Shakespeare's Insanity In The Tragedy Of Macbeth

How far would one go to get exactly what they wanted? William Shakespeare’s play, “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, was based on a character’s ambition to be king and gain power. Macbeth wanted to gain power so bad that he decided to do anything and everything to get exactly what he wanted no matter the circumstance. Macbeth transformed from a war hero into a killer. His weakened character and his own ambition drove Macbeth’s insanity. Macbeth’s psychosis brought forth a weakness in character and his ambition resulting in murder, and inability to let fate run its natural course.

Many things can cause insanity within a character. However, the cause of Macbeth’s psychosis is the ambition he had to be king and the weakness within his character. In the

Macbeth’s psychological state of mind begins to deteriorate from his strong ambitious vision to a decline of murderous schemes. In Harold C. Goddards book “The Meaning of Shakespeare” he says, “We do not expect to be tempted to murder; but we do know what it is to have a divided soul” (Goddards 496). The author of Macbeth, William Shakespeare, introduces Macbeth to have a divided soul. The concept of morality and mortality will be the catalyst for the moral decline of Macbeth’s unethical behavior. Macbeth begins the division from right and wrong, good and bad, and to be forgiven and to want forgiveness. Harold C Goddards says in his book “But bloody thoughts are the seed of bloody deeds.” (Goddards 496) With this quote Macbeth was driven to commit murder because “In The Meaning of Shakespeare” the book says “Passion means originally the capacity to be affected by external agents” (Goddard 494). Wayne C. Booth, “Shakespeare’s Tragedies”, Shakespeare says, “take a noble man, full of conscience and the milk of human kindness, and make of him a dead butcher” (Booth). Macbeth torn by his consciousness, Macbeth’s guilt and his accountability, motivated through his deviant actions was stirred within his inner spirit, resulting in compromising his own ethnical behavior. Macbeth had completely lost his mind that his morals had completely deteriorated and Macbeth committed murder without having any second thought. In “Guilt in Macbeth” author Cassandra Nelson says “On the night Duncan is killed, the stars do hide from view. But it is an unnatural darkness, a sign that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have disrupted the natural order of things” (Nelson). Also in Susan Synder’s book “Theology as Tragedy in Macbeth” she says “When Macbeth kills his kinsman and guest in violation of his sacred "double trust," the natural world reacts violently with storms, earthquakes, unnatural