Name: Gender, Guilt, and Fate - Macbeth, Part 2: Crash Course Literature #410
Uploaded: 2019-05-05T14:39:44.000Z
Duration: 12 min 7 s
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This is Crash Course Literature and today
we'll be doubling, bubbling, toiling and

troubling as we continue our discussion of
Macbeth.

Today we'll be looking more closely at the
characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as

well as discussing the play's treatment
of gender roles and its downer ending.

most remarkable things about Macbeth is that
it presents us with a hero who is also a villain.

As we discussed last time, when we first meet
Macbeth he's helped win a major battle for

The first time he's mentioned, a sergeant
introduces him as “brave Macbeth.”

Being brave and winning battles were two of
the major signs of Great Mandom at the time.

And okay, maybe this Macbeth is a little violent;
he slices an opponent down the middle and

But he's definitely the hero of the day
and Duncan, the King, rewards him.

Even if that whole beheading thing seems a
little extreme, at the beginning of the play

And we stay on his side when he has a lot
of second thoughts about his wife's plan

/
His wife has to talk him into it—basically

she attacks his masculinity, but more on that
later—and I think our sympathies mostly

We worry that someone is going to find him
out, maybe the same someone who knocks so

unrelentingly on the gate, and hope he gets
away with it, even though it's horrible.

(The fact that it sickens even him is another
way to get us on his side.)

Once he becomes king, his paranoia kicks in
and so does his cruelty.

He starts ordering more murders, maybe even
some he doesn't have to order, like that

Now he's the one encouraging murderers,
not his wife--he's gone from hero to antihero,

a journey that has since been undertaken by
everyone from Walter White to Tony Soprano

to Pablo Escobar to Don Draper to Jamie Lannister
to that Hannibal Lecter guy in Westworld.

I wonder if it's a coincidence that all
those dudes are dudes.

But before we get there, let's examine how
to understand Macbeth's choices in the Thoughtbubble:

Could we argue that Macbeth's encounter
with the witches has made him evil?

I mean, there's no suggestion that they've
enchanted him, and they never tell him to

kill Duncan or even suggest that killing Duncan
is a possibility.

They let Macbeth and his wife figure that
part out for themselves—along with all the

But the witches do light up his ambition with
their prophecies.

Now, maybe Macbeth has been a terrible guy
from the get-go, a Thane who just needed the

excuse of the witches prophecies to act on
his worst impulses.

As we saw, there are signs of his cruelty
even from the beginning; splitting open opponents

from neck to belly is not the work of an especially
meek and mild person.

But then if Macbeth is inherently evil, in
the manner of some Shakespeare villains, then

Almost immediately, Macbeth loses the ability
to pray and sleep and he even seems to envy

Duncan:
“After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.”

He also doesn't seem to enjoy being king,
a job he was literally willing to kill for.

And whether he actually sees Banquo's ghost
in the banquet scene or just hallucinates

him, neither suggests a man who is happy in
his life choices.

A sociopathic villain, like I'd argue Iago
is from Othello, just wouldn't be haunted

But for a guy who maybe isn't evil to begin
with, he does keep getting a lot of people

Or maybe, seeing that the murder of Duncan
has already damned him for eternity, he figures

“I am in blood/ Stepp'd in so far that,
should I wade no more,/ Returning were as

Basically, if you're midway through fording
the River of Blood, might as well cross

However we understand Macbeth, by the midpoint
of the play, probably around when he orders

the murder of Banquo and his son, we've
stopped rooting for Macbeth and his wife to

Instead, we're hoping they'll get their
comeuppance, preferably before Macduff's

wife and kids are brutally murdered in front
of us.

Shakespeare keeps the violence offstage until
that scene, then he allows it full rein, which

should shake anyone who still feels sympathy
for Macbeth.

Even the witches now acknowledge his evil.

The next time he approaches them, they say,
“Something wicked this way comes.”

And as for nameless Lady Macbeth, Holinshed,
in the play's source material, describes

her as “verie ambitious, burning in unquenchable
desire to beare the name of a quéene.”

She's the one spurring him on to murder
when he's reluctant or frightened or listening

In her opinion, at least early in the play,
stabbing a king is no big deal.

/
She even offers to go frame the guards by

smearing them with Duncan's blood, saying,
“A little water clears us of this deed.”

It's interesting to see the opposite effects
the murder has on them.

It hardens Macbeth into a serial murderer,
but it softens Lady Macbeth into a victim.

Her mind disturbed, she brings to sleepwalk,
miming washing her hands over, desperate for

the little water to clear her of her deed.

But she can't get the spot of blood out--not
even after its visibly gone.

Instead her guilt seems to drive her to suicide.

To understand more about this dynamic, let's
look at how the play treats masculinity and

This tragedy has a particular interest in
what it means to be a man, but we get our

first taste of this by characters who don't
really seem male or female, the witches.

Banquo says to them, “you should be women,/
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/

These are the weird sisters, which may be
a corruption of “the wayward sisters,”

and there's definitely a suggestion that
characters who aren't identifiable as either

male or female are destabilizing and upsetting.

This was a period that oppressed gender fluidity,
even though it's worth noting that theater

was a place of gender complexity, since male
actors played female roles, and Shakespeare's

characters often play with traditional gender
constructions.

We get another example when Lady Macbeth reads
her husband's letter and starts worrying

that he won't be man enough to get himself
the crown.

Knowing he'll need her help she calls on
spirits to “unsex her”:

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Gender, Guilt, and Fate - Macbeth, Part 2: Crash Course Literature #410

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