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THE AMBITION OF THE THANE OF CAWDOR

Maria Ximena Romero Gravito

English, Gimnasio Los Ocobos, Grado Once

Profesor Luis Felipe Velez Velez

7 de abril de 2022
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THE AMBITION OF THE THANE OF CAWDOR

(MACBETH, William Shakespeare)

Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It dramatises the damaging physical and

psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that

Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, Macbeth most clearly reflects his relationship

with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of

1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that

one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his

wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then

wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself

from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent

civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.

Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff,

and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles, a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to

Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the

history of the real Macbeth.

Act I Amid thunder and lightning, Three Witches decide that their next meeting will be

with Macbeth. In the following scene, a wounded sergeant reports to King Duncan of Scotland

that his generals Banquo and Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, have just defeated the allied forces

of Norway and Ireland, who were led by the traitorous Macdonwald, the Thane of Cawdor.

Macbeth, the King's kinsman, is praised for his bravery and fighting prowess. In the following

scene, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the weather and their victory. As they wander onto a heath,
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the Three Witches enter and greet them with prophecies. Though Banquo challenges them first,

they address Macbeth, hailing him as "Thane of Glamis," "Thane of Cawdor," and that he will

"be King hereafter". Macbeth appears to be stunned to silence. When Banquo asks of his own

fortunes, the witches respond paradoxically, saying that he will be less than Macbeth, yet

happier, and less successful, yet more. He will father a line of kings, though he himself will not

be one. While the two men wonder at these pronouncements, the witches vanish, and another

thane, Ross, arrives and informs Macbeth of his newly bestowed title: Thane of Cawdor. The

first prophecy is thus fulfilled, and Macbeth, previously sceptical, immediately begins to harbour

ambitions of becoming king.

King Duncan welcomes and praises Macbeth and Banquo, and Duncan declares that he

will spend the night at Macbeth's castle at Inverness; Duncan also names his son Malcolm as his

heir. Macbeth sends a message ahead to his wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her about the witches'

prophecies. Lady Macbeth suffers none of her husband's uncertainty and wishes him to murder

Duncan in order to obtain kingship. When Macbeth arrives at Inverness, she overrides all of her

husband's objections by challenging his manhood and successfully persuades him to kill the king

that very night. He and Lady Macbeth plan to get Duncan's two chamberlains drunk so that they

will black out; the next morning they will blame the chamberlains for the murder. Since the

chamberlains would remember nothing whatsoever, they would be blamed for the deed.

While Duncan is asleep, Macbeth stabs him, despite his doubts and a number of

supernatural portents, including a hallucination of a bloody dagger. He is so shaken that Lady

Macbeth has to take charge. In accordance with her plan, she frames Duncan's sleeping servants

for the murder by placing bloody daggers on them. Early the next morning, Lennox, a Scottish

nobleman, and Macduff, the loyal Thane of Fife, arrive. A porter opens the gate and Macbeth
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leads them to the king's chamber, where Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth murders the

guards to prevent them from professing their innocence, but claims he did so in a fit of anger

over their misdeeds. Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain flee to England and Ireland,

respectively, fearing that whoever killed Duncan desires their demise as well. The rightful heirs'

flight makes them suspects and Macbeth assumes the throne as the new King of Scotland as a

kinsman of the dead king. Banquo reveals this to the audience, and while sceptical of the new

King Macbeth, he remembers the witches' prophecy about how his own descendants would

inherit the throne; this makes him suspicious of Macbeth.

Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy.

Macbeth invites Banquo to a royal banquet, where he discovers that Banquo and his young son,

Fleance, will be riding out that night. Fearing Banquo's suspicions, Macbeth arranges to have

him murdered, by hiring two men to kill them, later sending a Third Murderer, presumably to

ensure that the deed is completed. The assassins succeed in killing Banquo, but Fleance escapes.

Macbeth becomes furious: he fears that his power remains insecure as long as an heir of Banquo

remains alive. At the banquet, Macbeth invites his lords and Lady Macbeth to a night of drinking

and merriment. Banquo's ghost enters and sits in Macbeth's place. Macbeth raves fearfully,

startling his guests, as the ghost is visible only to him. The others panic at the sight of Macbeth

raging at an empty chair, until a desperate Lady Macbeth tells them that her husband is merely

afflicted with a familiar and harmless malady. The ghost departs and returns once more, causing

the same riotous anger and fear in Macbeth. This time, Lady Macbeth tells the visitors to leave,

and they do so. At the end Hecate scolds the three weird sisters for helping Macbeth, especially

without consulting her. Hecate Instructs the Witches to give Macbeth false security.
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Macbeth, disturbed, visits the three witches once more and asks them to reveal the truth

of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions, they summon horrible apparitions, each of

which offers predictions and further prophecies to put Macbeth's fears at rest. First, they conjure

an armoured head, which tells him to beware of Macduff. Second, a bloody child tells him that

no one born of a woman will be able to harm him. Thirdly, a crowned child holding a tree states

that Macbeth will be safe until Great Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Macbeth is

relieved and feels secure because he knows that all men are born of women and forests cannot

possibly move. Macbeth also asks whether Banquo's sons will ever reign in Scotland, to which

the witches conjure a procession of eight crowned kings, all similar in appearance to Banquo,

and the last carrying a mirror that reflects even more kings. Macbeth realises that these are all

Banquo's descendants having acquired kingship in numerous countries. After the witches

perform a mad dance and leave, Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to

England. Macbeth orders Macduff's castle be seized, and, most cruelly, sends murderers to

slaughter Macduff, as well as Macduff's wife and children. Although Macduff is no longer in the

castle, everyone in Macduff's castle is put to death, including Lady Macduff and their young son.

Lady Macbeth becomes racked with guilt from the crimes she and her husband have

committed. At night, in the king's palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady

Macbeth's strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a

candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff, and Banquo, she tries to

wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, all the while speaking of the terrible things she

knows she pressed her husband to do. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her

descent into madness. In England, Macduff is informed by Ross that his "castle is surprised; wife

and babes / Savagely slaughter'd". When this news of his family's execution reaches him,
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Macduff is stricken with grief and vows revenge. Prince Malcolm, Duncan's son, has succeeded

in raising an army in England, and Macduff joins him as he rides to Scotland to challenge

Macbeth's forces. The invasion has the support of the Scottish nobles, who are appalled and

frightened by Macbeth's tyrannical and murderous behaviour. Malcolm leads an army, along

with Macduff and Englishmen Siward, the Earl of Northumberland, against Dunsinane Castle.

While encamped in Birnam Wood, the soldiers are ordered to cut down and carry tree branches

to camouflage their numbers. Before Macbeth's opponents arrive, he receives news that Lady

Macbeth has killed herself, causing him to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair and deliver

his "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow" soliloquy. Though he reflects on the brevity

and meaninglessness of life, he nevertheless awaits the English and fortifies Dunsinane. He is

certain that the witches' prophecies guarantee his invincibility, but is struck with fear when he

learns that the English army is advancing on Dunsinane shielded with boughs cut from Birnam

Wood, in apparent fulfillment of one of the prophecies. A battle culminates in Macduff's

confrontation with Macbeth, who kills Young Siward in combat. The English forces overwhelm

his army and castle. Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be

killed by any man born of woman. Macduff declares that he was "from his mother's womb /

Untimely ripp'd", and is not "of woman born", fulfilling the second prophecy. Macbeth realises

too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realises that he is doomed, and

despite Macduff urging him to yield, he is unwilling to surrender and continues fighting.

Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy. Macduff carries

Macbeth's head onstage and Malcolm discusses how order has been restored. His last reference

to Lady Macbeth, however, reveals tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life", but
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the method of her suicide is undisclosed. Malcolm, now the King of Scotland, declares his

benevolent intentions for the country and invites all to see him crowned at Scone.

Macbeth is an anomaly among Shakespeare's tragedies in certain critical ways. It has

more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear, and only slightly more than half

as long as Hamlet. This brevity has suggested to many critics that the received version is based

on a heavily cut source, perhaps a prompt book for a particular performance. That brevity has

also been connected to other unusual features: the fast pace of the first act, which has seemed to

be "stripped for action"; the comparative flatness of the characters other than Macbeth; and the

oddness of Macbeth himself compared with other Shakespearean tragic heroes.

Macbeth's ambition is commonly seen as so dominant a trait that it defines the character.

Macbeth, though esteemed for his military bravery, is wholly reviled. Shakespeare apparently

intended to degrade his hero by vesting him with clothes unsuited to him and to make Macbeth

look ridiculous by several exaggerations he applies: His garments seem either too big or too

small for him – as his ambition is too big and his character too small for his new and unrightful

role as king. When he feels as if "dressed in borrowed robes", after his new title as Thane of

Cawdor, prophesied by the witches, has been confirmed by Ross, Banquo comments: "New

honors come upon him, Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, But with the aid of

use". And, at the end, when the tyrant is at bay at Dunsinane, Caithness sees him as a man trying

in vain to fasten a large garment on him with too small a belt: "He cannot buckle his distemper'd

cause Within the belt of rule" while Angus sums up what everybody thinks ever since Macbeth's

accession to power: "now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a

dwarfish thief". Macbeth wades through blood until his inevitable fall. Macbeth has not a
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predisposition to murder; he has merely an inordinate ambition that makes murder itself seem to

be a lesser evil than failure to achieve the crown.

The motivating role of ambition for Macbeth is universally recognised. The evil actions

motivated by his ambition seem to trap him in a cycle of increasing evil, as Macbeth himself

recognises: "I am in bloodStepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as

tedious as go out. Lady Macbeth is feminine... one of those active, insistent wives who becomes

her husband's executive, more resolute and consistent than he is himself, she is only helping

Macbeth carry out his own wishes, to her own detriment.

As a tragedy of moral order, the disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not

limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land

shaken by inversions of the natural order. Perturbations in the political sphere are echoed and

even amplified by events in the material world. Among the most often depicted of inversions of

the natural order is sleep. Macbeth's announcement that he has "murdered sleep" is figuratively

mirrored in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking. Macbeth's generally accepted indebtedness to

medieval tragedy is often seen as significant in the play's treatment of moral order. The theme of

androgyny is often seen as a special aspect of the theme of disorder. Inversion of normative

gender roles is most famously associated with the witches and with Lady Macbeth as she appears

in the first act. Whatever Shakespeare's degree of sympathy with such inversions, the play ends

with a thorough return to normative gender values. Some feminist psychoanalytic critics, such as

Janet Adelman, have connected the play's treatment of gender roles to its larger theme of

inverted natural order. In this light, Macbeth is punished for his violation of the moral order by

being removed from the cycles of nature ; nature itself is part of the restoration of moral order.
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Finally respect to the witchcraft and evil in the play, the Three Witches represent

darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. Their presence

communicates treason and impending doom. During Shakespeare's day, witches were seen as

worse than rebels, "the most notorious traytor and rebell that can be". They were not only

political traitors, but spiritual traitors as well. Much of the confusion that springs from them

comes from their ability to straddle the play's borders between reality and the supernatural. They

are so deeply entrenched in both worlds that it is unclear whether they control fate, or whether

they are merely its agents. They defy logic, not being subject to the rules of the real world. The

witches' lines in the first act: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air"

are often said to set the tone for the rest of the play by establishing a sense of confusion. Indeed,

the play is filled with situations where evil is depicted as good, while good is rendered evil. The

line "Double, double toil and trouble," communicates the witches' intent clearly: they seek only

trouble for the mortals around them. While the witches do not tell Macbeth directly to kill King

Duncan, they use a subtle form of temptation when they tell Macbeth that he is destined to be

king. By placing this thought in his mind, they effectively guide him on the path to his own

destruction. This follows the pattern of temptation used at the time of Shakespeare. First, they

argued, a thought is put in a man's mind, then the person may either indulge in the thought or

reject it. Macbeth indulges in it, while Banquo rejects.