Editing Macbeth (section)

===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.