Originally Posted by
ajvenigalla
In honor of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death, let us now discuss one of his greatest plays - The Tragedy of Macbeth, or the Scottish play. While many argue that Hamlet or King Lear is the greatest of the "great tragedies," there are also those who could argue for Macbeth. Harold Bloom, who considers Hamlet the grandest of Shakespeare's plays, sees Macbeth as his personal favorite of the plays.
I have read three of Shakespeare's plays - Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet - and I would say that Macbeth is my own personal favorite as well. I love how it adopts from the events and trends of the time - the Gunpowder Plot, the craze over witches, and others - and adopts it into a sumptuous, ferocious, and compact play full of phantasmic visions, a style that is varied and full of blood, allusiveness, and fantastic experiments and combinations with language, a character that is an ultimate terminator who yet has a soul (the only tragic hero of the four tragedies who is damned), and the opacity it has, even in its generally victorious ending.
As for the experimental language I mentioned, see this example: "Was the hope drunk/Wherein you dress'd yourself? Hath it slept since?" (I.vii.35-38). And another: "Besides, this Duncan/Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been/So clear in his great office, that his virtues/Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd, against/The deep damnation of his taking off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd/Upon the sightless couriers of the air,/Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye/That tears shall drown the wind." (I.vii.16-25) The metaphors seem as if they dart off one another, moving from one to another. That's a sign of the fierce rapidity of the play's spirit, of the darkness that gives the play its preternatural power. Truly, language like this makes Macbeth feel less like a proto-modern play like Hamlet and more of a pre-natural, pagan-Christian story. Plus, the strangeness of the language, compared to others of Shakespeare's play, adds to the strangeness of the play.
It may seem "simplistic" compared to Hamlet, considering that Macbeth is more explicitly Christian and moral than the other tragedies of Shakespeare. Yet Macbeth has its own moral complexity, and I like how it mixes a certainty about morality with questions and opacity. I like that mixture, and I feel that, as it is shown in scenes relating to Macbeth's murder of Duncan, the visions that Macbeth receives, and the events of the play, this mixture is effective to the feel of the play.
So, in our honoring of Shakespeare's 400th anniversary, let us not forget this great tragedy, and let us appreciate its unique virtues, even as arguably greater tragedies such as Hamlet and King Lear stand in its company.