This shows that his ambition and self-image of bravery wins over his virtues. After Duncan’s murder, his “partner of greatness”, Lady Macbeth, starts to fall ill and is going crazy. Her powerful personality is disintegrating, and this leaves Macbeth even more alone. Even after gaining the throne, Macbeth is still insecure about remaining on the throne, and he goes and orders a series of murders. However, all this does is add to the terrible guilt that haunts him (Banquo’s ghost) Macbeth is lonely and alone, and has nobody once Lady Macbeth dies.
The Phrase “any shape” means that Macbeth would rather see even the fiercest of animals than see the ghost of Banquo, further telling us that he is being driven maniacal by his own thoughts. “my firm nerves” is ironic because his nerves are not even close to being firm at all, in fact his nerves are the farthest thing from firm if he is hallucinating a ghost in the first place. Shakespeare’s use of hallucinations and irony in act III creates the tone that Macbeth has truly gone
Macbeth shall sleep no more” (II.2.55-57). He is already panicking regarding what he has done and hearing voices that foreshadow his sleeplessness. Then, Lady Macbeth scolds him for leaving the murder weapon behind and he admits that, “I’ll go no more./ I am afraid to think what I have done./ Look on ‘t again I dare not” (II.2.65-67). He’s terrified by what he has done and cannot bear to return to the scene of his bloody crime. Instead, Lady Macbeth must to there and clean up from his murders.
This incident shows Macbeth starting to display signs of mental instability. Secondly, Macbeth hears voices talking to him while he is killing Duncan. Macbeth explains to Lady Macbeth “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘sleep no more Macbeth does murder sleep’, the innocent sleep,” (2.2.38-39). Macbeth is shaken by the event that just passed and tells Lady Macbeth that he believes he was cursed not to sleep again. This makes Macbeth feel regret right away for killing Duncan.
Shakespeare does a magnificent job by using Macbeth to show the terrible consequences that can result from an unchecked ambition and a guilty conscience. Those elements, combined with a lack of strong character, distinguish Macbeth from Shakespeare's other tragic heroes, such as King Lear and Richard III, both of whom are strong enough to overcome their guilty conscience. Before Macbeth murders Duncan, he is plagued with anxiety and almost does not go along with the plan. It takes his wife, Lady Macbeth's persuasion in order to complete the plot. When is about to kill Duncan, Macbeth sees a dagger covered in blood floating in the air, representing the bloody course he is about to take.
As the play goes on, Macbeth slowly looses his morality as he strives for more control whilst Lady Macbeth steps into a frantic stage of guilt. After killing the king, Macbeth starts to plot other evil undertakings as he becomes nervous that someone will take away his power. At one point he goes from wanting to needing the sovereignty, which makes him loose sight of his integrity. As Macbeth begins to immorally act in order to achieve what he hungers, the line between good and evil starts to fade. “I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” (3.4.136-138) In this quote, Macbeth is telling himself that because he has stepped into evil so deeply, it will be hard to go back to morallity because he will never be able to rid of this guilt brought onto him.
Macbeth is a little nervous at first, but Lady Macbeth is able to get Macbeth to agree with her to kill King Duncan. Macbeth still has a conscience because he is very hesitant about killing the King. He has a conscience throughout the entire play. It is Macbeth’s conscience talking when he sees the hallucinations of the dagger and the ghost of Banquo, and has a constant worry of being discovered. This is also evident in his terrible dreams in which he hallucinates a voice that cries “Macbeth does murder sleep...Macbeth shall sleep no more”(Shakespeare II, ii,43).
Hamlet increasingly gets angrier and angrier with himself as he keeps talking, and his anger turns to Claudius. Hamlet is now angry and self-loathing. He calls himself a “scullion” which means the lowest of the servants. He tells his brain to start working and gets an idea: to watch Claudius’ reaction to the modified version of The Mousetrap to confirm or deny his guilt about the King’s murder, which is the fourth part of Hamlet’s soliloquy. In the soliloquy, Hamlet is at first upset with himself about finding ways to avoid avenging his Father’s murder, like his spirit in ghost form told him to.
In Macbeth, Macbeth himself is shown as being disturbed due to the way that he is acting and that he starts hallucinating just before he murders the king “Is this a dagger which I see before me” and this shows that he is disturbed because he believes that he can see the dagger even though it is not there which means that he is worried about doing the deed of killing the king and it puts doubt in his mind but his over-whelming ambition forces him to still kill him. Lady Macbeth is disturbed due to the way that she acts, believing that there’s Duncan’s blood on her hand and trying to wash it off constantly, she is also disturbed in a similar way to the woman in The Laboratory because during this time period that they are set in the common stereotype for a woman is to be obeying, shy and to do what they’re told but in the case of Lady Macbeth and the woman in The Laboratory are both manipulative and controlling, in the case of The Laboratory the woman is disturbed because she wants to murder a woman for taking away her last love by poisoning her and she paranoid that they know her plans “He is with her, and they know that I know “ which is another feature of her being deranged due to her being paranoid, in a similar way Lady Macbeth exclaims “and take my milk for gall” which is similar to The Laboratory because they are both trying to create poison in order to gain what they want, Lady Macbeth wants her husband to become king by Duncan and the woman in The Laboratory wants to kill her loves lover (Pauline). The Duke from My Last Duchess is disturbed much alike to the woman in The Laboratory due to them both being paranoid, in the case of the Duke he was paranoid that his wife was flirting with everyone and believe that she valued his “gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name ” the same value as any other gift she was given such as cherries from a peasant whereas in The
This is right before Macbeth will kill Duncan. On his way to murder King Duncan, Macbeth sees the vision of the bloody dagger leading the way. Significance: It is clear that Macbeth is insane. Macbeth has been convinced into the action not by his own reasoning, but by his personal insecurities, played upon by his wife, the witches, and his own ambition. By the time Macbeth’s mind conjures up a dagger for him, he can see the murder as a conclusion, not a question for his consideration.