Macbeth 2019 - the old story in today's reality

LUST & LOSS

Macbeth’s lust for power and his eventual loss

Macbeth’s fate was a result of his own doing. The play begins with Macbeth winning on the battlefield and ends with him dying in combat. He took a risk he forebode wouldn’t end well and that led to his shameful end. So why do people take risks that they know would lead to their own destruction? Is ambition the driving force, or greed or, are both the same?

William Shakespeare has shown the several shades of human nature through all of his characters and Macbeth is no different. The journey of changes in a human’s nature/personality is often the doing of external forces. Macbeth is the story of the temptation of a good man by evils. The witches’ prophecy and Lady Macbeth’s irreligiously cold triggering led to Macbeth’s change from a noble kinsman who respected his king to one who murdered the same king to gain power.

Macbeth is not a Manichaean vision of man. The witches prophesize Macbeth becoming Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor and eventually the king  “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!”  “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!” “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!”However, unnatural, Macbeth’s belief in the prophecy becomes stronger when he finds out he has become the Thane of Cawdor and thus he could potentially become the king;  “Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme.”

The knowledge of his future prospect, when shared with his wife Lady Macbeth, becomes a shared prospect of them becoming king and queen. For an inherently ruthless and ambitious woman, Lady Macbeth’s way of achieving the power and position was by eliminating the owner of that power and position, here, king Duncan. Human nature is a crossover of opposites – simplicity/complexity and easy/difficult. The simple way to reach one’s ambition is difficult, whereas the easiest way is the complex one, full of ill ways. The Macbeths took the easy way of gaining power by involving themselves in a risk so complex, that they couldn’t fully gauge its consequences. 

Lady Macbeth taps into her husband’s inefficiency to do evil, manoeuvring him to do as told.  Her famous dialog,  “unsex me here,/And fill mefrom the crown to the toe/ top full of direst cruelty” mirrors her pride of being awoman bold enough to commit a regicide as compared to her husband, a man, who isn’t strong enough to do wrong for his own wellbeing, is seen as her ambition dominating his nobility. It is she who steadies her husband’s nerves immediately after the crime is perpetrated.

Killing Duncan and becoming king was Macbeth’s first taste of success by wrongdoing. Achieving ambition, the wrong way is easier than doing it right. For Macbeth, it was no different. His greed for more and all propelled him to eliminate every obstacle on the way. However, Macbeth’s final call to murder Duncan was purely a risk he took with his conscience for his ambitious end. The murders/killings Macbeth committed or orchestrated were all the result of his ‘o’erweening ambition’and not only Lady Macbeth’s belittling his manhood.

Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth knew their act of killing would lead them to guilt later on when she says,  “These deeds must not be thought/After theseways. So it will make us mad.”  They trust the unnatural apparitions but fail to uncover the loophole it hides. Too much power gained by wrongdoing, is a lonely place. The ambition that ignited the journey becomes a brief candle that melts away all the joy of achieving the ambition. Macbeth’s ambition turned him into a killing machine that he himself hated. He was sunk in guilt to an extent that he could neither enjoy his power or share it with his wife. At the end, he realized that he had taken a risk he knew wouldn’t end for the better, when he says  “She should have diedhereafter/There would have been a time for such a word” referring to LadyMacbeth’s suicide, saying that such a news was inevitable. He knows his wrongdoings when he confesses to Macduff,  “My soul is too much chargedwith the blood of thine already”.  ‘Shakespeare uses Macbeth to show theterrible effects that ambition and guilt can have on a man who lacksthe strength of character’. People who intend to achieve by doing wrong are inherently strong willed to confront the challenges that those risks may bring. But Macbeth isn’t villainous enough to conquer the effects the crime has on his body and mind. 

Macbeth was a good man who under the bad external influence and an unrestrained ambition for power underwent a change leading to wrongdoings that he knew would lead to guilt and thus his own bad ending. In a similar reality, when a luxury giant like Christian Dior, a brand that has reached the pinnacle of any designer’s ambition of being exclusive and identifiable, copies a print created by a smaller less known brand and sells it off without credit, in an attempt to be different, and then gets caught red-handed for doing the same, the act comes down to staining the brand. So why did they do it in the first place? This could be seen as an example of bad ambition where Dior knowing the blind following that it has, took a calculated risk of copying ‘People Tree’ a Delhi-based brand’s design because unless grilled, no one would question its authenticity and it would only be seen as a smaller brand copying a giant and not the other way. Such an act may not have destroyed the brand completely like Macbeth, but it did stain the belief of exclusivity that people have towards Dior as a brand and ultimately leading to a shameful end to their decision.

Such an act of copying, ‘dilutes a giant brand’s equity’ and ‘makes their products less desirable’ as the belief that the brand’s clientele has is shaken when it is either copied or available to the mass. Their act was a clear show of disrespect for another clothing brand and an underestimation of peoples’ wariness in general. Here, ‘People Tree’ would stand example to one with the good ambition of being different and known for its individuality and ethical practice even in the existence of such a ‘copycat economy’. Unlike in Macbeth, Dior however, had no show of regret. 

The sea of regret that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth succumb to is clear from the self-realization that the former has when he questions himself,  “What hands are here?” “Will allgreat Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”  He knows nowater can cleanse him, instead, he will stain the seas from green waters to red, “No, this my hand will rather/ The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.”  The consequences of fulfilling one’s selfish ambitions aredevastating to one’s psyche. By committing the murder Macbeth rapidly degenerates from the honourable solider that he was, to a deceiving King who is void of any magnanimous qualities.

Risk taking is a significant part of human existence as the thrill involved is what keeps us going. Taking a calculated risk is making a choice whose circumstances can be premonition-ed. It is a common act of humanity, to know the dangers and still leap in. A mutual binder to all such acts is greed. Every risk is driven by some form of greed that fuels an ambition; the nature of the ambition could however, differ. Ambition is regarded as a positive drive, one that every human should ideally have; however, the journey to achieve the ambition is what counts, as that defines the worthiness of the risks that one has to take to the top. Every risk taken, can go two ways – a good way and a bad way; those bold enough to take the risk take equal chances.  We might also say that the only acceptableor worthy risk is one where that results in happiness and satisfaction, ‘thus increasing the moral good of the risk, an idea which is based on John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism’.