The Non-human as a Character in Macbeth (1606)

Modern Philology, 2019

I Near the end of Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), while fortifying Dunsinane against the encroaching rebel army, Macbeth has a brief exchange with the physician who has been attending his wife. When asked how Lady Macbeth is faring, the Doctor replies that she is "not so sick, my lord, / As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies / That keep her from her rest." 1 For the Doctor, operations of the mind are considered apart from the operations of the body, or at least, he considers himself capable of treating the latter more than the former. But Macbeth, irritated at the implication that his wife's sleepwalking malady is distinct from somatic illness, asks:

Queer Shakespeare: Desire and Sexuality (ed. Goran Stanivukovic), Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2017

This study examines the power of nature and the supernatural powers in Macbeth, the last and the shortest of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, and their influence on the course of events in the play. Macbeth is the one of Shakespeare plays that supernatural figures and elements take place at most. The mainstays of the play are developing events as a result of the prophecies of the witches, supernatural powers’ triggering human greed and as a result of this, deterioration, distortion and disorder occurring on the universal order. In this study, in which cases the harmony and balance of nature is impaired, what happens as a result of this deterioration and the perspectives of the people of Shakespeare’s era about the witches were examined with comments by famous critics.

Shakespeare Review, 2018

This paper applies the cognitive theory of conceptual integration to the dramatic composition of Shakespeare's Macbeth in which the abstract and the concrete as well as the supernatural and the natural are blended in the mind of the audience to generate a novel conceptual outcome and an enveloping unity, suggesting a remarkable dramatic significance. The paper argues that an understanding of the mechanism of conceptual blending is indispensable to the recognition of the narrative composition and thematic content of the play. The paper concludes that what makes the play memorable is Shakespeare's creative capacity of blending irreconcilable concepts and contradictory elements conceptually in an insightful and coherent whole.

1999

Macbeth is one of the most complex villains in literature as he seems to be aware of the gravity and consequences of his actions but, at the same time, blind to his chosen path of self-destruction. On one hand, he acknowledges a kind of fate or poetic justice, in which 'bloody instructions return to plague th'inventor'; yet, on the other hand, this does not impede his course -rather it makes him more 'bloody, bold, and resolute'. Despite Macbeth's will to succeed the metaphysical mechanism of fate proves to be stronger as the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel points out: Macbeth 'stepped out of nature itself, clung to alien Beings, and so in their service had to trample and slay everything holy in human nature, had at last to be forsaken by his gods (since these were objects and he their slave) and be dashed to pieces on his faith itself.' For Hegel, this mechanism stems from Macbeth's hostility to life, which also puts him at odds with nature. Already the murder of Duncan is characterized as unnatural and being against nature in II.iv. The perceived unnaturalness of Macbeth's villainy mediates the horror and suffering that is causes. Moreover, his villainy is unnatural because his hostility to life is also hostility towards himself -therefore it is a path of self-destruction. In my chapter, based on a reading of Hegel, I aim to problematise and critique the current understanding of nature (and culture) with this reading of Macbeth and draw attention to the mediatedness of the concept of nature. The chapter's focus will be on elucidating the ethical and social dimension of Macbeth's hostility to life and the implications it has on the concept of villainy.

2018

In an attempt to find in Macbeth a transcendental view of manhood, this article offers a brief description of some of the ways in which Shakespeare pursues the fragmentation of gender barriers and problematizes traditional representations of masculinity. Through a comparative analysis of the play and the 2015 film adaptation of it by Justin Kurzel, aspects such as heroic violence, sexuality, boyhood, fatherhood, and the loss of humanhood are addressed. In the end, Shakespeare’s uncertainty and Kurzel’s interpretation thereof combine in order to further illustrate the issue of masculinity.

Behala College, 2023

who were a continual source of inspiration. They pushed me to think imaginatively and urged me to do this project work without hesitation. Their vast knowledge of English literature enabled me to accomplish this project. This endeavour would not have been possible without their help and supervision. I'd like to thank The University of Calcutta for allowing me to work on the paper about the supernatural elements in Macbeth entitled: "Double, Double Toil and Trouble; Fire Burn, and Cauldron Bubble": Exploring the Supernatural in Macbeth. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family, siblings, and friends for their invaluable assistance, and I am deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed to the successful completion of this project.