physical nor his moral being seems his own. He regards his hands as
if they no longer belong to him- ‘What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out
 mine eyes’. He cries that to know his deed it were best not to know himself.
Thus, we get a peep into his terribly anguished and suffering soul, and we,
somewhat, sympathize with him despite his being a thorough villain.

Q.2 Examine critically Shakespeare’s treatment of the supernatural in the play.

What are its distinctive features?

Or

Write a note on witches’ scenes in the play. How far are the witches
responsible for bringing about the downfall of Macbeth?

Ans. ‘Macbeth’ is the only play of Shakespeare in which he introduced the witches.
There are three witches. They have their Queen Hecate as well as their
attendant spirits e.g. a toad, a cat, etc. They appear and disappear like bubbles
of water. They have a cauldron which they use to cast their spells. They are
neither men nor women and symbolize all that is evil in nature. They meet during
storms and can raise tempests. They work their spells with fragments torn from
organic creatures e.g. the thumb of a pilot, the organs of men and animals: they
symbolize sterility and death by their ‘withered’ appearance, with ‘choppy’ fingers
and ‘skinny lips’. They reduce their victims to the same condition as the First
Witch plans to revenge the insult done to her by the sailor’s wife.

Shakespeare’s witches are the witches of the English and Scottish countryside,
whose malice would cause any explained disease in their neighbour or their
livestock. They were instructed by their familiar spirits which often took the form
of birds and animals. It was these familiar spirits who enabled them to ride in the
air or disappear into it; to raise storms and to foretell the future, as do the
apparitions, whom the witches also call their ‘masters’.

There are two different approaches to the witches- the superstitious and the
skeptical. On the one hand there is actual belief and on the other, there are
suggestions that they are the products of the excited imagination. They have
been brought into close connection with both character and action. It has been
suggested that the trance-like state of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and
Macbeth’s ‘raptness’ when the witches first tempt him and when he sees
Banquo’s ghost, would have indicated to the audience that they were the victims
of demonic possession. They behave compulsively, as if they were controlled by
evil spirits rather than by their own conscious minds. Macbeth’s inability to pray is
another symptom of this condition and Lady Macbeth’s damned spot might have
suggested the devil’s mark that was to be found on a witch. She actually
assumes the role of a witch when she summons the ‘spirits that tend on mortal
thoughts’ to possess her body and the Doctor’s comment that she needs the
divine more than the physician might mean that she is in need of exorcism as
well as spiritual healing.

The very first words uttered by witches, “Fair is foul and foul is fair”, strike the
key-note of the play. This inversion of values and ideals is apparent in their own
deformity- they should be women but their beards deny it. They use mutilated
fragments of animals and men from which their charms are brewed. They meet in
the blasted heath. Their doctrine reverses the natural order of things: “Fair
is foul and foul is fair”. It echoes in Macbeth’s first words which he goes on to
adopt in order to gain the throne and then finds that he cannot escape from it.

The confusion of ‘fair’ with ‘foul’ is the theme of the play. It is emphasized by the
irony of Duncan’s misjudgement of the two Thanes of Cawdor and, in contrast,
by his son’s elaborate testing of Macduff. The play is full of false appearances.
The world of this play is the word of false values in which Macbeth is guided by
deceptive apparitions and hallucinations. His moral sense becomes as confused
as are his physical senses when he cannot distinguish the real from the unreal
dagger, and it is the latter that directs him to the murder. Macbeth has
condemned himself to living a lie. By the final scenes, the royal robes have
become another burden to Macbeth. His title hangs about him ‘like a giant’s
robe/Upon a dwarfish thief.’

The witches’ doctrine is, in fact, a self-deceiving one. ‘Foul’ cannot be ‘fair’. It
only appears so; but the first half of their jingle is true, for what should have been
‘fair’- kingship- becomes ‘foul’, polluted by the means by which it was obtained.
The witches equivocate with Macbeth in their initial promise to him of things that
sound so fair, as well as in the prophecies of the apparitions. He achieves the
throne but has sold his soul- his ‘eternal jewel’ for something that proves
worthless. Banquo does not believe in the witches and he seems not to care for
their prophecy at the time, but their poison works on him also and there are
suggestions that he, too, is lured by their prophecy that his son and descendants
will be kings.

In the case of Macbeth, the influence of these instruments of malevolent forces is

much more profound. This is seen in the fact that on his very first appearance on
the stage, he closely echoes them when he says, “So foul and fair a day, I have
not seen”. They tempt him and lead him away from goodness. He is particularly
vulnerable to their influence because he hears them voice the desires of his heart
and after his initial fear at being caught out, his mind moves easily along the
route they indicate towards ‘the imperial theme’.
 The equivocation theme which is central to the play operates most obviously
through the witches and they are the most striking voices of unnaturalness and
disorder. Lady Macbeth comments on them as the ‘metaphysical aid’. Macbeth
needs the witches to tell him what is in his own mind. They utter riddles which
Macbeth interprets in his own interest. He is, therefore, deceived not by the
witches but by his ill-founded reliance on his own interpretations.

However, the witches cannot be dismissed as mere hallucinations, as products of

Macbeth’s heated imagination for Banquo has also seen and heard them, is
surprised by their unnatural appearance and, though not at that time but later on,
it is seen that he, too, is affected by their prophecy.

Unlike the witches, the ghost of Banquo which appears in the ‘Banquet
Scene’ is entirely hallucinatory in character. It is purely a subjective
phenomenon. It is a creation of guilt-obsessed imagination, which is why none
sees the ghost. It does not speak and vanishes. Macbeth, himself, regards it as
‘unreal mockery’, ‘a shadow’, a mere creation of his heated imagination. It is an
instrument of divine punishment and justice. The ghost is the externalized form of
Macbeth’s guilt and fear of discovery, invisible to others but a terrifying reality to
Macbeth, himself. Macbeth, a man celebrated for his courage in battle, cringes
before the creation of his troubled conscience, and almost betrays himself to the
assembled guests. Henceforth they are suspicious, and their suspicion goes on
increasing as Macbeth marches ahead on his bloody career.

In short, the supernatural in the play has been closely integrated both with
character and action. Shakespeare has given to his audience what they wanted,
but in a much purified an exalted form.

Q.3 What do you understand by poetic justice? Do you find poetic justice in
Macbeth?
Ans. Poetic justice may be defined as the distribution of rewards and punishment
according o the merits of the person concerned. The virtuous are rewarded and
the wicked punished proportionately to the wickedness of goodness of their
actions. Poets and dramatists introduced it in their works in the interest of
morality. They wanted their audience and readers to imitate the virtuous and
avoid the wicked. But since that is not always a fact of nature, Shakespeare does
not introduce such perfect justice in his tragedies. In his plays, as in real life, the
good and the virtuous are often crushed and they do not get the prosperity they
deserve. The ultimate power in hi tragic world reacts against evil and ultimately
evil is expelled and destroyed. But along with evil, much that is good is also
 destroyed. So, it can be said that there is only partial justice in Shakespearean
Tragedy.

Macbeth is the only tragedy of Shakespeare “which has a villain or a criminal as

its hero”. The hero turns a villain and violates the moral order. Macbeth turns a
villain early in the play. Hence when he and his wife are punished the feeling is
that they have been justly punished for the crimes they had committed.

Macbeth murders his old, benevolent and generous king, who has suitably
rewarded him. Moreover, he is the guest at that time. Lady Macbeth, as if she
were the fourth witch, chastises him with the valour of her tongue, and the crime,
which might otherwise have remained undone, is committed. Since Macbeth, the
host, murders Duncan, the guest, in sleep, his punishment swiftly follows that
henceforth, “he would sleep no more”. Lady Macbeth, too, soon realizes the
futility of the crown, “Naught is had, all is spent”. She suffers the tortures of Hell
like her husband. We get to see a glimpse of it in the sleep-walking scene. Poetic
justice is done to her and her punishment makes us almost pity her.

Macbeth descends deeper and deeper into hell. He gets Banquo murdered.
Banquo’s son, Fleance, escapes to be the father of the future kings of Scotland.
Macduff disobeys Macbeth and flees to England. In wrath, the tyrant has his
revenge upon his family and has his wife and children brutally murdered. The
people are horrified and Macduff becomes the means through whom nemesis
overtakes the sinner. It is he who kills the usurper in single combat and restores
the throne to its lawful heir.
Thus we find that though the wicked are suitably punished, needless suffering is
infected on the virtuous as well. Macbeth’s bloody career makes his country
bleed and engulfs the innocent and the virtuous.

Q.4 Analyze the various soliloquies of ‘Macbeth’, and state their significance.
Ans. The soliloquies are the windows through which we get a glimpse of Macbeth’s
inner sufferings and realize that, though a villain, he has also much good in him
which fails to assert itself owning to circumstances beyond his control.
The first soliloquy is in Act I, Scene VII. It reveals, on the one hand, Macbeth’s
desire to be a king an on the other, his pricks of conscience. He knows that he
should not murder his own king- who is his guest, who has done no harm to him
but has rewarded him with honour and title. It shoes that Macbeth is gifted with
poetic imagination.
The next soliloquy comes in Act II, Scene I, just before the murder. Macbeth
suffers from hallucination. He sees a dagger with which he is going to murder
 King Duncan. Such hallucinations occur to the conscientious souls that are about
to commit a great crime for the first time in their life.

In the third soliloquy which occurs in Act III, Scene I of the play, Macbeth
prepares himself for the murder of Banquo because he cannot bear the idea that
Banquo’s sons should be kings. Besides, he also feels insecure so long as
Banquo and Fleance are alive. This reveal Macbeth’s fear and insecurity which
prevents sleep and tortures his soul.
In the fourth soliloquy at the end of Act IV Scene II, Macbeth expresses his
determination not to lose a single moment in putting his thought to action- the
revenge on Macduff.
Macbeth’s last two soliloquies beginning “Tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow” and “I have lived long enough” reveal Macbeth’s frustration and
disillusionment. He realizes that his life has fallen into the sea and that he has
lost all the good things of life.
Lady Macbeth has an important soliloquy to her credit. It is just after receiving the
news that Duncan is to be her guest that night. She calls upon the murdering
ministers, the powers of darkness, to unsex her and suppress her womanly
instincts. This results in complete nervous break-down and the sleep-walking
scene follows.
Thus the combined effect of the soliloquies of Macbeth is that we acquire a better
knowledge of what is happening to his soul. His inner struggles and frustrations
have been revealed through them. In short, the soliloquy is a potent means of
self-revelation.

Q.5 What are the various factors which bring about the downfall and death of
Macbeth?
Or
What is the tragic flow in Macbeth’s character? How far does it contribute
to his tragedy?
Ans. Macbeth is an exceptional individual, a brave warrior, a ‘peerless kinsman’. But
he also has a fatal flaw, like all other heroes. His flaw is his vaulting ambition.
He longs for the throne of Scotland. It is this evil within him which makes him
start at the prophecy of the witches, and also to think of murdering Duncan, his
relative and king as well as his guest for the night. Not only has Macbeth
vaulting ambition for himself, he is also ambitious to found a dynasty of
kings. This desire is symbolized by the child or baby. The witches show him
apparitions of two children and a number of kings, who are the descendants of
Banquo. Therefore he decides to wage a war against the future and defeat the
prophecy of the witches. He gets Banquo murdered but his son, Fleance,
escapes, thus symbolizing the truth of the witches’ prophecy. He fails to realize
that war with the future is futile and rushes on his bloody career till the very end.
He and his wife, both, die childless.
Macbeth also possesses a weak will which is why he yields to the suggestion
of the witches. Lady Macbeth, the fourth witch, instigates him. She taunts him
and he acts against his better judgement. He understands clearly the enormity of
the crime, but because of his lack of determination, he yields to his wife and
commits the murder.
‘Macbeth’ is a melodramatic tale of murder. His poetic imagination makes him
see visions of the terrible consequences of his crime and it intensifies its horror.
He is superstitious and, therefore, influenced by the predictions of the witches.
Criminal thoughts are aroused. It is this poetic imagination which makes him hear
voices pronouncing upon him the doom of selflessness , and makes him see the
ghost of Banquo with twenty gashes on his head and, the blood-stained dagger!
Macbeth fails to understand his own true nature and interprets his sleepless
torture as resulting from a sense of insecurity and fear of retaliation. Hence his
ruthless career of crime despite inner remorse and hence his gradual descent
into hell. We pity the man, condemn murderer. It is clear that he had no will
power. Had he possessed even a bit of that, the witches could not have
influenced him.