Aristotle serves us the recipe for tragedy in his
Poetics. There, he says a perfect tragedy must have a unified plot
and a tragic hero that suffers a reversal of fortune as a result of a mistake in
judgement.
Indeed, Macbeth, the play and the character, fit
this mold. Macbeth is a noble, valiant thane who (at first) is loyal to king, God, and
country. Soon, however, he entangles himself in a plot to murder the king, as devised
by his wife. Underscoring all of this is his belief in his victory over his ambition,
cruelty, and suffering when he consults supernatural sources (the witches) that seem to
help him control elements of time and fate.
Macbeth is also
very thoughtful and poetic in his speech. His soliloquies echo eternal themes of the
nature of good and evil, ambition and cruelty, fate and free will, the natural and the
supernatural. His language elevates him above the rest (Lady Macbeth in
particular).
Macbeth will suffer from a tragic mistake:
blind ambition. His Machiavellian attitude ("the ends justify the means") will disturb
the natural order of society and family. Soon, all will suffer. He and his wife will
succumb to mental illness because of guilt.
In the end,
Macbeth will go out like he began: fighting. He will valiantly try to defeat the moral
agent of the play, Macduff. Nay, he will take on a whole army by himself: man against
the world. His death will give us a katharsis, a purgation of pity
of fear. We will empathize with a man who risked it all at a chance for greatness and
immortality.
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