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Recommended: Role of Lady Macbeth
During the Renaissance playwright era, William Shakespeare was a famous playwright and actor. One of his most famous plays is a Tragedy called Macbeth. This play is about a Scottish general who received a prophecy from 3 witches that he would one day become king, he told this news to his wife who became very spurred. His wife Lady Macbeth wanted him to be King so bad so she can become Queen, that she convinced him to murder the current King Duncan. Lady Macbeth started to experience so many emotions about her and her husband’s actions. Lady Macbeth clearly suffers from a paranoid schizophrenia due to the auditory hallucinations, delusions, and the social withdrawals.
Lady Macbeth had hallucinations while being watched by the Gentle Women and
Extreme circumstances such as the ones presented in Macbeth are highly probable causes for both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s development of schizophrenia. Their behavior, although seeming quite erratic and irrational, is quite common among patients with this disorder. The term “schizophrenic,” however, was not even brought to the public until 1911, by a Swiss psychologist, Eugen Bleuler, almost three decades after Shakespeare’s Macbeth was introduced to England. Citizens during the sixteen hundreds would have just thought Macbeth and his wife were insane and should be locked away. With today’s psychoanalytic sciences, though, it can be most likely predicted that schizophrenia was present in Macbeth.
“...Seize upon Fife, give to th' edge o' th' sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls That trace him in his line” (4.1.170-174). In act four of Macbeth, Macbeth demands Macduff’s entire castle be murdered in full resolve and utter insanity. He becomes the very personality he disdains from the start of Macbeth. However, it cannot be simply chalked up to a shift in heart but, instead, a diagnosable disorder that contributes to his full-fledged lunacy. It is easy to assume that Macbeth was only influenced into his craziness; but upon further inspection Macbeth had, without a doubt, developed Bipolar Disorder. He quickly changed from a virtuous and proud warrior to a liar and thief of the crown once Lady Macbeth had pressured him into killing Duncan. From thereon out, Macbeth quickly made his descent into madness; a combination of manic episodes, delusions,
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy in which the main characters are obsessed by the desire for power. Macbeth’s aspiration for power blinds him to the ethical implications of his dreadful acts. The more that Shakespeare’s Macbeth represses his murderous feelings, the more he is haunted by them. By analyzing his hallucinations it is possible to trace his deteriorating mental state and the trajectory of his ultimate fall. Throughout the play Macbeth is never satisfied with himself. He feels the need to keep committing crime in order to keep what he wants most: his kingship. The harder Macbeth tries to change his fate the more he tends to run into his fate. His ambition and struggle for power was Macbeth’s tragic flaw in the play. Macbeth’s rise to the throne was brought about by the same external forces that ensure his downfall.
William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is intense and horrifying, with Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, planning to kill the king so that Macbeth can take his position. Lady Macbeth is the master mind behind all of this. She is in his ear telling him what to do and how to do it. Under all of this pressure from his wife, Macbeth starts to go insane. In the play, Macbeth shows symptoms of bipolar disorder due to his lack of sleep, agitation, and activeness.
Mental illness is a serious societal problem today, and has been for a long time. People who have a mental illness often end up hurting other people mentally and physically. When someone has a mental illness, they might also end up hurting themselves or cause suffering for themselves. Also, it is sometimes difficult for them to understand things clearly, and they might be unsure of things in their life. All of these problems are shown in a person who is mentally ill. Macbeth hears his prophecy from three witches which starts his mental illness, along with Lady Macbeth pressuring him to kill the king. After Macbeth kills the king, things start to get out of hand; Macbeth gets over ambitious and wants to kill more people, whatever it takes. Lady Macbeth asks for her womanhood to be taken so that she will not feel guilty, but ends up feeling more guilty than ever. Subsequently, she kills herself to escape the guilt, and causes her husband great pain. These tragic examples and many others show that mental illness is a societal issue, and it is shown throughout the story of Macbeth.
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play centring around opposing forces trying to gain power in the succession for the throne of Scotland. Macbeth, in the beginning, is known to be a nobel and strong willed man, who is ready to fight for his country. However, one may see that Macbeth has a darker side to him, he is power hungry and blood thirsty, and will not stop until he has secured his spot as King of Scotland. Though Macbeth may be a tyrant, he is very naïve, gullible, and vulnerable. He is vulnerable and willing to be persuaded by many characters throughout the play, his wife, the witches to name a few, this is the first sign that his mental state is not as sharp as others. One will see the deterioration of Macbeth and his mental state as the play progresses, from level headedness and undisturbed to hallucinogenic, psychopathic and narcissistic. The triggering event for his mental deterioration is caused by the greed created from the witches first prophecy, that Macbeth will become King of Scotland (I.iii.53). Because of the greed causing his mental deterioration, Macbeth’s psychosis is what caused his own demise by the end of the play. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the tragic hero Macbeth’s demise is provoked by his hallucinogenic episodes, psychopathic actions and narcissistic behaviours.
Lady Macbeth is really quite insane“Out damned spot! Out, I say!...Yet who would have thought the old man have had so much blood in him?”(Scene 1, act 5)But she isn’t the only one with an unstable mental state .In Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, Macbeth’s mental state quickly deteriorates. We can trace Macbeth's mental deterioration by his actions leading up to his death at the end of scene V, such as when he saw the floating dagger, or when Macbeth sends the three murders to murder his best friend Banquo,and when he started to talk to somebody that nobody else could see at the banquet.
Lady Macbeth Mental Illness William Shakespeare tragedy in Macbeth. Macbeth was a Thane, which is a noble. Lady Macbeth wants to be Queen of Scotland. Lady Macbeth wants to be king no matter what it takes, Lady Macbeth was going to be king and Lady Macbeth was going to be queen. Lady Macbeth was a very strong person.
There were several aspects of Shakespeare’s novel ‘Macbeth’ that led to the downfall of Lady Macbeth. The mentality of Lady Macbeth in the play changes dramatically from the wife a Noble General, to an evil aggressive murderer (brought upon by the witches predictions), and finally a woman who had de-graded to such an extent that she took her own life.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is a heroic tragedy that shows the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition for those who seek power for its own sake. These psychological effects can be seen in many characters, but are most clearly displayed in the main character Macbeth. Macbeth begins the play as a noble and stable character- a loyal husband, subject, and the Thane of Glamis. However, as Macbeth receives more power and becomes more ambitious, he loses his mental stability. Macbeth’s mind deteriorates from his strong ambition, his guilt of killing, and the paranoia that comes of power. You can also see Macbeth’s mind deteriorate by examining his visions, attitude toward fear and death, and how
Schizophrenia is mental disorder that inhibits the abilities “to think clearly, to distinguish reality from fantasy, to manage emotions, make decisions, and relate to others” (Duckworth). One defining symptom of schizophrenia lies in recurring delusions of grandeur. The afflicted patient’s “beliefs are not based in reality and usually involve misinterpretation of perception or experience” (Mayo Clinic Staff). It could be argued that Macbeth suffers from delusions that he rightful king of Scotland. Unlike Banquo, Macbeth, in his fantasy-like state, takes the witches prophecy too strongly to heart and thus acts upon it. Additionally, when the witches foretell that “none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth” (4.1. 91-92), Macbeth succumbs to an unrealistic delusion of invincibility, which inevitably proves to be fatal. As with Macbeth, Lady Macbeth also appears to suffer these delusions with her husband as king of Scotland. She is the ...
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both show signs of what would today be diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as "a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought, and conduct." There are three major symptoms of the disorder; not being able to distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality, incoherent conversations, and withdrawal physically and emotionally. The most common and most well known symptom of schizophrenia is when people cannot distinguish between what is real and what is not. Schizophrenics often suffer from delusions and hallucinations. A delusion is a false belief or idea and a hallucination is seeing, hearing, or sensing something that is not really there. Some people diagnosed with the illness may speak with disjointed conversations. They often utter vague statements that are strung together in an incoherent way. Lastly, some schizophrenics withdraw emotionally, for example, their outlook on life is deadened and they show little or no warmth, and also physically, such as their movements become jerky and robot-like.
Macbeth’s Descent Into Madness. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the character Macbeth descends into madness. Macbeth’s descent into madness first started with the witch’s prediction. If he had never met the witches, none of this trouble would have occurred.
.... His insanity was a result of ambition taken much too far, ambition mutated and converted into evil by internal as well as social conflict; Macbeth’s wife did nothing to prevent Macbeth’s sickness and actually helped the problem develop. From his ambition came actions that filled his mind with conflict, dread, suspicion and guilt. It could be said that Macbeth was insane from the beginning, from the moment that the witches appeared to him in the third scene of the play or even from when he carved out his bloody passage in battle. Whether Macbeth was insane his whole life or just from the moment he first saw the imaginary dagger, it is indisputable that his visions and hallucinations only helped to supplement his lunacy.
I decided to analyze Act II, Scene II in MacBeth using Psychoanalysis. I have previously examined the passage using Marxism and Queer Theory, so I thought it might be beneficial to scrutinize the scene from yet another angle. However, I will also discuss another scenes, as well, in order to fully, yet briefly, demonstrate MacBeth’s two opposing psychological constructions.