Analysing Macbeth as a Tragic Hero

Learn everything you need about the tragic hero in Macbeth with analysis of how Macbeth fits into the tragic hero character and why Shakespeare wanted to make him a tragic hero in the first place. This analysis is going to help anyone studying Macbeth, whether for exams or coursework and for any of the exam boards (AQA, Edexcel, OCR etc.).

I cannot overstate how useful this is. The truth is that you are very unlikely to get a direct exam question about tragedy (it would be too hard). However, that is exactly why it is so useful. It is relevant to the main characters, it is very relevant to the themes and it is a core vehicle by which Shakespeare communicates his key ideas. This means that you are going to be able to use this information for a wide range of questions, and it is going to give you a huge amount of high-level insight into the play. Do not be thrown by the long, Greek words; you may struggle to spell or pronounnce peripeteia (I certainly do), but you can absolutely understand it.

Timestamp
0:00 Why has Shakespeare made Macbeth a tragic hero?
07:56 Macbeth the hero
16:38 Macbeth's hamartia
26:20 Macbeth's internal conflict
32:09 Macbeth's peripeteia
37:37 Macbeth's anagnorisis
43:11 Linking Shakespeare's intentions to the tragic hero

This video is on my YouTube channel. However, there are a few benefits to watching it here instead:

1. You can register to keep a track of which videos you’ve watched
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There are also multiple resources to help you in the Study Materials section:

Unlocking Shakespeare Study Guide

This is the perfect accompaniment to my video on how to read Shakespeare's language. It goes back over the strategies with more examples and - most importantly - more opportunities for you to practice putting those strategies to use.

Macbeth Wide Margin Textbook

If you don't have a copy of the play to annotate, then this is a must, must, MUST have. If you do have a copy of the play, but it's one of those editions where they have filled every inch of the page with only slightly useful information and have left practically no space for your notes, then my version is also going to be ideal. The wide margins of this version mean that there is plenty of space for your notes. I have still provided translations for lots of the archaic language, and I've provided a list of characters at the start too. It is basically everything I always wished was in the copies of Macbeth I had to use to teach! If you are from a school and would like to order physical copies of the textbook, you can find it on Amazon too.

Macbeth Hexagons Game

If you are studying Macbeth for the purposes of an exam, then this is a fantastic, quick and easy revision game (dare I call it 'fun'?). The basic idea is that every hexagon has a character, theme or some sort of important technique on it. You have to join the hexagons up by connecting the things that link. It's a great way to practice making links and also revise what you know about every important aspect of this play.

If there are any videos or resources you'd like to help you with the study of this play, then please do leave a comment and let me know. I know that my videos only scratch the surface at the moment and you can rest assured that I fully intend to release videos on all the other characters, themes and key techniques. I'm also planning to release model essays so that you can spot the patterns of approach across top grade essays.

Lesson Transcript:

When we're thinking about Macbeth as a tragic hero, the first thing we have to ask ourselves is essentially: why do we care? Why have you bothered to study this? Why am I bothering to make a video about it? How important is it?

A simplistic answer would be: well, the play is a tragedy, and Macbeth is the main character of that tragedy as the tragic hero, and that's why it matters. But that's a fairly simplistic point, because my next question to you would be: why is the play a tragedy? And so, actually, the answer to the question of why Macbeth is a tragic hero is one of the most important we have to understand before we even look at what it means for him to be a tragic hero. Because otherwise, all we're doing is collecting a bunch of facts: you know, the play is a tragedy, he's a tragic hero, he has a hamartia. And that's not going to help us to get the very highest grades in our essays. We have to be able to link together the fact that he is a tragic hero and the qualities of a tragic hero that he has, with why he is a tragic hero and why Shakespeare has given him those qualities.

So before I even go into the different characteristics of the tragic hero that Macbeth fits, I want to go over why he is created as a tragic hero. There are four main reasons that I'm going to look at, and all of them link to the key themes of the play.

The first theme is ambition, and the dangers of ambition, and how it can make a human being go way too far, how it can consume us, how we can become obsessed with it. And essentially—again, in a simple way of thinking about Macbeth's downfall as the tragic hero—everything goes wrong for him the second he lets his ambition win over his religious faith and his moral integrity. The second he lets that happen, that's essentially the beginning of his downfall. So by making Macbeth a tragic hero, by giving him a downfall, by giving him a horrible end, Shakespeare is able to essentially use Macbeth as a lesson for his audience: look what can happen, look at how things can go wrong when you let your ambition go too far.

Continuing this idea of using Macbeth to teach a lesson, the second lesson is: don't commit regicide, which is the murder of a king. Now, most people, obviously, would never consider committing regicide, but it was a fairly hot topic of the time. Historians think that Macbeth was most likely written in around 1606. One year earlier—probably not even a year earlier, because it was November of 1605—there was the Gunpowder Plot against King James I, essentially the attempted regicide of King James I. Of course, yes, Macbeth does technically succeed in his regicide, but that isn't the point. The point Shakespeare is making is: even if you did succeed, you would never be happy, nothing good would ever happen to you, so there's no point doing it. Macbeth is a sort of lesson for that.

Now, some historians have argued that the reason Shakespeare was taking such a clear pro stance for the king on this topic was that he was nervous about being linked to the Gunpowder Plot. And the reason he was nervous about that is the fact that some members of his extended family had been linked to the plot. Now, if you're going to write about that in your essay, you have to write about it super tentatively, like: "it could be this," "historians have wondered," "historians have argued," "historians have suggested," because we obviously don't know for any certainty that is why Shakespeare did what he did. Even if it wasn't that, even if it wasn't just essentially trying to cover his backside because he was worried about being executed for treason, in this time, one of the biggest supporters of plays was the king. Plays could only be put on if they had the financial support of the wealthy in society, and so it just makes sense to not bite the hand that feeds you. Don't make a treasonous play—that would be a terrible decision. So it does just generally make sense for society of the time that Shakespeare would make a pro-monarchy play.

So that's two messages so far. There are another two, and the third one is about not going against your faith. This is closely tied to not letting over-ambition overpower you, and also not committing regicide. In this time period, we're dealing with the Christian faith, whether that be Protestant or Catholic—there's obviously quite a big divide going on at the time, but certainly Christian faith. And what we see Macbeth doing throughout the play is going against some core beliefs, core Christian values: "don't commit murder," for example. Some core Christian beliefs in the time period, such as their belief in and fear of witchcraft, and their belief that witches worked for the devil. So Macbeth listening to the witches and taking seriously the prophecies that they offer him is essentially him accepting help from the devil.

And the act of not killing a king would also be seen as an aspect of Christianity at the time, because of the theory of the Divine Right of Kings that King James I was really heavily pushing. The basic idea of the Divine Right of Kings is that the king is chosen by God and is the human representative on Earth for God, and therefore no human being can get rid of the king; it is only God's will to decide who the king is, and the king is above everybody else in the social hierarchy. And so by killing King Duncan and making himself king, Macbeth broke the Divine Right of Kings. He was never supposed to be king: King Duncan said that he wanted Malcolm to be king. And so by breaking that Divine Right of Kings, he's also broken with his faith as well. And Macbeth is very aware of the fact: there were heated moments throughout the play where he talks about, for example, the "poisoned chalice," where he knows that he has destroyed his relationship with God. There was also the moment straight after he killed King Duncan where he wanted to say "Amen," and it stuck in his throat, almost as if God Himself was blocking Macbeth from having that peace.

The final message is, again, very heavily linked to the first three, and that is to not go against the natural order. Now, "natural" in Shakespeare's definition is like natural under Jacobean society, natural under Christian belief. We see this heavily with Lady Macbeth as well, how she goes against the natural order in terms of gender with, you know, her whole "unsex me here" and all the repercussions that that has for her trying to get rid of her womanly qualities. We see that with Macbeth in that he breaks the natural order of the Divine Right of Kings. And the reason that is a problem is essentially this idea that chaos begets chaos: by breaking the natural order, Macbeth causes more unnatural things to happen. It's like a ripple effect of his actions, which makes sense as you think about it as a kind of moral argument, right? It's that whole idea of: if some influential people start to behave in a really wrong and immoral way, then others will watch that, aspire to that, be inspired by that, and follow and copy the same. It just has a ripple effect; it causes more. It's essentially a Shakespearean version of why people are so against the Kardashians, right?

What we're going to do now is go through the different key criteria of a tragic hero and how Macbeth fits into that, constantly linking it back again to those key concepts. We're going to start off with the very beginning of the play and essentially work our way through, because of course the course of the tragic hero fits with the actual storyline of the play too.

The first thing we're going to talk about is the fact that, in order to have a downfall, you have to start up, right? You have to start on a high. Specifically with the tragic hero, they typically start off the play at a peak for them; things are going really well. And that is definitely the case with Macbeth. So some of the classic things about a tragic hero is that they are respected, they're honorable, they're of high rank. All of those are seen with Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 2. This is such an important scene in the play—I would argue it's one of the most important scenes in the play—because it's essentially a real opportunity to understand Macbeth's character before all the witches' prophecies and before they get their hands on him, because that's going to happen in Act 1, Scene 3.

In terms of showing him as being really respected, the way that this scene is structured is pivotal to that. So you've got the fact that we're hearing about Macbeth via a secondary account of, first of all, a captain (or sometimes some copies of the play call him a sergeant) and then the Thane Ross. Now, to have a secondary account is really important: if it was Macbeth himself who had shown up and been like, "Listen guys, this is what I did, I'm so brave, I am so great, aren't I wonderful?", the audience would be like—they'd think he was cocky, they'd think he was arrogant. But because somebody else is saying it about him, suddenly we see it as: "Oh, okay, maybe he is that good."

When we then have two people, Ross and the captain, saying really positive things about him, we go, "Okay, he must really be honorable, he must really be great if more than one person is saying such wonderful things about him." And of course, the third person in the scene is King Duncan, who, although he wasn't there in the battle, when he's hearing all this stuff about Macbeth, he has lines like, you know, "O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!"—like, he's complimenting Macbeth as well. So to add on top of that a king who is hearing all of this and reacting positively, for us as the audience, we basically aren't having a choice, right? We're going to view Macbeth honorably, we're going to view him positively. So from the very beginning, he has that respect and that honor. And of course, by the end of this scene, he also gets given the position of the Thane of Cawdor by the king, so he has that height, right? He had it already—he had Thane of Glamis—but being given an additional title, you know, he's having a promotion, he's having a good day.

Looking then at an actual chunk of Act 1, Scene 2, we've got these lines that the captain says:

"...all’s too weak;

For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

Like Valor’s minion carved out his passage..."

So we've just been talking about how badly the battle has been going and how things—all hope seemed lost, you know, both sides were exhausted, all bad. But at the same time, none of that mattered for Macbeth. So it shows his tenacity from the off: like, everything else is not going to be able to defeat him. So that metaphor of everything being weak in the face of Macbeth just shows his strength, his tenacity.

And then when the captain calls him "brave Macbeth"—I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the compliment about him there—"well he deserves that name," so just sort of like confirming it, doubling down on it, if you will. So what is foregrounded to us, what is made to really stand out from the very beginning about Macbeth, is that he is incredibly brave, physically strong, and tenacious.

That is then continued with this line about "disdaining Fortune." That means, like, he's ignoring the fact that the battle is doomed, and he's pushing on anyway. So the metaphor continues that idea of him being tenacious. And we're told about how he's got his sword out, his "brandished steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution." So this line has connotations of righteousness, because if you think about the basic principle of science here: Scotland is cold, so when you kill somebody, that heat of human blood is going to create some sort of condensation when it's exposed to the cold air. If you've got enough blood, it might even create the illusion of something smoking. So if his sword is smoking, it must be covered in blood; he must have killed a lot of people.

Now, yes, that does suggest that Macbeth is incredibly violent, but the bit that comes after it is really important in framing this violence in a positive way, because it says it's "bloody execution." Now, if you're executing somebody, you are punishing them for having done something wrong. And so if what it's smoking with is execution, the implication is that Macbeth has killed a lot of people who have wronged the king and Scotland and needed to be killed, should have been killed; it's morally right to kill them. So that's the key thing about Macbeth's violence here, because we're obviously going to see him violent—way more violent—as the play goes on. But you could also argue he's at his most violent here, because here is where he's most actively killing people. As the play goes on, he is going to individually kill King Duncan, he's going to order the killing of Banquo and Macduff's family, for example, and then in the battle at the very end he's going to kill Young Siward and whatever. So this is arguably the sort of highest number of people we ever have suggestions that he's killed; this is him at his most violent, but it's okay because it's for the right reasons.

So going back to those themes of don't go against the natural order, don't go against your king, don't go against your faith, what we have here is an understanding that, in terms of morals, right and wrong, one of the key reasons why something can be right or wrong is your motivations for doing so. So what Macbeth does to these people is execution, is punishment, because they were the ones in the wrong and he is the morally righteous. On the other hand, when he kills King Duncan, when he kills Macduff's family, even though that's a much smaller number of people—arguably less violent in that he just orders the killing of Banquo and Macduff's family rather than doing it himself—it's viewed significantly worse because it's for the wrong reasons; it's for his ambition that he's now doing it. So a really key part about Macbeth in this Act 1, Scene 2 is the fact that he has all these qualities, like his tenacity, his bravery, his violence, and he's using them for the right reasons. Later on, he's going to use them for the wrong reasons.

This other line that the captain says is really important: "Like Valor’s minion carved out his passage." We've got metaphors on metaphors here: we've got the simile "like Valor's minion." Valor just means your bravery and courage in battle. So the fact that he is Valor's minion—I have no doubt you know what a minion is, because, well, you know... The key point about this description is serving someone. So again, in terms of our morally right, morally wrong: what he's doing is morally right because he's acting in service of higher powers, higher morals.

Similarly with the "carved out his passage": that is referring to the way that he's making his way over to the person he's got to kill, so it's a metaphor for how he's getting there. Now, "carved out his passage" could connote his power, because of course what he's actually doing is killing people; he's making his way through a crowd, killing as he goes. So to have that described with the verb "carved," it connotes a lot of power and strength for him to be able to physically do that to those people. But if you also think of it as having connotations of artistry—like a woodworker carving wood, or a sculptor carving their sculpture out of marble—there is a skill, there is an art to it as well. So he's being respected because of what a great warrior he is.

What's really important, though, about this scene is that it's not just about setting up what a great person Macbeth is. That is definitely one of its key aims, but there are also suggestions in there at the next step, which is his hamartia.

Now, hamartia just means fatal flaw. And Macbeth's key fatal flaw—there are some sort of secondary ones, but they all come back to this one—is his ambition. That's his key fatal flaw; if it wasn't for his ambition, none of this would have happened. And we do have suggestions in Act 1, Scene 2 that he is too ambitious as well.

So if we have a look at these lines from the captain, it says:

"they were

As cannons overcharged with double cracks..."

Now, if we were to view that positively, it shows that, in the face of this battle that they are losing and seems to be set against them and thing after thing is going wrong, Macbeth doesn't give up. In fact, he actually fights back harder, and he has great power and strength and tenacity. However, when we look at the captain questioning why they did that, why they fought back so strongly, he gives these two reasons:

"...Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

Or memorize another Golgotha..."

If we start off with "they meant to bathe in reeking wounds": that metaphor suggests a great deal of bravery in that, if you think of bathing, you're relaxing, you're enjoying yourself. And if you're bathing in the wounds of others, it's like you're enjoying the violence, you're enjoying the battle. So that contrasts to what we would expect, right? We would expect people, when their backs are against the wall, when they're losing a battle, to be giving up, to be panicking, to be worried. And the fact that Macbeth is just loving life, loving the violence, fighting back harder, shows his bravery, but also shows how he is perhaps almost too violent. Like, he is fine with killing people; he's not concerned about it at all. Someone who could enjoy killing this much would raise questions about their moral character.

Similar to that metaphor of "carved out his passage": because yes, it could connote a sculptor carving out a piece of art, but it could also connote a butcher carving up a piece of meat. And that suggestion of not viewing the people around him as anything other than obstacles in his way that he needs to destroy—and so he's very unfeeling, unthinking about the people he has to kill. So that tenacity could actually become his fatal flaw: he's determined, he doesn't give up to achieve his goal, to achieve what he wants. Now, in this battle, what he wanted was good; what he wanted was to destroy King Duncan's enemy. But once his hamartia of ambition is going to get involved, suddenly that quality of tenacity is going to become a real big problem, because he will not stop; he will keep doing things that get worse and worse and worse, because he's so determined to protect his kingship and ensure that his children can become king.

Similarly, when we look at this line from the captain: "Or memorize another Golgotha." Now, Golgotha is the hill where Jesus Christ was crucified, so it has a huge meaning for our Christian audience. So memorizing another Golgotha could be positive, in that it's an allusion to the sacrifice that Jesus made for humanity. So it could be suggesting that Macbeth was willing to sacrifice himself for others, to protect others; so he was going to fight to the bitter end, he was going to sacrifice his life to try and help protect Scotland. Positive.

Negative: a very key part of Christian belief is that you do not try to make yourself, your human self, be viewed as greatly, as positively as God or Jesus. You are not them; you are not on their level; that is not right. So this idea of them wanting to create, memorize, make us think of, make us remember another moment as significant as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ would perhaps suggest Macbeth having ambitions that go way beyond what he should have.

So even within the really complimentary things that the captain says about Macbeth, there are these suggestions that he has characteristics that could also work against him. Now, those characteristics—his violence, his tenacity, his perhaps desire for power beyond himself—don't properly come out until his ambition is triggered.

To look at that hamartia of ambition, we turn actually to Act 1, Scene 7, and something Macbeth says right towards the end of that soliloquy:

"I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself

And falls on th’ other—"

Now, in this metaphor, it's really clear that Macbeth is very much aware for himself that ambition is what is driving him forward. So when we see the first part of the metaphor, "I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent": for those of you that don't know anything about horses, I will explain what this means. For those of you who know a lot about horses, don't come for me if I get something slightly wrong; the basic principle of what I'm about to say works. A spur is used to make a horse go faster, right? So it digs into the side of a horse to kind of make them move. So having "no spur to prick the sides of my intent"—intent just means like his plans, his intentions to do something—he's saying: there is nothing to make me do this, there is nothing to make me go ahead with killing King Duncan, "but only vaulting ambition." The only thing to make him do it is ambition. And so he's aware that the thing really driving him here is his ambition.

Now, this uses the word "vaulting," so there's two ways of looking at it. It could be a continuation of the equestrian metaphor—equestrian is a fancy word for horse—the horse imagery that we have here. So a vaulting horse is like jumping over stuff, okay? So that image of ambition overleaping itself and falling on the other, it's like ambition trying to jump something, trying to get over an obstacle. The obstacle in this case is King Duncan: he is the one that has to be sort of gotten out of the way for the ambition of becoming king to be achieved. So on the one hand, what Macbeth is saying is that ambition is what's going to push him to achieve this, to get over this obstacle.

However, he is also concerned about that ambition, because the other meaning of the word "vaulting," when we're not using it for horses, when we're using it as an adjective—as it is used in that sentence—when it is used as an adjective, it means over-exaggerated, excessive confidence, arrogance. So what Macbeth also knows is that his ambition could be way beyond what it should be, going against the natural order, too much for him to have. And then when we have that line about it overleaping itself and falling on the other, what we realize is that Macbeth's concern is that he's going to fail: he's going to have this great ambition and not be able to achieve it, and fall as a consequence.

Now, of course, in the metaphor of the horse falling, it's failed the jump and so it's fallen onto the ground. But we could also think of the word "fall" with its more moral implications as well: you know, the fall of Adam and Eve, for example; the downfall of a tragic hero; "fall" also meaning that loss of your moral character, loss of who you are, etc. So when he's saying that it overleaps itself and falls on the other, he is essentially showing that he is aware that not only is ambition the only thing driving him, but that it could also destroy him.

So Macbeth himself is acutely aware of his hamartia, and he says all of this right at the end of a soliloquy where he then changes his mind and he decides not to go ahead with it. And now this is where things get really interesting, but also slightly off on a tangent of Macbeth, so I'm only going to cover this quickly: he changes his mind back again because of one person—Lady Macbeth.

So is it that one of his other fatal flaws is how easily he could be manipulated? The witches managed to convince him of these prophecies; Lady Macbeth convinces him to kill King Duncan. Or is Shakespeare trying to set up Lady Macbeth as our villain of the play, as our serpent, our temptation that is trying to convince Macbeth to do the wrong thing, and ultimately it is still Macbeth's responsibility for giving in to that temptation, for making that poor judgment, for letting Lady Macbeth's manipulations succeed over him? Either way, the point is that for a moment, Macbeth was going to make the right decision: he was going to ignore all of this and not kill King Duncan, and then he goes and makes the wrong decision.

Which leads us on to the next way he really fits into the tragic hero. It is really important for the Shakespearean tragic hero that they struggle internally and externally: they have to battle external forces and internal forces. Now, those internal forces for Macbeth is his own conscience. He really struggles about whether or not to kill King Duncan, and he struggles with the guilt in the immediate aftermath of having killed King Duncan. And those are all good signs that he has his moral compass, he has good judgment in him. The problem is, because of that old hamartia, he ends up making the bad choices and the bad judgment, and ends up losing more and more of his morals as he keeps making bad decisions.

But if we look at this line—this is now earlier than the vaulting ambition, because this is Act 1, Scene 3, so he's just been told about the witches' prophecies, and this is the first aside that he has after that. So an aside is when he's essentially thinking out loud while other characters are having a conversation. So it's our first chance to see inside his thought process after hearing about the witches' prophecies. And what he's basically thinking about is the fact that he cannot figure out whether or not to trust the witches and whether or not these prophecies are a good thing.

So he lays it out as:

"This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, cannot be good..."

That parallelism—it's equal, right? And you could also actually, in fact, call it a paradox: that paradox of "cannot be ill, cannot be good." Okay, that is already a problem, because for our Jacobean audience, with everything they know about witches and witchcraft and how witches work for the devil, they're like: they are evil, do not side with them, do not give them your voice! Like, they are the bad person, don't listen!

But Macbeth isn't seeing that. He's seeing it as an equal two sides. It's like: it's good because it's given me what I want, that "earnest of success"—it's given him this Thane of Cawdor position, he's got more power now. So if that prophecy came true, their first one about him being Thane of Cawdor, then the one about him getting to be king must be able to come true as well. So again, it's his hamartia here that's clouding his judgment, that's making him not see the problem with these prophecies, and instead seeing it as a huge conflict where it could be good, it could be bad, and he honestly can't tell which it is. So his ambition, the fact that he's getting some power, is corrupting him.

He does also struggle with it, though, because he says:

"...If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature?..."

Unfixing your hair is like, you know, making his hair stand on end, so it has connotations of fear. Now keep in mind, this is our Macbeth after Act 1, Scene 2. This is our "bathe in reeking wounds" Macbeth; this is our "cannons overcharged with double cracks" Macbeth; this is our Macbeth who can see endless people running at him with swords and be fine, but just thinks about killing the king and he's worrying, he's panicking, he's scared. So that indicates that he does still have a good person in him, because he is really able to recognize the difference: he's able to recognize that this is wrong. To think about killing the king is really wrong, and he has that fear as a result.

You also have all of those interrogatives in there, all the question marks. And we see these not just in this little example, but in a lot of the different soliloquies that Macbeth has, where he's essentially trying to make up his mind about whether or not to kill King Duncan. Essentially most of Act 1 is Macbeth trying to make up his mind. And the frequency of those interrogatives really highlights his uncertainty, his questioning, his conflict about what he is doing, and the fact that he does change his mind, as we saw with Act 1, Scene 7.

So part of what makes Macbeth a tragic hero, rather than just an outright villain, is this internal conflict. An outright villain doesn't have a moral compass, isn't worried about the repercussions of their actions; they just go and do what they want to do. A tragic hero is someone who was a good person that made bad choices.

And the key to that is the effect it has on us as an audience. A key aspect of the tragic hero that was outlined by Aristotle and is continued by Shakespeare is this idea that they want the tragic hero to evoke pity and fear in the audience. So that pity: it's about us looking at Macbeth and being like, "No, don't do this! You're making the wrong decision!" And we're rooting for him, and we want him to make the great decision, and then when he doesn't, we just feel bad. So he's set up as a good person to make us root for him, and then we see him go through this struggle where we worry for him, and we pity him and the struggle that he's going through with his manipulative wife or these manipulative witches, and we wish he will make the right choice.

Of course, he doesn't later on, and he ends up becoming more of a villain character. The more of his morals he loses, the less of a conflict there is, the less that the audience roots for him, and the more he becomes essentially the villain of his own play. And you could argue that it's that turn to a villain that is a key part of his reversal of fortune.

The fourth aspect of the tragic hero that we're going to look at: once a tragic hero has let their hamartia overtake them—right, their hamartia has led them to make bad choices—that then begins their peripeteia, their reversal of fortune. Now, for Macbeth, that reversal of fortune has two parts to it: there's the internal reversal of fortune and the external—what happens to him in who he is, and also how others see him as well.

So the internal is his moral character: the fact that he goes from being somebody who spends an entire act trying to decide whether or not to kill King Duncan, to somebody who just is like, "Yep, women and children, go kill them. I will kill you if you don't tell me what I want to hear," as he says to one of his servants. Like, he just stops caring about the consequences of his actions on others; he really loses his morals. The other consequence to that is that he really loses that high level of respect and honor that he had way back in Act 1, Scene 2.

So we're going to look at a couple of quotes from Act 4 for this. Now, it's worth noting that for the purposes of this video and to make sure that it doesn't last like six hours, I'm only looking at really small, specific quotes. If you feel like what you need is detailed analysis of full soliloquies, of full scenes, have a look in the link in the description below for where you can get that. What I just want to look at is a couple of lines.

So we've got this line from Act 4, Scene 1, where Macbeth has just gone to speak to the witches and demand that they give him more prophecies. And when he's come out from there, he has then been told that Macduff, along with some other lords, have run off to England, have abandoned Macbeth and gone to join Malcolm, who's building like an army to fight back against Macbeth. Now, when he hears this, one of Macbeth's reactions is that:

"From this moment

The very firstlings of my heart shall be

The firstlings of my hand."

Now, his heart symbolizes his feelings; his hand is his actions. So in other words, he's saying: whatever I want to do, I will immediately do. So it shows a lack of caring about the consequences of his actions, and it shows that he's just fully driven by what he wants—his ambition, his desire. Now that's all he cares about. That is really different from the Macbeth of Act 1, who spent like endless soliloquies: "Should I do this? Should I do that? Is it logically right? Is it morally right? Is it right according to my faith? Is it right according to my desire?"—constantly trying to make up his mind. Now there's none of that thought, there's none of that processing things; it's just: "What do I want? I'm going to make it happen." So that's a real sign of the loss of his moral character by the time of this act.

The other thing is the fact that his respect and honor from others is lost, and we see that—this chunk is from Act 4, Scene 3. Now this scene, I've come to love this scene just because it's so weird. But this is the scene where Malcolm tries to play reverse psychology on Macduff and act like he's the worst king ever to try and test Macduff's loyalty basically, and what kind of person Macduff is. And the way that Malcolm does that is he asks Macduff's opinion on Macbeth, and Macduff says:

"Not in the legions

Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned

In evils to top Macbeth."

That's some strong words. And Malcolm agrees with that—he's going to follow up in a minute by suggesting he's worse than Macbeth, but, you know, let's ignore that—and he says:

"I grant him bloody,

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name..."

So he's just rattling off all these bad qualities that Macbeth has.

Now, what Macduff and Malcolm are saying here isn't necessarily particularly groundbreaking in terms of what it means, right? They're pretty explicit in what they're saying here. The key thing about this is the comparison to Act 1, Scene 2 and how much things have changed. Thinking about the way the captain spoke of "brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name"; thinking about the way that Ross spoke of "Bellona's bridegroom," that he praised onto him; "valiant cousin, worthy gentleman" by King Duncan. And now he is the devil, he is sinful. All those things that we looked at before—of his righteousness in battle, his bravery, his power, his greatness—have been completely lost, and instead replaced with the worst qualities that a human, by Jacobean standards, can be seen to have: being worse than the devil, having every sin that goes against the Christian faith.

So he has, in terms of his reversal of fortune, lost who he is morally, and then also linked to that, he's lost all of his reputation, he's lost all of his respect and honor from those around him as well. So that's his reversal of fortune: he loses the good person he was, and as a consequence, the good reputation that he had.

Anagnorisis is basically the moment of realization that a character has when they recognize they've done wrong, they've made a mistake. In Macbeth, and with tragic heroes, they do have an anagnorisis, but not until it's too late. So in the case of Macbeth, he has it right before he dies in Act 5, Scene 8. And I want us to have a little look at a chunk from that scene, because I think it says a lot about Macbeth.

This is after Macduff has told Macbeth that he was born by a Caesarean, so technically he breaks the witches' prophecy that Macbeth can't be killed by a man born from a woman. Macbeth has already seen Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane Hill, so he's now had the prophecies by the witches be broken, and he has finally realized that they cannot be trusted:

"Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,

For it hath cowed my better part of man..."

That bit, "my better part of man," is really telling: he's showing via that metaphor that he knows that they have essentially destroyed his moral character, and he's not going to trust them anymore, he's not going to believe them. So he has this anagnorisis, and he tries to undo things; he tries to stop it there by saying to Macduff, "I will not fight with thee."

But Macduff won't have that. He then calls him to yield, calls him a coward, says that they will chop off his head and underneath his head write: "Here may you see the tyrant." He's essentially telling Macbeth to surrender: "Here is all the stuff we're going to do to you: we're going to humiliate you as much as we can and belittle you as much as we can. You are going to die; there is no coming back from this."

And so what happens is: Macbeth has had his anagnorisis, he's realized he can't trust the witches, so he's backed in a way just being him. What does he do in this situation? Well, in a lot of ways, he goes back to the person he was in Act 1, Scene 2:

"I will not yield,

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet...

Yet I will try the last. Before my body

I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,

And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"

So he's getting rid of his shield: "Lay on, Macduff, / And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'" The amount of bravery, tenacity, determination, confidence in all of that is a lot like the Macbeth from Act 1, Scene 2—our "disdaining Fortune," "double cracks" cannons Macbeth. There's a lot of similarity there. So in some ways, he has come, you know, kind of full circle, and he's gone back to the way he was.

But the key difference is still this bit: "I will not yield, / To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet." He will not show the proper respect and order that he is supposed to, to the one who is now king. So what hasn't returned is his respect for the natural order. So his last speech, the way that he dies, is: his reversal of fortune has stuck. He has these qualities—this violence, this tenacity, this power, this physical strength—that he's using for the wrong reasons. He's using them to protect his own ego, in other words, and not appear weak and give in to the rightful king. He has his anagnorisis, but it's too late: he's lost his moral character, he's lost his reputation, there's no coming back from it. He has to die.

And that is another characteristic of tragic heroes: they do have to die. Though I'm not sure I would bother to make a point of that in an essay, because there's not much you can say except "tragic heroes are meant to die, and Macbeth dies." I think the much more interesting thing is the anagnorisis—the fact that he has that too late, he recognizes his mistakes too late. Because if we think about Shakespeare's goal of using Macbeth as a lesson, it's almost like it's saying to the audience: he learned his lesson too late; you learn yours before you've even made the mistake. You don't even make the mistake that he did. Because if you give Macbeth redemption, if you let him walk his way back, if you let him be like, "Sorry guys, let's just hold hands, I'm really sorry," and they welcome him back like, "No problem, you just murdered my entire family," "Oh, you just murdered my dad, no worries"—then all of a sudden it makes people think: well, okay, you can kind of get away with doing things.

But the key message is: no, you can't get away with it. Even when you realize you've messed up, even when you realize you've gone too far, you are going to have to face the consequences. And in this case, those consequences are:

• The destruction of you, of your character.

• The destruction of your reputation, how others feel about you.

• The destruction of your soul, religiously speaking (there have been lots of lines from Macbeth and from others essentially saying that he's damned to hell for what he's done).

• And the destruction of your actual life, because you die.

So all in all, not really worth it.

I just want to end by thinking about that final link between the characteristics of the tragic hero that Macbeth has and also the key messages that Shakespeare is trying to get across.

Of course, the link to ambition is clear: that is his hamartia, right? That is the thing that leads him to have all of these problems in the first place. It's also the key part of his internal conflict, because it's essentially his ambition versus his morals. It also is the reason he has his reversal of fortune; it's also the reason he doesn't have his anagnorisis in time. All of his judgment is just clouded by this hamartia.

In terms of that message of "don't commit regicide," the key bit is the reversal of fortune: we see that doing something so wrong like regicide has no positive outcome for the person who has done it.

Similarly with the going against your faith: he did have that internal conflict because we could say that his conflict was between his religious morals and his ambition, but it's also that when you go against your faith, it ends up going terribly for you. It ends up destroying your life, destroying your moral character, destroying your relationship with your God, sending you to hell—all that kind of thing.

Similar again with the destruction of the natural order: you're just not supposed to destroy the natural order, so when you do, it ruins everything, it ruins your life.

So all of this, all of Macbeth's downfall, is designed to prove the point that nothing good comes from allowing ambition to control you, from going against your faith, from going against the natural order, from committing regicide. Nothing good can come of those things. And for all of those lessons, when you learn them too late, that's it: there is a point where the consequences are set in and you have to deal with them.

So again, Shakespeare's final big sort of lesson here is: learn from Macbeth. If you can learn from Macbeth, then you won't end up having the tragic outcome that he did.