The Correlation of Macbeth’s Contemporary Issues With Modern Day Society In Macbeth by William Shakespeare many issues addressed in the play are still relevant in today’s society. People can relate life over four hundred years ago to life today by bringing the contemporary issues used in this play forward such as fate vs free will, violence and repercussions, and stress and mental illness. These issues arise quite frequently in modern society, yet the people carrying out these actions are sometimes unaware of how detrimental the end result can become. By relating these topics between Shakespeare’s Macbeth and society over four hundred years after the play was written, people may be able to better understand the connection between fate vs free …show more content…
Since Macbeth was set over four hundred years ago when almost everyone believed in God and went to church on Sunday, many people believed in fate. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people didn’t ‘believe’ in free will, it just means that most people acted on fate more so than free will. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth finds himself trying to differentiate between what is real and what is in his imagination. Since Lady Macbeth is the one who intentionally placed the dagger in a designated position with the intention of leading Macbeth to kill, this causes Macbeth to question his sanity: “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?... or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation proceeding from the heart-oppressed brain?“ (2.1.32-37). In today’s society people may not find themselves trying to figure out if there is a real or fake bloody dagger in front of them, but they can have similar problems in terms of being manipulated. People are manipulated all of the time in modern society (i.e. domestic violence situations, cheating on school work, etc.). When someone is manipulated into doing something, they oftentimes find themselves questioning every move that they make. This happened to Macbeth and this also happens quite frequently in modern society. Fate vs free will is a controversial subject today, just like it was over four hundred years ago because it can be interpreted in so many different