MACBETH’S IDENTITY CRISIS: SHAKESPEARE AS THE SAVIOUR

G. M. Javed  Arif

doi:10.53808/KUS.2000.2.2.9939-ah

Authors

G. M. Javed Arif English Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna 9208, Bangladesh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53808/KUS.2000.2.2.9939-ah

Keywords:

Unconscious; Preconscious; Conscious; Hamartia; Peripeteia; Anagnorisis

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a highly complex and magnificent tragedy where nemesis descends upon the tragic hero in a true tragic manner. It is as well an excellent crime story with an intricate pattern of crime and punishment. Macbeth in a sense is a criminal but he is also a tragic hero because Shakespeare endues him with qualities worthy of a tragic hero, because he has a moral weakness which impels him to criminal thoughts and criminal deeds which are his tragic acts, because his fortune undergoes a reversal, because he realizes his error and consequently suffers immensely and dies. But these tragic qualities of his together with his crimes and punishments are integrated in such adroit dramatic and psychological ways that in spite of degenerating into a criminal he commands pity as a tragic hero. Macbeth’s tragedy is that he fools his conscience but cannot kill it for it is deeply, inextricably and poetically rooted in his unconscious. And essentially it is this artifice with which Shakespeare salvages his hero.

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References

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