William ShakespeareS Macbeth Essays - Characters In Macbeth

William Shakespeare'S Macbeth Evil Women Women are not always the affectionate, compassionate, and nurturing people that humanly instincts make them out to be. On the contrary, they are sometimes more ruthless and savage than their male counterparts. A good example of this idea is in William Shakespeares Macbeth. Through the use of various feminine roles throughout the play, Shakespeare manages to portray how dramatically important the witches are, along with how imminent greed and power can eventually grasp hold of Lady Macbeths morals, and thrust her into a state of emotional stupor. Shakespeare begins the play with the witches for several reasons. First, the fact that they are witches portrays many evil themes since witches are a universal symbol for an advocate of the devil. They themselves foreshadow malign events to come. For example, to add to the witches representation of evil, the clich?d background is that of thunder and lightening, which also represents wickedness and confusion. Shakespeare also uses the witches to give some background to the play; they decide to meet with Macbeth when the battles lost and won (I, I, 4). Here, Shakespeare makes clear the fact that there is a battle taking place and Macbeth is involved. They choose to meet with Macbeth upon the heath(I, I, 7), wherein a heath is described as being uncultivated, open land. The uncultivated aspect of the heath can be used to foretell the uncivilized intentions the witches have for Macbeth. The last line of the scene is immensely important, for when the witches say that fair is foul, and fou l is fair(I, I, 12), the reader Komery 2 later understands that this is the main theme of the play. This implies that appearances can be deceiving. What appears to be good can be bad, and this is seen in such ways as the deceptive facade of Lady Macbeth and in the predictions of the witches. The witches provide the spark for Macbeths explosion onto King Duncan. They plant the idea of him becoming king with a witty strategy in which they tell him half-truths, so that he will succumb to believing the false half of the lie since the later half is true. During the third scene of Act I, Macbeth and Banquo, his friend, encounter the three witches, who call him the Thane of Cawdor and he who shalt be king hereafter! (I, III, 50-51). The fact that Macbeth will become the Thane of Cawdor is true. Yet, the prediction that he would rightfully become king is false. This prediction gives him the confidence to kill King Duncan since the witches must have been right, as he thought, since they were correct regarding him becoming the Thane of Cawdor. Without the witches, Macbeth would have never had the encouragement to kill his loyal friend. However, while the witches are not entirely responsible for the actions of Macbeth, they are responsible for introducing the ideas to him, which in turn fires up his ambition, and leads to a disastrous and unnecessary chain of events. One must note that the promoters of Kind Duncans murder are all female. This is contrary to the familiar understanding of women, who, instinctively, are nurturing and caring creatures. Because of this, Shakespeare performs a magnificent job of letting the reader know of their masculinity, and how whenever he hints at their masculinity, a malign event is forthcoming. When Macbeth and Banquo first set eyes on the witches, they are aghast at the sinister sight of the ugly women. Banquo states that they should be women, / and yet [their] beards forbid [him] to interpret/ that [they] are so(I, III, 45- Komery 3 47). They are so hideous to Banquo that he believes that he could actually mistake them for being men. Interestingly enough, after this line, the witches make their prophecy about Macbeth becoming the king of Scotland. In the fifth scene of Act I, Lady Macbeth wishes that she were male so she could take the matter of dealing with King Duncan into her own hands, without having to cope with Macbeth. When she learns that Macbeth has invited King Duncan to his castle for dinner, she becomes thrilled, for she believes that her opportunity is at hand. In