Macbeth Act 1 Essay

Two Shall Become One

“Stars, hide your fires,

Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

-Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4

What shapes a villain? Is it a cruel glare, a vicious laugh, a pathetic backstory? Moreover, what doesn’t make a villain? An innocent smile, an honest repentance, an inclination toward “good”? In kindergarten, the rules are simple. Your main character is always the good guy, and the villain is the evil guy. Contrastingly, Shakespeare quakes our black-and-white foundation and takes Villainhood to the next level in his playwright Macbeth. For it is not merely the actions which make a villain, but their soul’s stance in the end, whether they pursue their inner desires at the cost of good. For while Macbeth perhaps did not intend

He is modest about his success in battle and skeptical as the witches foretell his future. But he has, as all humans do, a dark, shadowy corner in his soul which could be exposed in all of us, if the right circumstances were to trigger it. The sweetest person you know has the potential to become their villain-version. Fortune telling aside, Macbeth truly did want to be king, and only received in the witches’ message the confidence boost he needed to pursue his goal. If Macbeth desires were a frozen lake, the witch's foretelling was a mere crack in the icy blanket, releasing the dark, thrashing pond beneath. As the tale progresses, Macbeth begins to live every waking moment in a hypothetical future- one hailing him as King of the land he is barely conscious of. His ambitions cloud not only his judgment, but his ability to do anything well and see what is before

If Macbeth becomes his own villain, what happens to Lady Macbeth? What ultimate purpose does she serve in the story? While many merely picture her as the stoney woman of the first several acts, I believe Shakespeare had a far deeper intention for her character. She is the failed heroine of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This became apparent to me after reading Act 5 Scene 1, when Lady Macbeth is hallucinating, wrenched with sobs as she fails to rub the guilt from her hands. While at the surface this is a “you asked for it” scene, it also gives us an overlooked chance to see Lady Macbeth as what she really was- a broken soul. Choose what you will, but I believe Lady Macbeth has an, at least potential, positive character arch. While most writers depict the character’s “realization moment”, the scene the character’s worldview changes and they transform into the person the reader has been waiting for them to become, as something which leads to good and happiness, Lady Macbeth’s does not change her circumstances. But that fact that it could’ve, takes this story to the next, heart-wrenching level and reveals to us a layer Shakespeare is whispering to us in this devastating scene: what if Lady Macbeth had realized her mistake sooner, before her insanity took over? She now has the ability to conquer evil- the very evil she promoted and her husband is now slaughtering nations with. She has the power to destroy it, yet is too overwhelmed by guilt to do anything- the thought