Editing Macbeth (section)

==Themes and motifs==
{{quote box|width=23em|"'''Macbeth'''<br>The [[Malcolm (Macbeth)|Prince of Cumberland]]! That is a step<br>On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,<br>For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;<br>Let not light see my black and deep desires.<br>The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be<br>Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."|—''Macbeth'', Act I, Scene IV}}

''Macbeth'' is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It is short: more than a thousand lines shorter than ''Othello'' and ''King Lear'', and only slightly more than half as long as ''Hamlet''. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt-book for a particular performance. This would reflect other Shakespeare plays existing in both Quarto and the Folio, where the Quarto versions are usually longer than the Folio versions. ''Macbeth'' was first printed in the First Folio, but has no Quarto version&nbsp;– if there were a Quarto, it would probably be longer than the Folio version.<ref>Bradley, AC, ''Shakespearean Tragedy''</ref> That brevity has also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to be "stripped for action"; and the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth.{{sfn|Stoll|1943|p=26}}<!-- Arthur Quiller-Couch, cited in Stoll, discusses this at more length. --> [[A. C. Bradley]], in considering this question, concluded the play "always was an extremely short one", noting the witch scenes and battle scenes would have taken up some time in performance, remarking, "I do not think that, in reading, we ''feel'' ''Macbeth'' to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear it is about half as long as ''Hamlet''. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatre too it seemed to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded."<ref>Bradley, AC, ''Shakespearean Tragedy''</ref>

===As a tragedy of character===
At least since the days of [[Samuel Johnson]], analysis of the play has centred on the question of Macbeth's ambition, commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Whalen |first=Richard F. |date=2014 |title=What Happens in Macbeth: An Originalist Reading of the Play |url=https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/Whalen.Originalist.Macbeth.pdf |journal=Brief Chronicles V  |pages=61–68}}</ref> Johnson asserted that Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sherbo |first=Arthur |date=1951 |title=Dr. Johnson on Macbeth: 1745 and 1765 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/511908 |journal=The Review of English Studies |volume=2 |issue=5 |pages=40–47 |doi=10.1093/res/II.5.40 |jstor=511908 |issn=0034-6551}}</ref>

This opinion recurs in critical literature, and, according to [[Caroline Spurgeon]], is supported by Shakespeare himself, who apparently intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth look ridiculous by several exaggerations he applies: his garments seem either too big or too small for him&nbsp;– as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful role as king. After Macbeth is unexpectedly greeted with his new title as Thane of Cawdor as prophesied by the witches, Banquo comments:

{{Poem quote|New honours come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,
But with the aid of use|I, 3, ll. 145–146}}

And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt:

{{Poem quote|He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule|V, 2, ll. 14–15}}

while Angus sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's accession to power:

{{Poem quote|now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
upon a dwarfish thief|V, 2, ll. 18–20).{{sfn|Spurgeon|1935|pp=324–327}}}}

Like [[Richard III (play)|Richard III]], but without that character's perversely appealing exuberance, Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. As Kenneth Muir writes, "Macbeth has not a predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown."{{Sfn|Muir|1984|p=xlviii}} Some critics, such as E. E. Stoll, explain this characterisation as a holdover from Senecan or medieval tradition. Shakespeare's audience, in this view, expected villains to be wholly bad, and Senecan style, far from prohibiting a villainous protagonist, all but demanded it.{{sfn|Stoll|1943|p=26}}<!-- Stoll doesn't make this connection explicit: he discusses Macbeth as a tragic hero that commits villainous acts, and discusses Aristotelan (Senecan, in practice) primacy of plot over character (Stoll is responding to psychological readings), but doesn't, here, say that Shakespeare was writing to an audience expectation of a villainous protagonist. He makes that connection elsewhere though (From Shakespeare to Joyce, Shakespeare and Other Masters). -->

Yet for other critics, it has not been so easy to resolve the question of Macbeth's motivation. [[Robert Bridges]], for instance, perceived a paradox: a character able to express such convincing horror before Duncan's murder would likely be incapable of committing the crime.{{sfn|Muir|1984|p=xlvi}} For many critics, Macbeth's motivations in the first act appear vague and insufficient. [[John Dover Wilson]] hypothesised that Shakespeare's original text had an extra scene or scenes where husband and wife discussed their plans.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}} This interpretation is not fully provable; however, the motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself recognises:

{{Poem quote|I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.|III, 4, ll. 165–167}}

While working on Russian translations of Shakespeare's works, [[Boris Pasternak]] compared Macbeth to [[Raskolnikov]], the protagonist of ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' by [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]. Pasternak argues that "neither Macbeth or Raskolnikov is a born criminal or a villain by nature. They are turned into criminals by faulty rationalizations, by deductions from false premises." He goes on to argue that Lady Macbeth is "feminine&nbsp;... one of those active, insistent wives" who becomes her husband's "executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself". According to Pasternak, she is only helping Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.{{sfn|Pasternak|1959|pp=150–152}}
===As a tragedy of moral order===
The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the [[great chain of being]], although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings. The play was meant to performed specifically for [[James VI and I|King James]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Paul |first=Henry Neill |url=https://archive.org/details/royalplayofmacbe0000paul/mode/2up?q=king+james |title=The royal play of Macbeth; when, why, and how it was written by Shakespeare. -- |date=1971 |publisher=New York : Octagon Books |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-374-96319-4}}</ref> whose belief in the Divine right of kings suggests that the tragedy of Macbeth is distinctly moral. The King's own [[Daemonologie]] is believed to have inspired the structure of the witches' coven,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Paul |first=Henry Neill |url=https://archive.org/details/royalplayofmacbe0000paul/mode/2up?q=hierarchy |title=The royal play of Macbeth; when, why, and how it was written by Shakespeare. -- |date=1971 |publisher=New York : Octagon Books |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-374-96319-4}}</ref> making the supernatural world of Macbeth an inversion of the natural kingship, in which he struggles. As in ''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]'', though, perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of the inversions of the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking.

Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. Glynne Wickham connects the play, through the Porter, to a [[mystery play]] on the harrowing of hell.<ref>{{Citation |last=Wickham |first=Glynne |title=Hell-Castle and its Door-Keeper |date=1967 |work=Shakespeare Survey: Volume 19: Macbeth |volume=19 |pages=68–74 |editor-last=Muir |editor-first=Kenneth |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/shakespeare-survey/hellcastle-and-its-doorkeeper/ED96ADB1ED4C7663816D18921069A0D7 |access-date=2025-03-20 |series=Shakespeare Survey |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/ccol0521064325.007 |isbn=978-0-521-52355-4}}</ref> Howard Felperin argues that the play has a more complex attitude toward "orthodox Christian tragedy" than is often admitted; he sees a kinship between the play and the [[Herod the Great|tyrant plays]] within the medieval liturgical drama.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Felperin |first=Howard |title=Criticism: A Painted Devil: Macbeth - Howard Felperin - eNotes.com |url=https://www.enotes.com/topics/macbeth/criticism/macbeth-vol-44/religious-and-theological-issues/howard-felperin-essay-date |access-date=2025-03-20 |website=eNotes |language=en}}</ref>

Some modern queer readings of Macbeth are concerned with the play's themes of "linearity, temporality, and succession," rather than transgressive sexuality.<ref name=":0">{{Citation |last=Love |first=Heather |title=Macbeth: Milk |date=2011 |work=Shakesqueer |pages=201–208 |editor-last=Menon |editor-first=Madhavi |url=http://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1499/chapter/171534/MacbethMilk |access-date=2025-03-20 |publisher=Duke University Press |language=en |doi=10.1215/9780822393337-023 |isbn=978-0-8223-4833-7}}</ref> Lady Macbeth's request that the spirits she calls on "unsex" her is read by Madhavi Menon as indicative of [[wiktionary:sinthomosexual|sinthomosexual]] drive, and queer anti-maternity.<ref name=":0" /> The theme of androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder, with feminist critic Dympna Callaghan arguing that Duncan's corpse stands in for both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's "gender indeterminacy".<ref>{{Citation |title=A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare |date=2000 |work=A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare |pages=3–20 |editor-last=CALLAGHAN |editor-first=DYMPNA |url=https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631208075.2000.00003.x |access-date=2025-03-20 |place=Oxford, UK |publisher=Blackwell Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-0-631-20807-5}}</ref> Macbeth also plays with the Inversion of normative gender roles, most famously in the case of the witches (and with Lady Macbeth as she appears in the first act). Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feministpsychoanalytic critics, such as Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of inverted natural order, as expressed through the "malignant maternal power" of the witches and Lady Macbeth.<ref>{{Citation |last=Adelman |first=Janet |title='Born of woman': Fantasies of Maternal Power in 'Macbeth' |date=1992 |work=Macbeth |url=https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350387614.ch-005 |access-date=2025-04-01 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-350-38760-7}}</ref> Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by being removed from the cycles of nature (which are figured as female); nature itself (as embodied in the movement of Birnam Wood) is part of the restoration of moral order.

===As a poetic tragedy===
Critics in the early twentieth century reacted against what they saw as an excessive dependence on the study of character in criticism of the play. This dependence, though most closely associated with [[A. C. Bradley]], is clear as early as the time of [[Mary Cowden Clarke]], who offered precise, if fanciful, accounts of the predramatic lives of Shakespeare's female leads. She suggested, for instance, that the child Lady Macbeth refers to in the first act died during a foolish military action.<ref name="Byler2015">{{cite journal|author=Lauren Byler|title=Loose characters in Mary Cowden Clarke's The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines in a Series of Tales |journal=Texas Studies in Literature and Language |volume=57 |issue=3 |date=2015 |page=343 |doi=10.7560/TSLL57305 |s2cid=162081047 |issn=0040-4691}}</ref>

===Witchcraft and evil===
[[File:Macbeth and Banquo with the witches JHF.jpg|thumb|''Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches'' by [[Henry Fuseli]]]]

In the play, the Three Witches represent darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses.{{sfn|Kliman|Santos|2005|p=14}} Their presence communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be".{{sfn|Perkins|1610|p=53}} They were not only political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world.{{sfn|Coddon|1989|p=491}} The witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air" are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed, the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only trouble for the mortals around them.{{sfn|Frye|1987}}{{page needed|date=January 2018}} The witches' spells are remarkably similar to the spells of the witch Medusa in Anthony Munday's play ''[[Fidele and Fortunio]]'' published in 1584, and Shakespeare may have been influenced by these.

While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.{{sfn|Frye|1987}}{{page needed|date=January 2018}}

According to J. A. Bryant Jr., ''Macbeth'' also makes use of Biblical parallels, notably between King Duncan's murder and the murder of [[Christ]]:

{{blockquote|No matter how one looks at it, whether as history or as tragedy, ''Macbeth'' is distinctively Christian. One may simply count the Biblical allusions as Richmond Noble has done; one may go further and study the parallels between Shakespeare's story and the Old Testament stories of [[Saul]] and [[Jezebel]] as Miss Jane H. Jack has done; or one may examine with W. C. Curry the progressive degeneration of Macbeth from the point of view of medieval theology.{{sfn|Bryant|1961|p=153}}|sign=|source=}}