942 shakespeare, William
no pain due to the torment in their minds. Ever the
optimist, Edgar convinces himself that to be as low
as possible is positive, since the situation can only
improve. No sooner are these words uttered than
his eyeless father enters, and Edgar must admit that
one’s suffering can always get worse. The play’s final
scene leaves little hope for England as well: The only
characters left to rule are Albany and Edgar, two
rather weak men whose judgments throughout the
play hardly inspire confidence in their leadership.
There are those who argue that Lear and
Gloucester bring all of their trials upon themselves,
and that their “evil” children have justifiable motiva-
tions for their actions. While this may be true, it
does not explain the play’s excessive suffering. The
suffering in King Lear is so intense that Nahum
Tate’s 1681 adaptation, in which the good are
rewarded, the evil punished, and many of the most
horrific scenes deleted or moved offstage, became
the preferred performance text for more than 150
years.
Deborah Montouri
SHakESPEarE, wiLLiam Macbeth
(1623)
Written in 1606 and first performed in 1623, Mac-
beth chronicles the bloody rise to power and equally
bloody fall from grace of an 11th-century Scottish
warrior. Macbeth is an ambitious noble who is told
by three witches called the Weird Sisters, whom he
encounters on a deserted heath, that he will be king.
His friend Banquo is told that while he himself will
never wear a crown, he will be the father of kings.
Macbeth quickly shares the news with Lady Mac-
beth, whom he calls his “dearest partner in great-
ness” (1.5.8). Together they plot the death of King
Duncan and their own ascent to the throne. They
succeed in usurping power but prove to be cruel
and tyrannous monarchs, and Scotland suffers badly
from their misrule. Meanwhile, Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth are increasingly tormented by guilt and
the fear that they themselves will be overthrown.
Other nobles such as Macduff and Lennox, along
with Duncan’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain, orga-
nize a revolt. Civil war ensues, and Macbeth meets
a violent end.
Macbeth is among the shortest of Shakespeare’s
plays, but he manages to pack many themes—
including ambition, family, gender, and guilt—
into a brief space. Macbeth was written in 1606 and
was apparently performed for King James I and VI
(first sovereign of both England and Scotland), who
believed himself to be descended from Banquo and
is one of the figures shown to Macbeth in the line of
kings in act 4, scene 1.
Cassandra NelsonambItIon in Macbeth
Like all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Macbeth features
a protagonist with a tragic flaw. Ambition—coupled
variously with cruelty, caprice, and overconfidence—
both propels Macbeth to the throne of Scotland and
proves to be his undoing.
Even before the opening scene, Macbeth has had
his eye on the crown. When the three Weird Sisters
hail him as king, he “starts” nervously because he is
shocked to hear his own treasonous thoughts spo-
ken aloud (1.3.51). Compare his reaction to that of
Banquo, who neither fears nor revels in the witches’
words. Macbeth is entranced by their prophecy
because it is exactly what he hoped to hear. He begs
them in vain to offer more details about his rise to
power. Moments later, when he is named Thane of
Cawdor, he assumes that this new title is simply a
prelude to the kingship, a “prologue to the swelling
act of the imperial theme” (1.3.129–130).
But at first Macbeth possesses only impotent
ambition. Cautious and worried that haste will lead
to waste, he lacks the will to make his rise to power a
reality. He often employs images of leaping and fall-
ing to visualize his fear of failure. The most famous
such image—of “Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps
itself / And falls on th’ other” (1.7.27–28)—shows
a clumsy horseman, who, having tried to quickly
jump into his saddle, ends up on the other side of
the horse instead.
Soon enough, Macbeth will find the “spur” he
needs to “prick the sides of [his] intent” (1.7.25–26)
in Lady Macbeth. Like her husband, she responds
to the news of their impending royalty with rapture.
Unlike him, Lady Macbeth’s desire for power is
matched by a murderous determination to achieve
it. She associates ambition with both masculinity