Throughout the play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, manhood is a recurring theme and appears in almost every act. What it takes to be a man differs from person to person as the play progresses. What William Shakespeare believes about manhood is much different than what his characters think. About this topic, Robert Kimbrough says this,“...so long as one remains exclusively female, or exclusively male, that person will be constricted and confined, denied human growth.” While Shakespeare’s characters don’t believe this, the idea is prevalent in the devolution of Macbeth. Macbeth is very keen on being a man and appearing manlike to his wife, Lady Macbeth. The play depicts the life of Macbeth, the murderous king of Scotland. According to most sources, manhood is defined as the state of being a man and not a child. Each character in Macbeth has a different idea of what it means to be a man. In Macbeth acts one through four, the theme …show more content…
Macbeth freaks out and says some very incriminating things before fleeing the scene. Lady Macbeth drags him from the party and asks Macbeth this,“Are you a man?”(3:4, 57). She brings up the fact that he was acting too ladylike at the dinner after seeing the ghost of Banquo. He was gasping and she clearly thinks that seeing the ghost of a dead best friend isn’t something to freak out about. To conclude, the theme of manhood in Macbeth is extremely prevalent in acts one through four. Lady Macbeth is the character who uses this the most to manipulate people into doing what she wants and her skill even rubs off onto Macbeth. The three major scenes that use this theme are act one scene five, act three scene one, and act three scene four. The theme is the backbone of the story and the murder of King Duncan wouldn’t have happened without this major influence in Macbeth’s