Macbeth

This is a blog written in response of a task assigned by Dilip sir. It is based on Shakespeare's famous play, Macbeth.

Macbeth- The tragedy of ambition: How do you view it in today's time?

Macbeth is a popular tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been performed first in the year 1606. It portrays the physical and psychological after effects of excessive ambition towards something and the one who has lust for power. All the plays of Shakespeare were written during the reign of James-I , which reflects his relationship with him. Macbeth is known to be the shortest tragedy of Shakespeare. 

Excess of anything can be poison and here Macbeth's ambition and the greed for power gradually turns into a sweet poison. He believes in the prophecies of three witches, under whose influence he conspires to murder King Duncan. He has been one of the most faithful warriors and has been rewarded for the same as well. Macbeth's wife, lady Macbeth is a lady of unpleasant strong opinion and excessive thirst for power and vanity. Besides the prophecies of witches, it's Lady Macbeth who encouraged Macbeth to kill King Duncan and acquire all the powers and vanity for the kids they might have in the future and for their well being as well. The three witches scene is a very prominent one throughout the play as it's the words of witches that play an important role in provoking Macbeth and lady Macbeth to murder their king. King is unaware of their evil intentions towards him and goes for dinner at their place. He is impressed by the service of Lady Macbeth and after that lady Macbeth provokes Macbeth to kill the King. After he kills the king Macbeth feels sudden guilt and his conscious strikes him over and over again for the charge of the murder of Duncan.

Macbeth

The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."

—Macbeth, Act I, Scene IV

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are crowned as the king and queen of the kingdom, despite attaining the power and vanity they were not happy with. Macbeth was extremely guilty of what all he had done and how he cheated his king. This guilt led him to commit more and more murders in order to survive the charge of convicting the murder of King Duncan. He even states that no water shall be able to clean the blood of his hands. 

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red' Macbeth (Act II, Sc. II). Macbeth laments in this passage that all the oceans in the world wouldn't be capable of washing the blood from his hands.

The use of hyperbole here signifies the amount of guilt he has. In the lust for the power he even murders his own friend Banquo and eventually sees his ghost every where around him. The reaction of Macbeth made people suspicious about him being guilty of charges. 

He is so blind by the power of the throne that he again goes to the witches and asks him if he ever will be caught. The witches give a very smart reply that he shall never be killed by the one who is born out of a woman. This makes Macbeth happy and satisfies what he wants to hear. He also kills a lot of other people in order to protect his throne. 

The witches had said that Macbeth would be the king but his children will never be able to inherit that. This is the most important twist in the play in my opinion. How diplomacy can make two people happy at the same time without disclosing the actual truth.

Lady Macbeth goes mad due to the guilt and at midnight wakes up and washes her hands and even the doctor says that they don't have a cure for something that is so worse and is a punishment by the almighty.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand'. - Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth by the end of the play even commits suicide due to the excessive guilt she has. Macbeth even feels despair but is very controlled and thinks that whatever has happened was for her good. She would have suffered much more if she was alive and hence her decision of hanging herself to death was apt.

The dialogue signifies the fact that lady Macbeth was too guilty and had gone mad and was washing hands in order to clean her self and trying to get rid of those imaginary blood stains off her hands.

By the end of the play Macbeth gets into the battle with Macduff where Macduff tell him that he was not born naturally and was born through a cesarean. So practically Macduff can easily murder Macbeth as he was not born naturally out of a woman.

 Despair thy charm;    

And let the angel whom thou still hast serv’d    

Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb

Untimely ripp’d. -Macduff

Despite knowing that he will lose the battle, Macbeth by the end even tried to fight his fate just because he doesn't want to let go off the power he has and the throne he possesses.

He already had killed ruthlessly young Siward and it showed that how powerful he was even though he was older than his opponent.

Here, his ambition to become a king and then to stay the king eventually killed several lives, his wife committed suicide and by the end even his head is beheaded and Malcom becomes the new King.

A similar story can be found in the mythology as well. 

There was a King named Hiranyakashyap who was a demon and he had asked lord for the boon of being immortal.Lord had killed his brother and hence he was enraged. To impress the lord's and get a divine blessing from them he started penance and had the thirst to be immortal. Being immortal of a demon can cause a huge imbalance in the cycle of other humans and god's hence he wasn't blessed with it. Instead he was blessed that he will never die in the morning not at night, neither by a man nor by a woman, neither a animal nor a bird, neither by God nor by demon, neither by weapons nor by scriptures, neither inside the house nor outside, neither by a snake nor by an arrow, neither on earth nor in the sky, neither in the hell nor in the heaven. 

These words depict that it has immortality overlapped by the play of words and indirectly he asked for being immortal. He is also granted with this blessing. If we think rationally we all might think that he shall never die and will live forever but that is not the case. 

Just like Macduff was untimely ripped off her mother's womb, lord Vishnu takes his 4th birth as Narsinh and takes Hiranyakashyap in his lap, near the threshold of his home and rips his chest off with the claws and eventually Hiranyakashyap dies. He also makes sure that the time he kills is between day and night, i e. Dawn so he didn't broke the spell yet a demon was killed. 

These are some twists and turn that are unexpected and here one thing is in common, the lust for power and possession which doesn't allow a person to live a normal moral life. Both of these people have tried innumerably to be in power but their greed made them lose it. They also went against the laws of nature which they had to face concequences for. 

Nowadays, with this fast growing world, everyone is becoming much more ambitious than before which is also making people more evil and immoral. 

It is wisely said that " An immoral thought is as bad as an immoral act"

Even thinking evil is equally bad as doing evil. 

Ambition are good and they give a proper shape and size to the dreams and aspirations of an individual but over power of ambition can definitely lead to destruction and we have many examples of such stories in our history. People cheat, steal, lie and do a lot of things that have been stated immoral universally. People fear nothing but failure which lures them to do such deeds and eventually they get harmed by their own ambitions. Trying to overpower reality is also one of the reasons that people suffer so much. It is good to be ambitious and determined towards ones goals and desires but exaggerating everything for own selfish motifs can be harmful to them and people around them as well.

"You must regulate your life by the standards you admire when you are at your best"

Failures are the best teachers, one shouldn't be afraid of them.