In Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Northrop Frye sees a relationship between Macbeth's guilt and his hallucinations: The future moment is the moment of guilt, and it imposes on one, until it is reached, the intolerable strain of remaining innocent.
Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy paints a portrait of Macbeth: Macbeth, the cousin of a King mild, just, and beloved, but now too old to lead his army, is introduced to us as a general of extraordinary prowess, who has covered himself with glory in putting down a rebellion and repelling the invasion of a foreign army....
Through Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth, Macbeth’s original character and values are destroyed because of the influence from the witches' prophecies, Lady Macbeth's greed, and his own hidden ambition....
This essay is going to be dealt with this difference in appearance and reality of Macbeth Macbeth is a deranged, old man with flashes of former greatness....
Throughout the play, Lady Macbeth changes from an evil mastermind to a guilt ridden woman because Shakespeare shows how a person’s actions affect their personality by having selfish desires turn into a person only driven by power and ambition....
(Mendham) This play is considered a tragedy because the protagonist of the play, Macbeth, will suffer a terrible downfall as the result of his actions.
However, without the occasional tune-up, Macbeth demonstrates how unchecked ambition can quickly become a speeding, out-of-control, vehicle that ultimately leads to destruction.
In Macbeth, Shakespeare sets the themes of seduction, ambition, and deception amid a correlating backdrop, whether you are giving chase on a battlefield, standing in foul weather, or seeing apparitions of bloody daggers we sense danger from the opening act....
In "Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth," Sarah Siddons mentions the ambition of Lady Macbeth and its effect: [Re "I have given suck" (1.7.54ff.)] Even here, horrific as she is, she shews herself made by ambition, but not by nature, a perfectly savage creature....
In "Macbeth as the Imitation of an Action" Francis Fergusson states the place of Macbeth's ambition in the action of the play: It is the phrase "to outrun the pauser, reason [2.3]," which seems to me to describe the action, or motive, of the play as a whole....
The start of their marriage, Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband, “This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee....
Clark and Wright in their Introduction to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare interpret the main theme of the play as intertwining with evil and ambition: While in Hamlet and others of Shakespeare's plays we feel that Shakespeare refined upon and brooded over his thoughts, Macbeth seems as if struck out at a heat and imagined from first to last with rapidity and power, and a subtlety of workmanship which has become instructive....
Samuel Johnson in The Plays of Shakespeare explains the place of ambition in this tragedy: The danger of ambition is well described; and I know not whether it may not be said in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that, in Shakespeare's time, it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive predictions....
Macbeth immediately addresses the ghost by saying, “Thou canst not say I did it: never shake/ Thy gory locks on me”, thus attempting to convince the apparition that he is not to blame for this murder and therefore not guilty (3.4.63-64).
This tragedy narrates the tale of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s quest to grasp ultimate power by ignoring their morals and succumbing to their dark desires, which ultimately leads to their downfall....