Macbeth's Motivation for Murdering Duncan
Macbeth's Motivation for Murdering Duncan
What Implications Would This Murder Have For A Contemporary Audience?";"At the beginning of the play we are told about Macbeth. He is a good swordsman, as a captain describes what he did ‘Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam’d him from the to the chops’. This shows that he is powerful when it comes to fighting for his King and country. He is also loyal to his King because King Duncan is his friend too. When the Thane of Cawdor was found guilty of treason, Duncan says, ‘And with his former title greet Macbeth’ and ‘What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won’. This means that Macbeth is worthy of becoming Thane of Cawdor, so what the former Thane has lost, his title and life, Macbeth has won or gained.
This play was written and acted out in the Jacobean period. At this time people believed in witches, witchcraft and the supernatural. This made the play more believable. The audience already knew the type of things that they thought witches could do. They thought that they could control the weather and the winds, that they could predict the future, disappear into thin air and that they could stop people from sleeping forever. At this time, James I was King. The play backed up the idea that Kings were appointed by God and that they were higher in the chain of being than man. Also that Kings had golden blood, ‘His silver skin, lac’d with his golden blood’ and ‘Most sacrilegious murther hath broke ope The Lord’s annointed Temple’.
When Macbeth first sees the witches he asks them to speak, ‘Speak if you can: what are you?’. They reply ‘All hail Macbeth, hail to thee Thane of Glamis’. Macbeth already knew that but he was intrigued to know how they knew. ‘All hail Macbeth, hail to thee Thane of Cawdor’ Then straight after that ‘All hail Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter’. Banquo can’t believe what they have just said. He asks ‘Are ye fantastical, or that indeed which outwardly ye show’? I don’t think that he believes that they are really there. While Macbeth is ‘rapt’, Banquo asks for them to predict his future, ‘If you can look into the seeds of Time, And say, which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither,...