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What Makes Macbeth Run?: Two British Superstars Work It Out
| Article
# : |
14577 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1988 |
2,302 Words |
| Author
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George Szamuely
George Szamuely writes for Commentary and The Wall Street
Journal. He is a former editor of the Times Literary
Supplement. |
Of all Shakespeare's tragic heroes, Macbeth is perhaps the one most difficult to fathom. On the face of it, his villainy is at least equal to that of Richard III or Iago or Edmund. He commits the most heinous crime of all--regicide--murdering a king, moreover, who has been his benefactor and patron. He then goes on to kill his closest friend, and has no compunctions about slaughtering little children. His brutal decapitation at the hands of a man who had hitherto displayed a notable lack of courage is the kind of humiliating death and disfigurement that Shakespeare liked to reserve for the least worthy specimens of humanity.
Yet, for all that, Macbeth remains a tragic hero: He is possessed of a reflective temperament, a magnanimity of character, and an almost childlike vulnerability that make his doom as poignant as those of Hamlet, Lear, and Othello.
It has often been said that what distinguishes modern from classical tragedy is that the central protagonist does not stand helplessly awaiting the fate that the gods had willed for him long before he had even been born. On the contrary, the Hamlets, the Brutuses, the Othellos bring about their own downfall through weaknesses of character that had remained hidden not only from everyone around them, but even from themselves. Their coming to self-knowledge coincides with death and madness.
Ghosts and Visions
But somehow Macbeth fails to conform to this pattern. For one thing, the abiding impression the theatergoer is left with is that he has witnessed supernatural events. The play is full of
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