Imagine yourself as a child. You are playing on the playground with your friends. Suddenly, a child approaches you and starts to tease you. What do you do? If you don't fight, you are a coward. If you cry, you are weak. If you start to tease the child, you teach yourself that it is all right to devalue others. These are the problems that create stereotypes of masculinity and this can be shown in the play Macbeth and today. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare suggests that even though men and society have progressed in one's idea of a man during the 1600’s, society has not really progressed because society's modern stereotypes of masculinity as it relates to violence, emotions, and attitudes towards women.
Shakespeare suggests that society has progressed and regressed based on one's stereotypes of masculinity relating to violence. In Macbeth, Macbeth is shown three apparitions while visiting the weird
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One of the apparitions warns Macbeth of Macduff. Macbeth kills Macduff’s family in order to lure Macduff to him. While Macduff is searching for Macbeth, he refuses to kill Macbeth's servants because they “Are hired to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth, / Or else [his] sword with unbattered edge / [He shall] sheathe again undeeded”(Act 5.6.18-20). Shakespeare shows the progression of the meaning of masculinity by contradicting the stereotype of violence that many people had during the 1600’s. During that time, it was expected of a man to fight as a way to express his masculinity and power, but Shakespeare shows that to be masculine a man does not need to be hostile towards innocent people. On the other hand, the documentary The Mask You Live In shows the regression of the stereotype of violence that