Macbeth Disease Essay

In William Shakespeare's renowned play Macbeth, Shakespeare draws parallels between the motif of disease and Macbeth's ambition. His ambition leads to his family’s insanity, political tyranny and social instability. The comparison of Macbeth’s ambition to disease is drawn for the causes and effects of said ambition which allows readers to see how it is this rather than fate, that led to Macbeth's demise. In this essay, I will explore how Shakespeare links ambition to disease and the extent to which ambition-fuelled actions led to disease within individuals and his country.

Shakespeare contrasts Macbeth's desire with sickness throughout the beginning of the play by focusing on its causes. Throughout the play, Macbeth's ambition rots much like

His ambition is shown to have wrongfully earned him the position of the king of Scotland. He went to extreme lengths to achieve this title, such as murdering highly influential people critical to the country's political system. In acts 4 and 5, Shakespeare uses multiple characters in the play to personify Scotland as a wounded woman, ‘diseased’ as a result of Macbeth’s actions. In act 4 scene 3, Macduff describes the wounded woman of Scotland by saying “it weeps, it bleeds, and each day a new gash Is added to her wounds” (4.3 46-47). The word “gash” connotes a long, deep cut, usually caused by a knife or sword, much like the sword Macbeth used on his victims, comparing Macbeth’s actions to disease. They say that Scotland “each new morn, new widows howl, new orphans, cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face.”(4.3 6-8). The references made by Shakespeare through the medium of the characters point towards the actions of Macbeth. New widows howling can be a reference to Macbeth himself, who became a widower after his wife committed suicide due to the unclearable guilt that Macbeth caused her, or the many people who would be widowed due to his actions, such as Banquo’s wife. New orphans' cry is regarding Fleance, whose father Macbeth killed, making him an orphan. ‘New sorrows’ is in relation to the effects of Macbeth’s leadership on the

In act 5 scene 2, Caithness refers to Malcolm as the medicine that will cure their sick country by saying “Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal, And with him pour we in our country’s purge/Each drop of us.” (5.2 30-32). Knowing the outcome of the war is that Malcolm becomes king shows the parallel between him being the medicine and implying that Macbeth is the ‘sickness’. With Malcolm being described as the royal flower of the country and Macbeth as the weed, the metaphors show how the people of Scotland, usually described as farmers, perceive the two. With farmers usually trying to ‘weed out’ unnecessary plants, Shakespeare uses the imagery of weeds to convey to the reader that Macbeth must be removed. Macbeth being the weed is robbing other ‘plants’ of nutrients and water, robbing the resources that Malcolm needs to become a successful king of Scotland, and making the overall state of the country worse. Other imagery like ‘Duncan’s horses going crazy’ mirrors Macbeth’s ambition driving him crazy, which clearly expresses to us that Macbeth’s ambition is a metaphor for a disease that affects everything around him. In Act 5 Scene 3 of Macbeth, Shakespeare personifies Scotland as a diseased woman, indicating that the country's infrastructure and political situation are crumbling under Macbeth's leadership. The doctor's suggestion that the war is the cure to the land's disease points to the change