This paper applies a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework to Shakespeare's Macbeth, arguing that Macbeth's moral deterioration is driven by his absorption into the symbolic order of language embodied by the witches. Beginning as a loyal subject of Duncan, Macbeth enters the witches' discursive system the moment their language mirrors his own, awakening a desire for kingship that did not previously exist. The paper traces how this linguistic "infection" passes from the witches to Macbeth and then to Lady Macbeth, examines the contrasting trajectories of both characters, and considers the role of free will in Macbeth's choices. Ultimately, it argues that Shakespeare defines character through language, and that Macbeth's tragedy is the story of a man gradually hollowed out by a symbolic system he voluntarily — yet irreversibly — entered.
The paper demonstrates the technique of theoretical application: taking an established framework (here, Lacanian psychoanalysis and its concepts of the symbolic order, the Other, and desire as produced by language rather than pre-existing it) and systematically using it to reread a canonical literary text. The paper does not merely describe Lacan or describe Macbeth — it shows how the framework resolves an interpretive problem (the question of Macbeth's agency) that other readings leave open.
The paper opens by staking out its thesis and immediately addressing a competing interpretation (the quasi-Oedipal reading). It then reconstructs Macbeth's pre-witch characterization to establish a baseline, before tracing the step-by-step linguistic transformation. A dedicated section handles Lady Macbeth's parallel but divergent trajectory. The paper closes by returning to the question of free will, completing a full argumentative arc from the introduction's claim to a nuanced final position.
This paper uses a Lacanian hermeneutic to argue that Macbeth enters into the discourse of the witches in a manner that explains his moral trajectory over the course of Shakespeare's tragedy. Macbeth begins the play as a loyal subject of Duncan, which is explicit when he says to his wife: "We will proceed no further in this business: / He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people" (1.7). Lady Macbeth reinvigorates his resolve by challenging her husband's masculinity: "When you durst do it, then you were a man" (1.7). This has caused some scholars to see Lady Macbeth as a kind of quasi-Oedipal maternal figure, using her power to kill the fatherly Duncan. However, this reading is problematic given the degree to which the witches influence Macbeth — it is he who writes to Lady Macbeth about his destiny to become king in the first place. Indeed, even Lady Macbeth's own language reflects the witches when she says in her famous monologue: "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be / What thou art promised" (1.5).
A more accurate reading, which accounts for the dual influence of both the witches and Lady Macbeth, is to offer a Lacanian psychoanalytic interpretation of Macbeth's psychological journey. Macbeth's shift in character is exhibited by a fundamental discursive shift: his language changes as it is infected by that of the witches. He then passes on this infection — this "possession" reflected in language — to Lady Macbeth, who, significantly, when first plotting murder is actually reading the witches' words as expressed in her husband's letter. Macbeth's possession by the witches' language is immediately demonstrated when he mourns their departure after his first encounter with them: "Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted / As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd!" (1.3).
Before this rapt attention on Macbeth's part, there is no evidence he ever harbored traitorous thoughts. In fact, Shakespeare deliberately orchestrates events so that the first impression the audience receives of Macbeth is of a "bloody man" telling King Duncan of Macbeth's valor in battle — a stark contrast to the original Thane of Cawdor, a traitor. The unnamed soldier's vivid depiction of Macbeth in service of the king is calculated to give the audience a swift sense of Macbeth as a loyal subject and a skilled warrior, not a man who is inherently evil by nature. Ironically, after becoming the next Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth will likewise become a traitor and betray Duncan, and the epitaph of the former Thane would be equally fitting for Macbeth: "nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it" (1.4).
Yet just as Macbeth once fought savagely and loyally for the king, he will, within a few acts, fight equally savagely for his own self-preservation as a threatened ruler. As Duncan says upon gazing at Macbeth after executing Cawdor: "There's no art / To find the mind's construction in the face: / He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust" (1.4). Duncan is unable to "read" the change that has taken place within Macbeth even as he mourns Cawdor's treachery. Macbeth's outward appearance is the same, even though the audience is well aware that his language has become infused with the witches' words.
The audience knows that Macbeth is no longer the same man who fought so loyally for the king because his first words — "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" (1.3.38) — directly echo the witches' incantation, "fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1.11). Macbeth has already entered into the Lacanian symbolic order of language personified by the witches, even before he is aware that he has been named Thane of Cawdor. Fundamental to the Lacanian view is that language creates desire; desire does not pre-exist language. Macbeth may be a ruthless warrior, but until the language of the witches mirrors his own, there is no indication in his actions that he is a traitor by natural inclination. The words "Thane of Cawdor," once spoken, cause him to credit the witches' prophecy and set off the swift, bloody chain of events that results in his death: "The thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me / In borrow'd robes?" (1.3).
It could be argued that Macbeth already senses the witches are "imperfect speakers" — that in the incomplete nature of their speech something is lacking. They do not explain how he will become king, or how Banquo's issue will become king. Banquo's language and his mistrust of the witches indicate that he is never welcomed into their symbolic order. His inability to speak the language of murder and kingship is underscored when his ghost appears utterly silent during the banquet scene, unlike the other specters conjured by the witches in the play. Macbeth, by contrast, is infected — and his very language even before he meets the witches suggests a predisposition to that infection. Once he is welcomed into the witches' Lacanian schema, he is, in fact, doomed.
For Macbeth, the symbolic center — the sense of "lacking" that stimulates desire and draws his character into the economy of the witches' language — is the desire to be king. Theirs is a hermetically sealed system of belief, where only violence can triumph and inversion ("fair is foul; foul is fair") reigns, in contrast to the conventional moral schemas embraced by Banquo, Macduff, and the play's other characters.
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