Joshua Turcotti Ms. Mazzzurco Macbeth Essay 10/19/2015 A Grim Reflection From the first scene, Macbeth manages to be disturbing in way that none of Shakespeare’s other plays are. It is chilling, horrible, and often leaves you questioning whether everything that just happened really did happen. Macbeth himself is among Shakespeare’s darkest characters. Yet the intricacies of the eponymous Scot’s convoluted motivations and drives are often as incomprehensible as they are vital to understanding the workings of the plot. His actions seem to reveal a different man each scene, and few of the sentiments he expresses persist beyond a single scene. Because of this, Macbeth’s character continuously shifts between hero, victim, and villain as he navigates the treacherous moral grounds on which he treads. And he lies at the center of the distorted struggle between the natural and supernatural running through the play, and is torn piece-by-piece, away from the mortal realm as the play progresses. No one is as instrumental in his descent into chaos as are the three witches that regularly appear to mock the mortal realm. The characters of the witches can easily be seen as grand manipulators, and perhaps even tormentors of Macbeth and the good Scottish people. But they could also be seen not as merely characters, but as projections of Macbeth’s twisted mind onto the physical realm. Rather than representing people, let them represent the rifts and snarls in Macbeth’s psyche, molded and condensed into tangible form, reflections of his darker side. This link manifests itself in many ways throughout the play, namely in the conflict between fantasy and reality Macbeth struggles with which the witches show through their own duality of fantastic and mundane qualities, and the insight Macbeth alone possess into morality that is analogous to the witches’ knowledge of the future. In culmination of this eerie bond, the linkage can be seen in ultimate manifestation through the cauldron scene, a terrifying ritual placing the witches’ chants and powers within Macbeth himself. From the moment Macbeth meets with the witches for the first time, and they prophesize to him that he will become king, he splits into two separate forms of the same man, both fighting for control over his actions and mind. The first Macbeth is a valiant and brave hero, returning home from a great battle to the applause and recognition of the king. He is a man showered with titles and riches by his many adoring friends. The second Macbeth is a dubious plotter, planning all manner of unspeakable deeds and tearing himself apart with the image his own depravity; known to few, yet hated by all those whom he touches. These two conflicting men alternate in appearance throughout the play, yet with only one able to take full control at a time. The first comes out during the day, politely shaking hands and bowing low before the king, praising His Grace’s wisdom and excellence. The second emerges at night, describing tomorrow’s horrors and yesterday’s secrets, prowling through the darkened halls with no one there to see. This duality is clearly understood by Macbeth, as it is exemplified when he describes his paralyzation by uncanny speculation, stating all he sees in reality cannot being to approach the horror of his own thoughts: “Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings. / My thought… Shakes so my single state of man / That function is smothered in surmise; / And nothing is but what is not.” (I.iii.150-155). He cannot act, for he knows that his fears are so terrible they could possess his actions and effect all manner of horrors. The phantasmal image of the future drowns out the worldly one, and thus the conflict between these two personae represents Macbeth’s inner struggles of reality and fantasy. A similar observation can be made with the witches: their paradox lies in the fact that although they are clearly powerful otherworldly entities, they occupy themselves with mundane, trivial tasks. They have the power to see the future, alter reality, and influence fate; they can summon the goddess Hecate to their side to assist them in their magic. Yet their business is trivial: bothering peasants, stealing chestnuts, and chasing pigs around a farm. Thus the coexisting profundity of their powers and absurdity of their exploits illustrates their similarities to Macbeth’s dual roles as virtue (a more commonplace and wholly less interesting quality) and depravity (an infinitely more profound and powerful force.) Though issues of morality are an integral part of Macbeth’s plot, and although all the characters are influenced by the repercussions of the struggle between good and evil, Macbeth is the only character who seems aware of this. To the majority of the characters of Macbeth, there are those things that are virtuous, and there are those things that are wicked, and to each it is their duty to be good without question (Malcolm, Macduff etc.) or evil without question (Lady Macbeth,) knowing nothing but that they must be as they are. Yet Macbeth, though clearly acting as an agent of depravity, is lucidly aware of the ramifications of his evil, and frequently questions this. Nowhere is this more eloquently shown then in Macbeth’s private eulogy for Duncan’s death, spoken in the midst of his own existential crisis: “[And] His virtues / Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / The deep damnation of his taking-off; / And pity, like a newborn babe / Striding the blast… shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, / That tears shall drown the wind” (I.vii.21-25). This illustrates the truly remarkable thing about Macbeth as a character: he is fully aware of both good and evil, yet willingly chooses to be evil, knowing exactly what he is doing and what it means. This makes him the most moral character of the entire play: no one else has this profound and complete a view of the entirety of morality, as opposed to just its tamer side. And this provides him with unique insight and interpretation of other’s (and his own) actions. In comparison, the witches possess a similar gift of insight: their future-telling. Their ability to ascertain what is yet to come allows them to see the world in a way other characters cannot, similar to Macbeth’s heightened moral vision. And both Macbeth and the Witches’ powers are untranslatable to others. Whenever the witches attempt to share portions of the future with mortal characters, their prophecies ultimately deceive more than they reveal, as they are almost always grossly misinterpreted. Similarly, when Macbeth tries to share his ethical standpoint with his beloved partner in crime, he seeks to avert would could be a horrible ethical mistake and makes declarations such as a forceful: “We will proceed no further in this business” (I.vii.34), yet is met with only insults and sexual taunting. This all contributes to a sense of isolation from others and from the rest of the play that both the witches and Macbeth attain, later driving the Macbeth to madness. The dissonant aspects of their composition that Macbeth and the Witches share unquestionably evince the presence of a primal bond between them. Yet the elaborate conceit between the witches and Macbeth doesn’t fully emerge until the Cauldron Scene in Act IV. Here the witches perform a terrifying ritual in full rhyme and meter, consisting of the adding a horrifying list of ingredients to a cauldron while chanting the famous lines “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble” (IV.i.10-11). Besides chilling us through and through, these two lines function create a mutual causation between two events: the fire burning and cauldron bubbling, and the causing of increased trouble and work in the lives of the mortal characters. This is accomplished through Macbeth, as it is he who is responsible for a good deal of the “toil and trouble” in the play, and is the one directly influenced by the witches’ magic. Within the full domain of this powerful analogy, the cauldron is placed within Macbeth himself, being responsible for not just his causing of trouble for other but all his impulses that seem to arise unprecedented or be fueled inexplicably, namely killing off all his friends and bringing ruin to his kingdom. The myriad strange ingredients thrown into the cauldron are perhaps not direct causes for his thoughts, but they are the infinite stimuli that lead him to his decisions. The witches, being the ones responsible for taking those ingredients and adding them selectively to the cauldron, are his thought processes that use input such as the dismembered finger of a strangled infant (IV.i.30) to generate Macbeth’s most fundamental urges and needs. So what are the witches? If not people, or even living entities with separate volition at all, are they just reflections of Macbeth? Or is Macbeth the reflection? Perhaps there is no reflecting going on at all, just a cryptic bond? This is but a variation of the simple question Macbeth first asks when meeting these witches: “Speak if you can. What are you?” he asks, and seems to attain no reply: the witches just move onto their own seemingly unrelated greeting: “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!” (I.iii.50). Yet those two lines are not unrelated at all, but rather distinct question and answer, where Macbeth asks for the identity of the witches, and in return is given his own name and title. The deeper you delve into the primordial relationship between Macbeth and the Witches, the more convoluted it becomes. Yet it exists, and it stands as one of the foremost threads pulling the play together. The witches are never caught, never held accountable for the harm they caused, and all those that knew them or had seen their powers are now dead. Despite turning the world inside-out, their story not only remains unresolved, but is erased from living memory. And thus, though he is killed, the greater part of Macbeth, that part inexorably bound to the cosmic forces within the Witches, the part halfway between existence and nothingness, could never be touched by anything so mundane as a beheading. The greater part persists far beyond the end of Macbeth’s reign, persists far beyond the end of Macbeth’s life, and persists far beyond the end of Macbeth.

Joshua Turcotti
Ms. Mazzzurco
Macbeth Essay
10/19/2015

A Grim Reflection

From the first scene, Macbeth manages to be disturbing in way that none of Shakespeare’s other plays are. It is chilling, horrible, and often leaves you questioning whether everything that just happened really did happen. Macbeth himself is among Shakespeare’s darkest characters. Yet the intricacies of the eponymous Scot’s convoluted motivations and drives are often as incomprehensible as they are vital to understanding the workings of the plot. His actions seem to reveal a different man each scene, and few of the sentiments he expresses persist beyond a single scene. Because of this, Macbeth’s character continuously shifts between hero, victim, and villain as he navigates the treacherous moral grounds on which he treads. And he lies at the center of the distorted struggle between the natural and supernatural running through the play, and is torn piece-by-piece, away from the mortal realm as the play progresses. No one is as instrumental in his descent into chaos as are the three witches that regularly appear to mock the mortal realm. The characters of the witches can easily be seen as grand manipulators, and perhaps even tormentors of Macbeth and the good Scottish people. But they could also be seen not as merely characters, but as projections of Macbeth’s twisted mind onto the physical realm. Rather than representing people, let them represent the rifts and snarls in Macbeth’s psyche, molded and condensed into tangible form, reflections of his darker side. This link manifests itself in many ways throughout the play, namely in the conflict between fantasy and reality Macbeth struggles with which the witches show through their own duality of fantastic and mundane qualities, and the insight Macbeth alone possess into morality that is analogous to the witches’ knowledge of the future. In culmination of this eerie bond, the linkage can be seen in ultimate manifestation through the cauldron scene, a terrifying ritual placing the witches’ chants and powers within Macbeth himself.

From the moment Macbeth meets with the witches for the first time, and they prophesize to him that he will become king, he splits into two separate forms of the same man, both fighting for control over his actions and mind. The first Macbeth is a valiant and brave hero, returning home from a great battle to the applause and recognition of the king. He is a man showered with titles and riches by his many adoring friends. The second Macbeth is a dubious plotter, planning all manner of unspeakable deeds and tearing himself apart with the image his own depravity; known to few, yet hated by all those whom he touches. These two conflicting men alternate in appearance throughout the play, yet with only one able to take full control at a time. The first comes out during the day, politely shaking hands and bowing low before the king, praising His Grace’s wisdom and excellence. The second emerges at night, describing tomorrow’s horrors and yesterday’s secrets, prowling through the darkened halls with no one there to see. This duality is clearly understood by Macbeth, as it is exemplified when he describes his paralyzation by uncanny speculation, stating all he sees in reality cannot being to approach the horror of his own thoughts: “Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings. / My thought… Shakes so my single state of man / That function is smothered in surmise; / And nothing is but what is not.” (I.iii.150-155). He cannot act, for he knows that his fears are so terrible they could possess his actions and effect all manner of horrors. The phantasmal image of the future drowns out the worldly one, and thus the conflict between these two personae represents Macbeth’s inner struggles of reality and fantasy. A similar observation can be made with the witches: their paradox lies in the fact that although they are clearly powerful otherworldly entities, they occupy themselves with mundane, trivial tasks. They have the power to see the future, alter reality, and influence fate; they can summon the goddess Hecate to their side to assist them in their magic. Yet their business is trivial: bothering peasants, stealing chestnuts, and chasing pigs around a farm. Thus the coexisting profundity of their powers and absurdity of their exploits illustrates their similarities to Macbeth’s dual roles as virtue (a more commonplace and wholly less interesting quality) and depravity (an infinitely more profound and powerful force.)

Though issues of morality are an integral part of Macbeth’s plot, and although all the characters are influenced by the repercussions of the struggle between good and evil, Macbeth is the only character who seems aware of this. To the majority of the characters of Macbeth, there are those things that are virtuous, and there are those things that are wicked, and to each it is their duty to be good without question (Malcolm, Macduff etc.) or evil without question (Lady Macbeth,) knowing nothing but that they must be as they are. Yet Macbeth, though clearly acting as an agent of depravity, is lucidly aware of the ramifications of his evil, and frequently questions this. Nowhere is this more eloquently shown then in Macbeth’s private eulogy for Duncan’s death, spoken in the midst of his own existential crisis: “[And] His virtues / Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / The deep damnation of his taking-off; / And pity, like a newborn babe / Striding the blast… shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, / That tears shall drown the wind” (I.vii.21-25). This illustrates the truly remarkable thing about Macbeth as a character: he is fully aware of both good and evil, yet willingly chooses to be evil, knowing exactly what he is doing and what it means. This makes him the most moral character of the entire play: no one else has this profound and complete a view of the entirety of morality, as opposed to just its tamer side. And this provides him with unique insight and interpretation of other’s (and his own) actions. In comparison, the witches possess a similar gift of insight: their future-telling. Their ability to ascertain what is yet to come allows them to see the world in a way other characters cannot, similar to Macbeth’s heightened moral vision. And both Macbeth and the Witches’ powers are untranslatable to others. Whenever the witches attempt to share portions of the future with mortal characters, their prophecies ultimately deceive more than they reveal, as they are almost always grossly misinterpreted. Similarly, when Macbeth tries to share his ethical standpoint with his beloved partner in crime, he seeks to avert would could be a horrible ethical mistake and makes declarations such as a forceful: “We will proceed no further in this business” (I.vii.34), yet is met with only insults and sexual taunting. This all contributes to a sense of isolation from others and from the rest of the play that both the witches and Macbeth attain, later driving the Macbeth to madness.

The dissonant aspects of their composition that Macbeth and the Witches share unquestionably evince the presence of a primal bond between them. Yet the elaborate conceit between the witches and Macbeth doesn’t fully emerge until the Cauldron Scene in Act IV. Here the witches perform a terrifying ritual in full rhyme and meter, consisting of the adding a horrifying list of ingredients to a cauldron while chanting the famous lines “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble” (IV.i.10-11). Besides chilling us through and through, these two lines function create a mutual causation between two events: the fire burning and cauldron bubbling, and the causing of increased trouble and work in the lives of the mortal characters. This is accomplished through Macbeth, as it is he who is responsible for a good deal of the “toil and trouble” in the play, and is the one directly influenced by the witches’ magic. Within the full domain of this powerful analogy, the cauldron is placed within Macbeth himself, being responsible for not just his causing of trouble for other but all his impulses that seem to arise unprecedented or be fueled inexplicably, namely killing off all his friends and bringing ruin to his kingdom. The myriad strange ingredients thrown into the cauldron are perhaps not direct causes for his thoughts, but they are the infinite stimuli that lead him to his decisions. The witches, being the ones responsible for taking those ingredients and adding them selectively to the cauldron, are his thought processes that use input such as the dismembered finger of a strangled infant (IV.i.30) to generate Macbeth’s most fundamental urges and needs.

So what are the witches? If not people, or even living entities with separate volition at all, are they just reflections of Macbeth? Or is Macbeth the reflection? Perhaps there is no reflecting going on at all, just a cryptic bond? This is but a variation of the simple question Macbeth first asks when meeting these witches: “Speak if you can. What are you?” he asks, and seems to attain no reply: the witches just move onto their own seemingly unrelated greeting: “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!” (I.iii.50). Yet those two lines are not unrelated at all, but rather distinct question and answer, where Macbeth asks for the identity of the witches, and in return is given his own name and title. The deeper you delve into the primordial relationship between Macbeth and the Witches, the more convoluted it becomes. Yet it exists, and it stands as one of the foremost threads pulling the play together. The witches are never caught, never held accountable for the harm they caused, and all those that knew them or had seen their powers are now dead. Despite turning the world inside-out, their story not only remains unresolved, but is erased from living memory. And thus, though he is killed, the greater part of Macbeth, that part inexorably bound to the cosmic forces within the Witches, the part halfway between existence and nothingness, could never be touched by anything so mundane as a beheading. The greater part persists far beyond the end of Macbeth’s reign, persists far beyond the end of Macbeth’s life, and persists far beyond the end of Macbeth.