Macbeth, in relation to AC Bradley's Analysis
...is country, and one whom Duncan, his king, had seen fit to praise and love, and had spoken of in terms of absolute trust. (“There’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face:/ he was a gentleman on whom I built/ An absolute trust—“, Duncan on Macbeth, A1 S4, Lines 11-14) Yet Macbeth proves himself unworthy of such when ambition overtakes him—egged on by his devilish wife, he says that he has “settled and bend up/ Each corporal agent to this terrible feat./ Away, and mock the time with fairest show:/ False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” (A1 S7, Lines 79-82) Here, Macbeth’s plain and honest face (Duncan speaks of how Macbeth’s face in easy to read in his aforementioned lines) has been replaced by a “false face”, a mask that serves only to hide his corruption and what he has become inside, With so many calamities and tragedies playing out upon the selfsame stage, who is to say that the play had not been most greatly and exceptionally calamitous? And the second point, of the death of greater men and women both, is all the more easier to prove—of Duncan, the sainted king; of Banquo, loyal general; of Lady Macbeth, the iron lady. And, as prophesied by Bradley, the story of terrible ambition but leads to yet another, dreadful death—that of Macbeth, whose ambition carried him to the apex of greatness, of kingship of lesser men, and yet still over-vaulted him down the other side at the very end. The second point—that this death is produced by human actions. This is broadly true for a single reason—that all characters to the play are passably human. Macbeth was slain by Macduff, and while the latter was “not born of a woman’s womb” but was instead “from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripp’d.” (A5 S7, Lines 45-46), he is (probably) still human—those of the English invasion, soldiers and officers both, were of the same type, and so was Macbeth, who had caused this rebellion, and his wife, who had spurred him on. Such, however, is but a crass and over-literal analysis of the question. More likely what Bradley means is that the death was produced by none but humans, and humans alone—of human thoughts, of human souls, of human hearts and minds did that dark deed rise from selfsame seeds, planted by the same deeds they would give rise to. Here, too, the “human” part of the equation is all too obvious—human ambition was what drove Macbeth to the deadly murder, for when his own did falter under conscience and shame, it was his wife’s avarice and ruthlessness that held him up, not some supernatural being—when rebellion sparked, it was from Macbeth’s rule, and the all too human resentment that followed—and it was human courage and human tenaciousness that took the battle to Macbeth’s castle and slew him there. One may, however, question this statement, and rightfully so, by pointing to the witches of Macbeth. These creatures may well be mortal, but it is likelier that they are not: when Banquo first sees them, he says in alarm “What are these,/ So withered and so wild in their attire,/ That look like inhabitants o’ the earth,/ And yet are on’t?” (A1 S3, Lines 39-42) Are these, then, not proof of supernatural influence upon the play? Does this not prove that spirits and their like may have had a hand in the action as well? My answer is a resounding No. Yes, the witches may very well be supernatural beings, but whether they really are or not is actually rather irrelevant to the question. This might seem strange, considering, but it is absolutely true. Whatever the witches are, they are still simply the embodiments of something else—temptation. Temptation in its many forms is all around us, calling to the different baser aspects of our nature—greed, lust, avarice and more. Just as the cookie jar called to the child, and the unlocked door to the burglar, so did the witches called to Macbeth, and chain him to his ambition. And temptation, of course, is a very, very human thing. (It is also an animal thing, but that is clearly off-point.) Simply put, the witches are the projection of real-life human temptation into Macbeth’s world, serving as to fuel the ambition that would guide the story’s tragedy. Without the witches, perhaps, Macbeth would have found ambition in something else—but witches, being witches, would have added greatly to the tragedy in Victorian times. Back then, the occult was still both believed in and greatly feared, so much so that the inclusion of a single chant has caused superstition to surround the play ‘till now. Temptation coming in the form of these weird sisters would both thus reinforce the warning to the audience against heeding such things and also add to the tragedy by aiding to elevate Macbeth beyond common man—while one would oft get tempted by a check on the floor or some other, more mundane thing, Macbeth was once so great and valiant that he had to be tempted by witches themselves, and the loss of the glorious Macbeth past thus makes it all the more tragic then that of a petty, scheming Macbeth, Two statements are now answered, and have been proven true in this little test. Now comes the third—that tragic Shakespearean heroes have “a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some particular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion or habit of mind.” Often known as the tragic flaw, what Bradley refers to here is that particulate trait of most tragic characters—that within them, there is this predilection that would either make them great, or utterly crush them, or both. Oedipus had it in his arrogant self-belief, and Lear in the blinding hubris that caused him not to see. Macbeth is, of course, no exception—his is towards ambition, and once sparked, this single trait carries him all the way to his disastrous end. We first see this ambition sparked when the witches tell Macbeth of his destiny—of soon gaining Cawdor, and then the throne. Once the first claim is realized, Macbeth’s mind immediately switches to his claiming of the throne itself, and ho...