Shakespearean+Text+Analysis

Be all my sins remember'd.
=**The Cursing of Cordelia and the Banishment of Kent**= = =

=**King Lear: Act 1 Scene 1**=

He'll shape his old course in a country new.
=**Macbeth: "Is this a dagger...."** **Source:**=
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//Macbeth// has long been one of Shakespeare's most gripping tales, dispensing with the usual subplots and humorous digressions in favor of a singular and direct plot action. As one wag once put it, the premise may be reduced to "behind every great man is a wife fully prepared to goad him into murder if it enhances the couple's social standing." The psychology behind Macbeth is a bit more complex, however. The tale is a tragedy of ambition studied through the prism of temptation. As such, it stands as a starkly humanistic morality play, more observing of Macbeth's evil than editorializing upon it.

The unspoken conflict is between free will and predestination; the subtle part of this study is the contrast of Macbeth and Banquo. Macbeth finds himself driven by external forces that seemingly conspire to abet his darker ambition. Banquo, on the other hand, resists temptation through his own choice, and yet passively fulfills his destiny even as Macbeth actively fulfills his own. Macbeth at first tries to distance himself from the dishonorable implications ("If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me/Without my stir.") and is reticent to commit the greatest treason. However, there are more than enough hints that the subject has been previously debated, either with his wife or his own conscience. Macbeth, tempted or not, becomes a man betrayed by his baser nature. What makes it tragic is Macbeth's knowing complicity in his own damnation.

With this speech, Shakespeare foreshadows the toll that Duncan's murder will exact upon the conspirators. For now, the appearance of a bloody dagger in the air unsettles Macbeth. Even he doesn't know whether the dagger is real or a figment of his guilty imagination. It is, however, certainly a harbinger of bloodier visions to come. Macbeth will suffer more frightening apparitions in the scenes that follow, and Lady Macbeth will go mad trying to scrub away blood on her hands that only she can see. As Macbeth fears, the murder of Duncan is not a deed that will be "done, when 'tis done."

The last vestiges of the honorable Macbeth die at the end of this speech. It is a fleeting match between Macbeth's ambition and revulsion. The bell ultimately tolls for Macbeth as it does for Duncan; the dagger of the mind is as potent a killer as the dagger Macbeth wields in murder.