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Page 2 The starting point then must be with Macbeth himself and with his wife. The tradition view of Macbeth is of a weak willed man brought down by the lust for power of an overambtious wife. Yet to follow this train of thought is to disregard all that we are told of him in the opening scenes of the play, and makes for a two dimensional character. This is a man who leads an army into battle from the front, is always where the fighting is thickest, and singlehandedly turns the tide of a seemingly lost campaign to save the kingdom for his cousin and friend, Duncan. He is well respected and regarded for his bravery nobility and loyalty. Are we really then to believe that this man is so downtrodden at home that his wife can accomplish what legions have failed to? We see the thoughts enter his mind and his revulsion at them. To expect him not to have considered the possibility of ascending to the throne would be to expect an almost Galahadian inhumanity, and his essential good can be seen in the constant internal war that is waged as he seeks to dismiss the notion, and in the manner and extent of his downfall once the crime is committed. Macbeth is not horrified by killing; this is a man used to wholesale slaughter on the battlefield; he is horrified by murder and betrayal, of his friend and of his own nobility. In the end he has destroyed everything that he stood for and waged war to protect. Are we then to believe that he has hitherto lived a lie? And what of his wife? Well it is reasonable to expect that both she and her husband are still fairly young. (It has always seemed a little preposterous to me that Duncan is often portrayed as a venerable octogenarian and the senior characters as middle aged (by today's standards) when life expectancy was such that most people of Shakespeare's era were dead before forty five.) Young people, especially with power and money, often crave danger and excitement, and the extent of that will often be relative to status. The nature of danger would also be relative to the era in which one exists, but would reasonably be that which is socially taboo, at least by an older generation. I believe that Lady Macbeth is already dabbling in the occult (even today's youths will sometimes play with ouija boards and the like) and her speech in I.5 "The Raven himself is hoarse.... " is ritualistic in both tone and rythm. Indeed, Macbeth's speech III.2 "...Come, sealing night,/Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day.... " is similarly laden and it would be safe to assume that at this point that he too has become a practitioner of witchcraft. Lady Macbeth exhibits all the traits of a young person craving adventure and excitement vicarously. The child who constantly eggs on her companions without actually performing any of the deeds herself, she is to be seen and heard denigrating her husband and belittling his manhood,
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