Shakespeare's Macbeth acts 1, 2, and 3

Macbeth and Its Relation to Modern Times

The first three Acts of Macbeth witness the rise and the start of the fall of the tragic hero Macbeth. He proves himself valiant in battle and shows himself to be a loyal subject to Duncan. But then he is tempted by the witches to fulfill his ambition and rebel against his lawful king. He forgets the good, the true, and the beautiful, and puts his faith in the prophecy of the weird sisters. The affect of his revolution is a veritable bloodbath, as one murder leads to the next. With each murder, Macbeth grows colder as a person. By upsetting the order of the kingdom, he upsets the order in his soul, and goes from being a man of virtue to a man of nihilistic tendencies. As Richard Weaver suggests, there is an important significance to the character of Macbeth: "What the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals" (Weaver 2-3). What Macbeth begins to realize, however, is that the witches are liars and that he had realized himself most fully before yielding to the temptation of his ambition. This paper will show how for today's audiences, Macbeth may well represent the tragedy of rejecting the existence of transcendentals (the good, the true, and the beautiful), which give men a reason to maintain a line of decency, honesty, dignity, and virtue. For when Macbeth, urged by the witches and his wife, slays Duncan, he begins a downward spiral that ultimately leads to the loss of conscience and the loss of his head.

Order is upset in the Macbeth as soon as the play begins: the curtain has just opened, signifying the start of action, but the witches transpose the order of sequences by asking, "When shall we three meet again?" (1.1.1) as though the play were over. They then set about eliminating distinctions: they chant, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." (1.1.12). This elimination of distinction is later echoed by Macbeth, who is on his way back from the battlefield. Already disorder has crept into his mind. "So foul and fair a day I have not seen," he states (1.3.39). Rather than exulting in his victory on the battlefield, he appears to be troubled. He is in danger of losing his sense of order and value even before he meets the witches. They use his weakness to compel him to overturn his reason and pursue his ambition.

His mental and moral health is not helped any by his wife, who renounces her femininity (and ends up losing her mind): "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here." (1.5.47-8). She prays for a spirit of cruelty, knowing for well that their ambition can only be satisfied through cruelty. After the murder is committed, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and seemingly stunned by what they've done. Lady Macbeth states that "it will make us mad" (2.2.50) if they think too much on what they have done. Murder awakens her conscience. It kills Macbeth's.