In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he uses four main techniques to create a feeling of sympathy for Macbeth. These come in the forms of; the witches, Lady Macbeth, Banquo (Macbeth’s friend) and Macbeth himself. The play is set in Scotland and starts with a dramatic stormy scene featuring the witches.
To create sympathy Shakespeare creates the three witches who set Macbeth upon his murderous path. They appear in the first scene, which is long enough to awaken curiosity but not to satisfy it. The practice of witchcraft was seen to subvert the established order of religion and society, and hence was not tolerated. They create a dream for Macbeth, being Thane of Glamis, then Thane of Cawdor and later the King.
As Macbeth is already Thane of Glamis, he does not believe the witches straight away. However, he is then made Thane of Cawdor by the King as a reward for the braveness he showed during the battle at the beginning of the play. When he is given the title of Thane of Cawdor, he begins to believe the earlier predictions made by the witches, and starts to believe that maybe he really will be King.These witches seem to turn values upside down.
They use lots of opposites; ‘Not so happy, yet much happier’, this allows them to cause much confusion amongst the other characters. Witches in that day caused a lot of apprehension; they were ‘agents of evil’, not to be trusted or believed, in fact, to be feared. They add a very creepy atmosphere to the play. Immediately the audience/reader can sympathise with Macbeth for being taken in by them, putting ideas into his head and consequently changing the path of his future.
The audience’s beliefs of whether or not the witches actually have power over Macbeth influence their interpretation of whether his actions result from personal choice or from external influence.Sympathy is also created for Macbeth through Banquo, a loyal friend of Macbeth’s. He bears witness to the initial prophecies made by the Three Witches (he is told his son’s will be Kings). Though eager to learn his own destiny, Banquo serves as a counterpoint to how one deals with fate.
Macbeth kills to reach his. Banquo is content to let destiny carve its own path. From the beginning he distrusts the witches and is suspicious of them, he says, ‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence’. In other words he thinks the witches give a little something, like a small truth, so that people trust them and then they betray that person.
It is also likely however, that Banquo could be a bit jealous because the witches have told Macbeth that he will be King, while Banquo has been told that only his sons’ will become kings.When the two friends run into each other at the beginning of Act Two, Macbeth lies about thinking and dreaming about the witches, Banquo goes along with him as Macbeth says ‘If you go along with me at the right time, there’s something it for you’. Banquo is ‘pleased to hear that, but doesn’t want to get in trouble’. They are both as bad as the other in this scene, both going along with each other and sounding each other out, neither says to forget the meeting of the witches and to never speak of it again.
There is a faintly conspiratorial air to the conversation.Lady Macbeth is Macbeth’s wife. Her ambition for Macbeth’s future rivals and arguably exceeds that of Macbeth’s. She pushes Macbeth to kill King Duncan when Macbeth hesitates.
She is power driven and therefore extremely angry at Macbeth when he tells her they ‘will proceed no further in this business’ she is so enraged that she declares ‘I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done this’ and forces him to kill the King. She uses emotional blackmail when she mentions their dead baby, ‘I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me’. He does anything to please her as he feels he cannot let her down. She wants Macbeth to take his place as King even more than he does.
She pushes him, even thought it is quite clear to the audiences both from the book, performances on stage and in videos that Macbeth would rather leave the King be, and as the King is their guest and ‘as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife himself’.He does try and tell his wife that he will proceed no further with the killing of the King, but she uses blackmail, drawing in the loss of their baby. The audience has to feel sorry for him there, he is simply a man delivering a duty to his wife and trying to please her even if it means that by killing the King, he is destroying his own life in the process. After he kills the king, he is deeply affected by it, he talks to himself, ‘what hands are here! Ha! They pluck out mine eyes’ in other words, his eyes are almost falling out of his head at the sight of his bloody hands.
However, Lady Macbeth does not seem to notice this and is more interested in making sure his tracks are covered and the guards are framed. The reader is again made to feel sorry for him, as they can see how much he is affected but no one is doing anything to help him. He starts hallucinating. He sees a dagger and blood.
After the deed is done he thinks his hands are so covered in the blood of the king that all the water from Neptune’s sea will not clean them.Although he does try and tell his wife that he will proceed no further with the killing of the King, she uses blackmail against him, drawing in the loss of their baby. The audience has to feel sorry for him there, he is simply a man completing a duty to his wife and trying to please her even if it means that by killing the King, he is destroying his own life in the process. The audience feels sympathetic towards Macbeth, he always feels the need to please his wife, because to the loss of her baby, he has come to believe everything about the witches and Is living under false hopes because of it, which drives him to murder the king which puts a great burden of him that he cannot shake off and is very affected by.
Macbeth himself is the tragic focus of this play. Originally a loyal and honest man, his descent into murder and betrayal is the tale of how ambition can tarnish even the purest of souls. Driven by loyalty to King Duncan, his own “Vaulting ambition,” leads to him killing King Duncan to secure his own destiny. Our vision of Macbeth changes quite abruptly from the beginning of the play.
When we first saw Macbeth, he seemed violent and ruthless, but as the audience sees more of him, they can see that he is not cut out to kill the king, ‘I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat.’ We feel sorry for him, caught up in this whirlwind of emotions and activity, ‘What horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature?’.Later he talks to the audience when he thinks of reasons not to go through with the terrible deed. There are five main reasons he comes up with; the fact that he is the King’s kinsman, his subject and host, the fact that the King is a humble one and has a ‘clear office’.
This shows that Macbeth has the ambition but not the drive. He thinks of the consequences on him and his wife, not about the fact that Duncan has an heir. Macbeth concludes, ‘We will proceed no further with this business’.When it is discovered that the king is dead Macbeth goes and kills the guards.
This raises a lot of suspicion and again conveys to the readers that he is scared and worried, he did not want to do it. He killed the guards because he was worried of getting caught, after finding this out Lady Macbeth is annoyed, Macbeth himself is obviously finding it hard to act surprised and shocked (probably because he is still coming to terms with doing it himself) and so she faints to draw attention away.Macbeth has a soliloquy in which he hallucinates and sees an imaginary dagger in front of him: “Is this a dagger which I see before me..
. the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.” The audience feel sympathy for Macbeth as it is noticeable that is he mentally unstable and is seriously contemplating the killing of the king. This soliloquy is one of the keys to the understanding of Macbeth.
It shows off his powerful imagination, which in the end, gets the better if him.By using these four main things, Shakespeare does create sympathy for Macbeth.. The extra strain created by Banquo seems minor in comparison but is always there, as Banquo saw the witches as well, he is a liability.
But perhaps Macbeth’s greatest enemy was the power of his imagination and his conscience. The hallucinations and the portrayal of himself to the audience show that he is not a ruthless warrior with no feeling able to kill anyone, but a man who is trying to make his status in life just that little bit higher being pushed and blackmailed by those around him.The audience feels sympathetic towards Macbeth, he always feels the need to please his wife, because to the loss of her baby, he has come to believe everything about the witches and Is living under false hopes because of it, which drives him to murder the king which puts a great burden of him that he cannot shake off and is very affected by.
