Lady Macbeth and Macbeth

Theatrical Analysis of Macbeth and Antigone The most accounted features of a tragedy are the gloominess of atmosphere, solemnity of action, mental conflicts, strain, suspense and capability of capturing the audience. Tragedy tries to stimulate the sentiments of pity and fear (Devi 1). Thus, this study is comparing the two Shakespearean and Greek tragedies, Macbeth and Antigone. This analysis will compare and contrast the two plays, their theme, comparison of main characters, conflict, plot etc.

The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of the plays to the reader and to assess the similarity and differences in both the plays. Macbeth unfolds the story of a man, ambitious to become a king. He even murders King Duncan to fulfil his ambition due to the prophecy of the three witches and his wife, Lady Macbeth. However, he ends up dying because of his greediness.

Antigone, on the other hand, unveils the story of a young woman, courageous enough to break the rules laid down by King Creon. She demands justice for the improper burial of her brother and she also dies at the end (Puspita, Arifaturrochmah &Setyowati, 2013) Macbeth and Antigone both lie in the category of tragedy as both the dramas end with the death of the protagonists.

Both the dramas are powerful in their approach as every act has its penalties and characters have to face them as a consequence of their action. Thus, the theme, as communicated in the end of both the dramas, is that people must learn the tough way resulting from their mistakes. In Sophocles' Antigone, Antigone and King Creon have to face consequences of their actions; as Creon has to face the loss of his family (Haimon and Eurydice) due to his bad decisions during his reign in Thebes.

Antigone also bears the consequences of burying her brother's body and ends up committing suicide, followed by the death of Haimon and Eurydice. The tragic end is the outcome of Creon's unwise decisions during his reign. While in Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth face their punishments due to their ambitions. Lady Macbeth detonates her ambitions by means of Macbeth by using her gender. She fulfils her ambitions by questioning Macbeth about his manhood, (Puspitaet al.

2013) as she says, Art thou afraid To be the same in thine own act and valour As thou art in desire?.. When you durst do it, then you were a man (Boyd 176). And along with three witches, she provokes Macbeth to murder King Duncan and become powerful. But, ambitions have costs, as they pay the price by death. They achieved their ambition but could not even enjoy it because of their bad ways of achieving it (Puspita et al. 2013).

Macbeth is considered as the shortest and blood-spattered of all the other Shakespearean tragedies. The story revolves around the obsession of the title character with power, which initiated due to the prophecy of the three witches that Macbeth would become king one day, which he shares with his wife, Lady Macbeth. The reward generates a conflict in Macbeth's life when he gets an opportunity to murder King Duncan to become king and make the prophecy true (Jankowski, 2017).

However, in Sophocles' Antigone, Antigone's struggle starts when she acquires the knowledge of her birth by incestuous union of the former king of Thebes, Oedipus, with his own mother, Jocasta. When she learns about the blindness of her father-brother, she follows him into banishment not to return to Thebes until his death to try to reunite her brothers who were in a dispute over the throne. However, both the brothers in dispute are killed and her uncle, Creon, becomes the king.

Creon honours the one who was protecting Thebes but condemns the corpse of another to rot as a traitor and forbids its removal. Antigone, not convinced with the justice done, believes that it disrupts the divine law and thus, out of her love for her brother, she secretly buries the body herself. Creon thus sentences her to be buried alive in a cave. This bewildering story, like Macbeth, unfolds the association between man and society i.e.

the opposition of an individual to Power and the reaction of Power to the opposition (Stewart 2013). Conflict The basic component of the course of action in a play is the dramatic conflict which results from the chemistry of opposite forces i.e. the ideas or interests, in the plot. The actual plot in a tragedy starts with the introduction of a conflict and ends with its solution. The middle of the play includes the advancement and variations of the conflict (Devi 1).

The central conflict, critically assessed in Antigone, can be said to be one of the State/power against the individual; where King Creon represents the power/State and Antigone the individual. This conflict between the two has frequently been interpreted as one between a political power and an individual's conscience. Watson's assessment of the play restates that Antigone displays a crystal-clear conflict between the contradictory notions of law, the human law and a greater divine law (qtd. in Owoeye 102).

The targets of the law of Creon, regarding the corpses of the brothers, are Antigone and Ismene, the only living relatives of the King Oedipus. However, Antigone sees herself not as a woman fighting men in a patriarchal world rather as a human being, united with gods to fight human oppression and injustice to other human beings. Therefore, Antigone considers this conflict as the one between the other worldly and the ordinary, the divine powers governing the universe and the physical powers (Owoeye 108).

In tragedy, two types of conflicts i.e. inward and outward can be observed. Outward conflict includes the tussle between two opposite parties, of the hero with the other one; as Macbeth involves the tussle between Macbeth and King Duncan's supporters, chiefly Macduff and Malcolm; and with his own wife, Lady Macbeth, who questions his manhood, calls him coward and provokes him to murder Duncan.

Macbeth, at the onset, is a praise-worthy war hero, but lured by power and progress; and due to the Lady Macbeth's constant pressure to fulfil the witches' prophecy, he tussles with the choice of murdering Duncan for his personal advantage. Encouraged by his ambition, he executes the unthinkable and murders Duncan and flounders in guilt later. His conscience supersedes and fear sets in with unending repercussions.

Macbeth, near the end, is hardly recognizable or comparable to the former praise-worthy hero introduced at the onset of the play, signifying the tax that evil takes (Jankowski 2017). The other inward conflict is more significant as it takes place within the mind of the protagonist, which is the conflict of feeling with feeling, of mind with mind. Presentation of this inner conflict is the forte of Shakespeare which places him far ahead of his contemporaries. All his great tragedies include heroes who are at war with themselves, facing contradictory emotions.

Macbeth also includes this inner conflict between the ambition and conscience in the mind of Macbeth that creates internal and greater tragedy (Devi 2). This internal conflict strikes Macbeth after the murder of King Duncan, which makes him so distressed and guilt-stricken that he starts hearing voices and has a feeling of isolation and uproar within him. A similar guilt feeling and internal turmoil occurs within his mind after the murder of Banquo, when he has the hallucinations of Banquo's blood-stained body at his dinner table.

Plot Shakespeare's Macbeth is considered as the shortest and the one most reworked by editors, by rearranging the disjointed and confusing lines, wherever required. However, it is believed to be Shakespeare's custom of weaving two-to-three stories together, but Macbeth differs from the lot in its plot structure, following the custom that a simple plot enhances the effectiveness of the play on the stage.

Macbeth has one plot and the story revolves around a few characters, and due to this unity and simplicity of plot, it is considered as the swiftest one in its movement, amongst all other tragedies of Shakespeare. Macbeth is interested in the murder of Duncan and Shakespeare makes him do the deed as if bound. Banquo seems a hindrance in the way, and the hint is trailed by the plan and it is executed.

Macbeth on getting information about fleeing of thane of Fife to England, at once decides on the murder of Macduff's kin (Cross 1999-2014) Similarly, Greek tragedy Antigone includes the action that takes place within a single day. But, no circumstance has as strictly been observed as the unity of action, which included prohibited under-plots, separating tragedy from comedy, and introducing anything which is not directly related to catastrophe and the design of the chief purpose, which interferes with the sincere impression for which the work was planned to make.

The fine illustration of this can be seen in Antigone as the opening dialogue reveals the conflict between the civil legislation and human piousness, the affirmative law of the state and the unrecorded law of the heart; and the action never deviates from the prescribed course in any single scene or incident, until the one type shown as Creon demonstrates the risk of arrogantly elevating the human law over the law of nature.

The other type is shown as Antigone when the large amount must be compensated, on earth at least, for disobeying the human law in order to obey a higher law (Collins, 2006). Characterisation Shakespeare weaved many stories into excellent dramas for Elizabethan stage. Shakespeare knew the style of involving and entertaining audiences with creative imagination, fast-moving plots and multi-layered characters (Underwood 2). The characterization in Macbeth, alike his other great tragedies, are multi-faceted strong characters, plotting, planning and facing the consequences of their decisions.

The character of Macbeth himself is a noble-turned-usurper antihero in the play Macbeth. Macbeth, the main character, plays both the character of a protagonist and antagonist in the course of action and his role is one of the most debatable and the most extensively researched and analysed in the English literature (Chu 2010).

Macbeth, initially a loyal subject of the Duncan King of Scotland; well esteemed, conquered agitators and invadors, became dubious after meeting the witches, harbouring ambition of becoming the king, gets influenced by his wife, commits murder of the King, slowly becoming a moral monster as he starts killing randomly, and finally gets killed himself by Macduff when it is exposed that he misunderstood the prophecies (Chu 2010). Similarly, Creon, in Antigone, is initially portrayed as a just ruler with rational justifications for his laws and punishments.

But, by the end, his extreme pride overpowers him, resulting in his demise. His self-righteousness and pride of considering himself superior to all, as he says, "The State is King," reflects his viewpoint of being superior to even Gods, which later results in his downfall (Cap 2016). Likewise, the two powerful female characters of the two plays are of no less importance as dramatists did not produce them. Instead, they only gave the stimulus and emerged from the circumstances themselves, becoming the great figures as Lady Macbeth and.