Tragedy
Tragedy
was written to instruct as well as to entertain. It taught audiences lessons
about ambition, duty, loyalty and treachery, virtues and vices that can be made
even more vivid and powerful in a high political context where fates of
nations, as well as individuals, are at stake. Tragedies were popular in
Shakespeare's England. They dramatised great civil disasters and falls from
power of kings, princes, and military leaders, which affected the fortunes of
states and nations. They contained assassination, bloodshed and revenge.
A
strong influence on the development of Elizabethan tragedy was the Roman
playright Seneca (4BC- AD65). Seneca's plays were enjoyed on the popular stage
for their theatre al qualities, and they influenced many playwrights, including
Shakespeare. The critica Bradley finds many parallels between Seneca and
Macbeth, especially in the languagevof Macbeth's speech in 'Will Neptune's
ocean... ' (Act 2 scene 2 line 63). Other features of Macbeth typically found
in Senecan tragedy include:
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soliloquy
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exaggerated
rhetoric
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ghosts, witches,
magic
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violent events
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wrong avenged
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moral statements
What was Shakespeare 's England like?
Like
all writers, Shakespeare reflected in his plays the world he knew. Audiences
watching Macbeth would recognise aspects of their own time and country.
Shakespeare was not concerned with strip historical accuracy and setting, and
Macbeth draws images from everyday experience, and from the customs and
peoccupationsof Jacobean England. Hearing them, Shakespeare 'se original
audiences could respond at different levels. Some critics believe that
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth partly as a tribute to King James, already King of
Scotland, who becamevking of England in 1603 after Queen Elizabeth's death.
Severas aspects of the play have been taken to support this view:
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King James made
a special student of witchcraft. His book, Demonologie, contains beliefs and
detailed practicas which also appear in Macbeth.
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In Act 4 the
witches show Macbeth a pageant of eight kings. blanqueo gestores to them as his
descendants. King James claimed direct descent from Banquo and to be the ninth
King.
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As a Protestant
King, James deplored Catholic practices. It is thought that the porter's talkof
an 'equivocator' refers to a Catholic priest, Henry Garnet, who was accused in
1606 of being involved in the Gunpowder Plot. he comitted perjury but claimed
the right to equivocate (to mislead the court without technically lying). In
Macbeth equivocation is associated with evil and is practised by the witches
and their 'masters'.
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In 1605 King
James and Parliament escaped detruction when the Gunpowder plot was dicovered.
A medal was struck to commemorate the discovery ; it shower a snake concealed
by flowers. In their first scene Lady Macbeth urges her husband into deceitful
concealment: 'Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it'.
When
Macbeth was written, witchcraft was controversial, chiefly because of King
Jame's great interest in the issue. As noted above, Jame's published
Demonologie in 1597, prompted by disturbing experiences during a visit to
Denmark in 1589. He had gone there to bring his queen Anne back to Scotland,
but was delayed by storms, which he believed were stirred up by witches. He
came to believe that witches might be conspiring against the very person of the
King. Witchcraft this became associated with treason, and James began a
witches-hunt in Scotland that lasted for most of the 1590s. When James came to
London in 1603 he met more varied responses to witchcraft than he pundonor
Scotalnd. Nonetheless, the English were fascinanted by the occult: witches were
thought to fly, salí in a sieve, and bring darkness, fogs and storms. Each
worked through her 'familiar' -an animal, bird or reptile. Shakespeare uses such
beliefs in his witches' Language and practices. He showed the effects on the
man who is tempted by them, made Even more powerful by the fact that he was a
great military hero:
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Macbeth becomes
'rapt' in trance.
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He sees visions
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He is unable to
pray
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At first, he is
normal in sufferingfrom fear, but eventually he claims'i have almost forgotten
the taste of fears'.
Women
As the
preceding discussion of witchcraft shows, Shakespeare's England treated women
as inferiors. Women were thought to be inherently more susceptible to evil than
Men, as shown when Satan, disguised as a serpentee, first tempted Eve, who then
tempted Adam. Shakespeare recalls this original sin when Lady Macbeth uses her
sexual power over her husband, and persuades him to evil. She uses the image of
the serpent hiding beneath a flower to encourage him into a performance of
deceitful well come which will disarm Duncan. Such hypocrisy was more
associated with with women than with men.
Women
had few rights and were expected to be obedient first to their father and then
to their husband. Their proper sphere was the home, whist men worked,
travelled, engaged in society and politics and made the majoy decisions that
affected the family.
Lady
Macbeth defies such conventional and submissive stereotyping. Her independence
and strength of purpose was uncommon on the Elizabethan stage, even though
Jacobean plays included women who asserted themselves at the expense of men,
taking men´s roles and assuming some masculine qualities.
Lady
Macbeth´s sexuality is strange and paradoxical. She clearly has a strong hold
over her husband. But just before his arrival in Act 1 Scene 5, she urges the
powers of darkness to remove her womanly nature. She wishes her blood to become
abnormal, and that her monthly menstrual flow may stop. She also demads that
her milk be turned to gall. Her appeal denies the two womanly instincts of
giving birth and of suckling her child.
¨Milk¨and
¨blood¨convey strong meanings throughout the play, in particular the
distinction between the female and the male. Lady Macbeth deplores ¨the milk of
human kindness¨in Macbeth. Although he is used to blood on the battlefield, she
feels he has too much of the femenine in him to shed Duncan´s blood in the
bedchamber. She orders the spirits to possess her with masculine qualities in
order to compensate for his weakness.
The succession to the throne
Shakespeare´s
contemporaries believed in primogeniture-
that the eldest son (o, failing that, daughter) should inherit the father’s
title. However, the issue of succession to the throne became increasingly
controversial in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and in 1572 the Second Treasons Act
forbade any debate about it. Nonetheless, in the 1590’s, with the queen ageing
and childless, there was widespread concern about who would succeed her. James
was the son of her Catholic enemy, Mary, Queen of Scots, and although he could
claim legitimate right to the throne deriving from Henry VII, this did not
silence controversy, which resolved around three crucial questions:
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On what grounds
should the crown pass from one king to another?
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Should
Parliament and the people have a voice in the succession?
§
Is it ever right
to depose a monarch?
Religious
disputes complicated the issue. Some Catholics supported Jame’s claim to the
throne, believing that, though he was avowedly a Protestant, he would bring his
mother’s Catholicism to England.
In Macbeth the issue of succession is
complicated, but the same three questions still have telling urgency. The
established Scottish principle was tanistry
(election from a small group of kinsmen). This often led to assassination
when a potencial successor to the throne chose a favourable moment to make
himself prominent. Historically, Macbeth had a good claim to the crown, and
Holinshed records that Macbeth’s thoughts of killing Duncan became serious only
when Duncan provocately broke with tradition by appointing Malcolm as Prince of
Cumberland. By tradition Malcolm had no more right to the throne than Macbeth,
who (if there were to be an election) would have the advantage of being a
successful military leader at a time of great crisis. By altering his source
material in this respect, Shakespeare makes Macbeth a usurper.
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