Act Macbeth Scene Shakespeare Audience Choice Fate Shakespeare’s

{{c1::Although set in 11th century Scotland, Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy, ‘Macbeth’, is clearly very much engaged with the choice of Robert Catesby and his companions in the Gunpowder Plot of the previous year—the choice, that is, to attempt to break the Great Chain of Being and become a regicide. In the play, Shakespeare examines how Macbeth comes to make this same choice, initially seeming to suggest that it is the malign supernatural power of the witches that controls his fate. Yet ultimately it seems inadequate to attribute his evil to some abstract notion of fate; instead, Shakespeare seems to encourage his audiences to examine how it is the choices Macbeth makes after learning his fate that shapes the man he becomes}}

{{c2::In Act 1, scene 1, the opening scene of the play, Shakespeare establishes a strange and nightmarish world where is seems Macbeth will lack any kind of agency in the face of the supernatural power of the three witches. }}

{{c3::Significantly, Shakespeare begins with the stage directions ‘thunder and lightning’ alluding to powerful natural forces and disorder; a common trope for Jacobean playwrights and one that would be familiar to the contemporary audience, symbolising societal disorder. Furthermore, the ‘weird sisters’ ask whether they shall meet in’ thunder, lightning, or in rain?’. This question is problematic since, fundamentally, although they seem to present a choice, it is not a choice at all.  These weather patterns appear simultaneously in a storm, therefore it could be foreshadowing their later paradoxical prophecies to Macbeth and implying that he has no genuine control over his fate. Equally disturbing is the unnatural trochaic tetrameter rhythm which echoes other magical characters in Shakespeare’s play such as Titania and Oberon, lending the witches a powerful other-worldly presence causing the audience to question how much agency Macbeth might have when confronted with these beings. Moreover, the third witch’s statement, ‘there to meet with Macbeth.’ suggests their ability to control his fate, maybe alluding to the three Fates from Greek mythology who held power over the individual earthlings lives with a thread.}}

{{c4::As the scene concludes, Shakespeare leaves the audience with an equivocal mood as the witches’ chant, ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’. The alliterative fricative sounds enhance the supernatural atmosphere as the paradoxical statement presents the moral ambiguity and darkness that the witches will bring to the play and Macbeth’s life. Notably, this the line which Macbeth echoes in Act 1, scene iii as, ‘So fair and foul a day I have not seen.’ which inextricably links him with the witches and their malign power.}}

{{c5::Shakespeare clearly plays on his contemporary audience’s superstitious fears of witches as well as reflecting James 1^st's personal interest in the supernatural, however most provocatively they would set a scene of mysterious power against which no mortal would be able to withstand.}}

{{c6::The questions around the extent to which Macbeth has choice in the play are certainly evident in the witches’ prophecies themselves, heard in Act 1 and Act 4. Initially his lack of control over his own fate is suggested through Shakespeare’s use of modal verbs, as his first prophecy states that he ‘shalt be King hereafter’, while in Act 4, scene 1 the second apparition tells him that ‘none of women born / shall harm Macbeth’ and the third apparition reveals that Macbeth is unconquerable until ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him’. These cement the sense that Macbeth is being told statements of truth – a fate he cannot avoid. His reaction to learning that the first two prophecies are coming true in Act 1, scene iii, as ‘happy prologues to the swelling act’ insinuates that kingship is his inevitable fate. At this point, the path to his fate seems untroubled, ‘happy’ and his life, like a play, is pre-written - he has no agency.}}

{{c7::, Shakespeare’s dumb-show in Act 4, scene iv, revealing the eight kings with the last king carrying ‘twofold balls and treble sceptres’, which could allude to James 1^st's reign of both Scotland and England, therefore establishing the prophecies as actual histories for his Jacobean audience and cementing Macbeth’s inability to escape his fate. Critically, Shakespeare could be reaffirming to his audience that their new King’s reign was devised by forces beyond human control, illustrating how the Great Chain of Being does not allow for choice.}}

{{c8::However, to entirely elide Macbeth’s power to choose is to overlook the many soliloquies which focus, obsessively, upon the moments in which Macbeth makes his decisions. At the turning point of the play, Act 1, scene vii, Macbeth admits he would kill Duncan to satisfy his ambition, only hesitating because of his concerns over the consequences which ‘plague th’inventor’ of the ‘bloody instructions’. Emphatically conveying to the 1600s audience the awful consequences of disrupting the Great Chain of Being while also revealing Macbeth’s torturous indecision. It is this indecision which his wife, Lady Macbeth, after his soliloquy manipulates in order to achieve their ambition of the crown as she torments him by insulting his masculinity, when you durst do it, then you were a man’.}}

{{c9::By the end of Act 1, it crucially appears to the audience that his hamartia, ambition, and his scheming wife have led him to carry out regicide. Reinforcing this chain of thought, his soliloquy in Act 2, scene I presents him being led to the King’s chamber by an apparition of a dagger. Initially he blames the hallucination on his ‘heat-oppressed brain’, yet it echoes the witches’ apparitions in Act 4, scene iii suggesting they have a part to play in luring him to the King’s chamber.}}

{{c10::. Furthermore, the dagger, being a feminine weapon could insinuate Lady Macbeth's control over his decision to kill the King. However, ultimately, he dismisses the dagger with ‘There's no such thing’ highlighting how he has taken a choice – regicide is the way to the crown. Compounding this, in Act 5 Macbeth comes to realise he has been misled, and that it was, therefore, his own ill-informed choices which have driven him to madness and tyranny, not fate}}

{{c11::As he admits that he ‘doubt(s) th’equivocation of the fiend’. This term ‘equivocation’ would raise alarm bells to Shakespeare’s audience in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot since it alludes to the way Catholics were to avoid lying under oath by telling misleading truths. This admittance from Macbeth might even evoke some sympathy from the audience as they see his awful realisation that he has been misled, resulting in damming and irredeemable choices. However, considering his crime of regicide maybe this is unlikely – the consequences for his choices are clear to the audience – death.}}

{{c12::Crucially, Shakespeare appears to present choice as a paradox in the play. It is Macbeth’s beliefs in his own fate is what seems to lead him to make his choices that lead to suffering and tragedy.
 

}}