The Tragedy of Macbeth by Shakespeare - Essay Example

Be Bloody, Bold and Resolute Shakespeare is perhaps one of the most influential and most celebrated in English literature. Not only is he known for his plays but his poetry as well. His works show complex human emotions and at the same time were beautifully written, which makes his works timeless in any generation. However, another aspect of Shakespeare’s plays was also brought into attention during the start of the 1970’s and is still a debatable topic until now. Author Carolyn Asp in 1981 brought upon the attention of sexual stereotyping regarding the characters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In her paper entitled “Be Bloody, Bold and Resolute”: Tragic Action and Stereotyping in Macbeth, Asp discussed the obvious sexual stereotypes of the male and female characters as well as how they relate to the effectiveness of the plot and of the play itself. Repression of some human emotions by the men as well as the needs for gender equality by the women were mentioned, and at the same time the play was able to show how such ideas would bring about the demise of the ruler and his wife. The Tragedy of Macbeth is a story about the rise of a king and the fall of a tyrant. What started out as something noble ended up into something despotic, which stems mainly from Macbeth’s fears of losing the throne and Lady Macbeth’s high aspirations for herself and her husband (Asp 153). In analyzing the plot of the play, Macbeth was influenced by the Three Witches, or the Three Weird Sisters, and this started out a series of events than ultimately destroyed his sense of humanity and distorted his perception as to what being a man is (166). Once Macbeth realized that the first prediction of the witches came true, he had an uncanny idea that he can become king. However, upon the suggestion of his much more strong-willed wife, Lady Macbeth, he has to prove his manhood in a much more violent way than going through the proper way of keeping his kingship. In a sense, while Macbeth doubts his own self, his wife was able to think of things clearly and enforce her own thoughts onto her husband. This makes Lady Macbeth the stronger one in this sense, which breaks the stereotypically docile image of females (Garner and Sprengnether 108). Another is the effect of the Three Witches in Macbeth’s life. Instead of paving the way for him to show what it is to be a real man, he heads out to the cave of the Three Witches to ask for guidance and to prevent his impending doom (Asp 165). The appearance as well as the reliance of Macbeth to the Three Witches also implies the vulnerability of men with regards to women in the realm of psychology (Garner and Sprengnether 111). It also implies the parallelism between Lady Macbeth and The Weird Sisters, where both were able to fuel Macbeth’s need for ambition and his drive to gain it. This shows a realm which is subtly touched by Shakespeare: an almost seemingly reversal of roles of men and women, where a man such as Macbeth has to be “mothered” by his wife, Lady Macbeth (Sadowski 285). It had to be noted that the strong emotions conveyed in the play were most effective when the seemingly weak-willed Macbeth had to gain insight and strength from the stronger-willed Lady Macbeth. She and Macbeth have exchanged roles, which also represents and exchange in their characteristics. This causes the audiences to polarize the two, with Macbeth exhibiting the role of yielding female, and of Lady Macbeth, an “unconscious maleness” (Sadowski 285). If it was the typical format of plays where the woman is portrayed as the weaker sex, the bloodshed and the killing would not be sufficiently justified. Lady Macbeth provides the source of willpower for her husband, especially when she has to taunt him a lot in order to show how manly he must be (Johnson 22). However, throughout the play, although the Lady Macbeth recognizes the differences between the sexes, she herself admittedly wishes be rather “unsexed”, so as to be able to do what she wishes, aside from being just a partner for her husband (1.5.41). This shows how willingly she wants to do anything, even to remove her maternal role to become the driving force in her husband’s murderous plans (Johnson 21). However, during the progress of the play, it is noticeable how the once seemingly-powerful Lady Macbeth quickly becomes pushed towards the background, bit by bit as Macbeth loses his sense of humanity (Sadowski 289). This just shows that while in the beginning of the plot, Lady Macbeth is more than willing to do whatever it takes to make her husband king, but in the end she really just wants to be seen as his equal and his partner in all doings. Ultimately she shares the madness that brought upon the ruin of the king, instead of the honor that kingship brings (Asp 169). Meanwhile, for Macbeth, while he strives to be seen as a man in terms of his abilities in battle, in reality he was just as weak as anyone else. It is most visible at the start of the play, when he was just a static character that has no strong sense of action (Sadowski 287). Instead of relying on himself, he has to gain the approval and even the support of his wife just to be able to get a greater resolve and ambition. However, once the ball starts rolling, the wife no longer is consulted and thus was the illusion of being manly enough to bring down all possible seekers of his throne (289). While the whole play itself is portrayed as a “hypermasculine world”, in reality most of the events were actually perpetrated by the Three Witches, which could also imply that most of the misunderstandings and wars were originally started by women (Machin and Norris 52). It shows a form of anxiety that is directed towards women, which were later portrayed by the witches and of Lady Macbeth (50). The feminine sides of some of the manly characters were also showed in some parts of the play. For example, Macduff initially wishes to grieve for the massacre of his family, However, Malcolm persuades him to just face it like a man, since shedding tears would make him seem like a woman (Asp 155). In the end, Macduff settles the score by exacting revenge on Macbeth, but not without settling his grief and “feeling it like a man” (Elsom 77). Another is the portrayal of King Duncan as the all-encompassing king. While most of the men being portrayed in the play were violent, brutal, and somewhat unjust, King Duncan was able to show a softer side of men, both by being a source of lineage and power, and by being the source of a benign and empowering nurturance which is normally exhibited by most mothers (Garner and Sprengnether 108). In this case, it shows how Duncan as an authority figure combines the dual roles of both being a father and a mother not just to his generals, but to his whole kingdom in general. It can be noted that while Macbeth exudes truant characteristics, Duncan shows a more nurturing side, which is even more contrasted by the Three Witches cooking up evils in their cauldrons (109). Another aspect of sexual stereotyping such as the attribution of negative actions to males and of positive actions to females is somewhat a recurring theme in most of Shakespeare’s plays. While being honorable, brave and noble would constitute a man’s characteristics, in order to portray this a man has to exert the effort of showing much violence for the common good (Asp 154). Inasmuch as Lady Macbeth wishes to become much more of a man by declaring that she wishes to have her sex removed, by ordering her husband to do despicable deeds, it can be seen that for her, being a man requires doing whatever is at his disposal to show it. This became a running idea for Macbeth, even after losing his own sense of humanity he was still desperately trying to feign his manliness through violence in the battlefield. It can be also noted that aside from winning heroic battles to be considered a man, dying in a battle can also confer manhood, which what drove Macbeth to still keep on fighting even when he knew he was already losing (Herrmann 6). To summarize, the play The Tragedy of Macbeth is a uniquely strong and emotional play written by Shakespeare that deals with the emotions living within the depths of the human soul. Although it is seen in a subtle way, the forces and pressures for both sexes were portrayed and played in such a way that inner conflicts would be the source for the power struggle in the story’s plot. However, without the strong reversal of stereotypical roles, the play would not be much dramatic. There is the struggle for freedom, seen with Lady Macbeth and her wish to become a man. There is also Macbeth’s inner conflict of acting whether to be a man by being noble and true, or by acting violently in order to assess his status both as a king and as a person showing his manhood. It is in this false sense of manhood that he ultimately dies from, concluding his tyrant life and ending it in full circle. In Asp’s paper, all possible sources of conflicts were gathered and processed, which were, and still are true even in this modern era. Works Cited Asp, Carolyn. “‘Be Bloody, Bold and Resolute’: Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth.” Studies in Philology 78.2 (1981): 153-69. Print. Elsom, John. “Is Shakespeare Still our Contemporary?” Suffolk: Routledge, 1989. Print. Garner, Shirley and Sprengnether, Madelon. “Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender”. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996. Print. Herrmann, Katharina. “Gender Politics in “”Macbeth””. Norderstedt: Grin Verlag, 2008. Print. Johnson, Jeff. “William Inge and the Subversion of Gender.” North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005. Print. Machin, Richard and Norris, Christopher. “Post-structuralist Readings of English Poetry.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print. Sadowski, Piotr. “Dynamism of Character in Shakespeare’s Mature Tragedies.” Danvers, MA.: Rosemont Publishing and Printing Corp, 2003. 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