Macbeth

Macbeth:
"We can't go on with this plan. The king has just honored me, and I have earned the good opinion of all sorts of people. I want to enjoy these honors while the feeling is fresh and not throw them away so soon.

Lady Macbeth
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would, ”
Like the poor cat i' th' adage?

Lady Macbeth

Were you drunk when you seemed so hopeful before? Have you gone to sleep and woken up green and pale in fear of this idea? From now on this is what I'll think of your love. Are you afraid to act the way you desire? Will you take the crown you want so badly, or will you live as a coward, always saying “I can't” after you say “I want to”? You're like the poor cat in the old story.

Macbeth
Prithee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

Macbeth

Please, stop! I dare to do only what is proper for a man to do. He who dares to do more is not a man at all.

Lady Macbeth

What beast was 't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Lady Macbeth
If you weren't a man, then what kind of animal were you when you first told me you wanted to do this? When you dared to do it, that's when you were a man. And if you go one step further by doing what you dared to do before, you'll be that much more the man. The time and place weren't right before, but you would have gone ahead with the murder anyhow. Now the time and place are just right, but they're almost too good for you. I have suckled a baby, and I know how sweet it is to love the baby at my breast. But even as the baby was smiling up at me, I would have plucked my nipple out of its mouth and smashed its brains out against a wall if I had sworn to do that the same way you have sworn to do this."

This quote is a tad extensive, but it beautifully portrays one of the main themes within the play Macbeth. Shakespeare focuses on a role reversal between Macbeth and his wife. He uses the stereotypes that men are supposed to be the daring and courageous ones while women should be reserved and uncertain. However, as is obvious from the quote, Lady Macbeth is in charge. She taunts him with charges of cowardliness and unmasculinity. She herself though, is the one who is sure that they must carry out their deadly plan and scolds her husband for his lack of courage. She questions what type of man he can be. This is exactly what Shakespeare aimed to do. Macbeth appears weak in the beginning so that he can be consumed more and more by evil as the play proceeds. Another one of the main themes in the play is how power can corrupt people and allow evil to consume them. Macbeth whimpers like a child the first time he claims an innocent man's life, but by the end of the novel, he dispatches of people without thinking twice. His progression was set-up and able to begin because of the switch in gender roles early on the play. His wife began to mold him into the man she thought he was. By playing on his weakness and insulting his masculinity, Lady Macbeth helps to turn Macbeth into one of the most heartless characters in literature.

Shakespeare wrote Macbeth as a tragedy. This genre is one of my favorite so Macbeth was my the drama I enjoyed the most. Tragedies tend to arouse feelings of sympathy for the tragic character because the audience witnesses the character's struggle step by step. Regardless of how evil Macbeth may have turned out, the audience feels sorry for him because they saw the innocence that was within him in the beginning of the drama. Tragic characters are some of the most interesting in all works of literature, especially Shakespeare's tragic characters. There were moments when Macbeth could have prevented his downfall. The audience sees him struggle with his decisions and secretly urges him to do the right thing. However, to their disappointment, he continues to travel down his path of fate and straight to his own demise. Tragedies have a way of drawing the reader in deeper and more effectively than the other genres of Shakespeare's play, which makes the reading experience all the more enjoyable.

Macbeth is easily my favorite play by Shakespeare. The way Shakespeare develops Macbeth's character and shows the step by step corruption/destruction of his soul is truly aweinspiring. Shakespeare helps the reader understand how evil slowly just consumes someone and makes them numb to all horror and destruction. Tragic characters are normally my favorite characters in a novel. Even as Macbeth meets his death, I felt a twinge of pity for him. A work of literature that can arouse pity from the reader, even after a character has been as ruthless as Macbeth, is one that should be remembered. I normally struggle reading Shakespeare, but this is a drama that I would enjoy looking into deeper into and analyzing Shakespeare's brilliance through the script.