Taking Responsibility for the Death of King Duncan

Taking Responsibility for the Death of King Duncan

The play Macbeth is about a man changing from good to evil, greatness

to eventually being killed. Macbeth at the beginning of the play is

Thane of Glamis and has just beaten the Norwegians. On the way back to

the camp they meet some witches that make prophecies that he is going

to become Thane of Cawdor and King which change Macbeth completely. He

becomes Thane of Cawdor and his wife pours evil thoughts into him. He

murders the King Duncan and anyone who stands in his way, but Macduff

knows what Macbeth is doing and builds up an army and eventually kills

Macbeth. When this play was written, James 1 was king. This play would

have pleased King James 1 because he hated regicides and to see

Macbeth get his head cut off and put on a spike would scare people to

even think of killing the king. Also most people believed in witches

in those days which would make the play seem more realistic. The three

main people to be blamed are Macbeth himself, Lady Macbeth, his

cunning wife and the 3 witches that made the prophecies in the first

place.

Lady Macbeth could be mostly to blame because she told Macbeth what to

do when he was in doubt. Lady Macbeth did not represent a

stereotypical woman in the Shakespearian time because she was the more

dominant person in the relationship and the man usually looked after

the money and was head of the family. The first time Lady Macbeth

speaks is when she is reading out Macbeth’s letter to her, telling her

about the witches. After she reads out the letter to herself

(soliloquy) she tells the audience what she thinks straight after:

“What thou art promis’...

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...es people believe that before you were born you

would have a pre-destination fate. So when the witches told Macbeth

he would be king, he could have become king with out killing anyone.

The king may have become ill and died, and his son would have been too

young to be king, but we will never find this out! So Macbeth was

trying to become king and therefore following his fate.

Overall I think that Macbeth is to blame for the death of King Duncan

because however much someone tries to make someone commit a murder, it

is always the murderers fault, as he did not have to listen to his

wife or the 3 witches. When the witches told Macbeth about him

becoming King, they may have meant that Duncan might have died

naturally. But instead he made an immediate reaction and started

thinking in an evil way with tragic consequences.