Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth's response upon learning of Lady Macbeth's death is one of the most powerful passages of the entire play. This passage displays his dependence upon Lady Macbeth for strength and motivation and his deep love for her. He feels that life in no longer worth living now that she is gone. He relates life to a "tale told by an idiot...signifying nothing" because he feels that life is basically not worth living without his wife just as a tale told by an idiot is not worth listening to. This passage ties into the theme of masculinity vs. femininity that is present throughout the entire work. The fact that Macbeth was so reliant upon Lady Macbeth for willpower and support was a typical gender role reversal. Lady Macbeth was the one with the real control in their relationship. She was the one manipulating Macbeth by telling him he could not be a coward and making him feel he had to prove his masculinity. This is ironic because behind the scenes she is the one playing the cards. Lady Macbeth is not your traditional loving, innocent housewife; she is dominant, demanding, and absolutely insistant upon Macbeth obtaining the power of the kingship.
As soon as Lady Macbeth dies, Macbeth slowly begins to crumble because he was so reliant upon her. He basically consulted her on every move he made and looked to her to justify and assure himself that what he was doing indeed was the right thing to do. After her death, Macbeth's downfall and ultimate murder follow fairly quickly. In this passage, Macbeth pretty much says that life is just going to drag on and on with no point whatsoever now that his wife is gone. Lady Macbeth definitely would not have felt the same way if Macbeth had died. In this relationship, although both of them are fairly horrible, Macbeth is the softer and more caring while Lady Macbeth is the more canniving and guiltless. Macbeth actually struggles with himself and the person he is becoming a couple of times throughout the course of the play, while Lady Macbeth washes her hands clean of the blood and moves right on. She is certainly the more aggressive and hardened character.
B.) Macbeth is most certainly categorized as a tragedy. The character of Macbeth, through his own actions and ambition, causes his own downfall. Though once credited as a brave military leader, Macbeth lets his greed and desire for power ultimately destroy him. The definition of a tragedy is a dramatic composition dealing with a serious or somber theme typically involving a great person destined through a flaw of character to downfall or destruction. Macbeth obviously falls under this category because though he could have been great and revered for his abilities, he wants more and more and lets his ambition destroy his personality. The reader has to feel some degree of sympathy for Macbeth in this play because his greed causes him nothing but more and more misery and despair. I think Macbeth realizes the wretched person he has allowed himself to become when Lady Macbeth dies and he is left with basically nothing but to await his death, which he seems to know is inevitable as an army marches toward him.
The difference between the Macbeth that is engulfed and blinded by his own ambition and the Macbeth that could have lived happily had he not been given the witch's prophecies is so dramatic that the reader must pity the way things turned out. This drastic difference and change in personality when presented with an oppurtunity for power enforced the theme that power can be costly, even deadly, and can cause changes in people that could never have been expected.
C.) I enjoyed this play but it was probably my least favorite of the Shakespearean plays we have read this year. I thought the killing got to be a little too much and was not really necessary after a while. The theme of the desire for power being a force too powerful for Macbeth to overcome was clear and I did not really think quite that many murders were needed to accentuate the theme. I did like the gender role reversals in the beginning of the play and the character of Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth was an extremely powerful character, though terribly evil, and she served as the driving force behind Macbeth's actions, assuring him all along that he was doing the right thing and manipulating him by making everything into a test of masculinity.
Lady Macbeth is not your traditional wife, especially in the time that this play was written, and I appreciate the fact that in the actual plays she is almost always depicted as fairly attractive. Generally evil people are depicted as ugly or deformed, but Lady Macbeth is deceiving because her appearance does not parallel her personality. I also found myself pitying Macbeth, even though he was a pretty horrible person, because he was so mislead and power-hungry that he basically destroyed his own life and caused his own misery.
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