Macbeth Understands the Evil Nature of His Actions, but He Proceeds with Them Anyways

Practise Essay

“Macbeth understands the evil nature of his actions, but he proceeds with them anyways. Discuss”

William Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” is a tale of greed and guilt which leads to death and the downfall of an entire nation. Macbeth does understand the evil nature of his actions in the beginning of the play but he loses his sanity as the play develops. Macbeth is an honourable nobleman in the beginning but as the play develops he loses understanding of the evil nature of his actions. Macbeth feels regret when he carries out his evil acts which proves he understands the evil nature of his actions. Macbeth does understand the evil nature of his actions in the beginning but the pressure from Lady Macbeth persuades him to murder Duncan and after these actions Macbeth does not know how to stop killing.

Macbeth is an honourable nobleman in the beginning but as the play develops he loses understanding of the evil nature of his actions. In the beginning Macbeth is describes as a “worthy gentlemen” by King Duncan, the very man Macbeth would murder a few scenes after. He was hailed “brave Macbeth” in the second scene of the first act after fighting off two armies of both rebels and the Norwegians. As the play develops and Macbeth kills more and more people he loses the understanding of the evil nature of his actions. He begins to lose his mind and instead of feeling remorse and acts on his “firstlings”, meaning he is going to act on his first impulse rather than using his conscience. Macbeth does show characteristics of being an honourable man in the beginning of the play but changes into an insane, evil character throughout the play that loses understanding of the evil nature of his actions.

Macbeth feels regret when he carries out his evil acts which proves he understands the evil nature of them. Macbeth clearly feels regret after he sends an assassin to kill Banquo as he was his best friend. He says, “Stars hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desire, the eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” He is trying to tell the stars to disappear because they are Gods eyes in the night and he does not want God to see what he does during the night. Macbeths “vaulting ambition” causes him to carry on with these actions even though he feels regret after committing them.

Macbeth