An old man wakes up in the middle of the night to a searing pain in his chest. He opens his eyes to see a knife lodged in his heart, and the face of a man he had trusted wholeheartedly. Macbeth is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare in the 16th century AD, though it takes place roughly 500 years earlier, and takes place in Scotland. The play is about a proud noble, Macbeth, whose royal ambitions bring about his ruin. This story is often looked at as a great man falling into evil, but the idea that Macbeth was a good man who fell from grace falls apart under closer inspection. He should instead be seen as a bad man whose true nature is revealed, as he almost immediately kills Duncan for his own gain, then Banquo out of fear, and finally …show more content…
In scene three of act one, Macbeth and Banquo meet the weird sisters, who give them prophecies. They tell Macbeth that he will be king of Scotland, and by the end of the act, he decides to murder Duncan, and he is more worried about “if [he and his wife] should fail” than the morality of the act (1.7.68). This is often seen as the moment when Macbeth becomes a bad person, but any person who puts up so little resistance to murder was never a great person. This, however, is not the only murder this so-called great man commits without a second …show more content…
After Macduff flees the country to meet up with Duncan's heir and plan an invasion of Scotland, Macbeth, almost instinctively, orders the murder of Macduff’s “wife, his babies, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in this line” (4.1.173-174). Both of the other murders were at least for understandable reasons, but this murder reveals how truly psychopathic Macbeth is, as the only reason for this murder is to get back at Macduff. This murder, finally, shows everybody in the British Isles Macbeth’s true