Fear

In “Macbeth reconsidered; an essay”, J.P. Kemble attributes the hero’s most questionable
actions to his disproportionate ambition1. His pride and lust for power are even regarded as his
hamartia, the cause of all of his misery2. However, Professor Fred Pattee provides another
interpretation for the character’s destiny: “Macbeth is not a type of ambition and its increasing
inertia; he is rather the type of a pure and noble man driven by circumstance to crime and living
the rest of his life in fear of the consequences which he knows must sooner or later follow”. 3 In
this paper, we will analyse Macbeth’s three great crimes - the assassinations of King Duncan,
Banquo and Macduff’s family- in order to prove the hero’s drive is not his overriding ambition but
his paralysing sense of fear.
Macbeth’s act of regicide is the first instance of him being unable to control his feelings of
dread and remorse. When the witches prophesy about Macbeth’s becoming king, his immediate
response is not one of joy but of fear:
“MACBETH: why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings" (I.iii.134-38)
He immediately considers what it would take for him to get to the throne, and those ideas make
him uneasy. As William Richardson4 explains, “in reflecting, the apprehension of danger, and the
fear of retribution, alarm him. He abandons his purpose”. Macbeth swiftly discards the idea of
forcing his destiny through violence, since he is well aware of its potential risks5. He is, however,
later intimidated by his wife’s insults, threats and instigations to “screw [his] courage to the
sticking-place”. To avoid being seen as “unmanly”, Macbeth finally decides to murder Duncan, in
spite of his fears. This “deed”, nonetheless, only brings about more despair to the Thane. He
cannot even bear the sight of what he has done:
“MACBETH: I'll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again I dare not" (II.ii.49).
In Professor Pattee’s words, Macbeth killed Duncan “to show his wife that he is not afraid,
and from that moment he has not a single instant when he is not in a hell of fear 6”. The king’s
death is not the end of Cawdor’s distress, but it signifies the start of a series of desperate actions
to try to secure his place in power.
The character who Macbeth fears the most is his brother-in-arms Banquo. As the newly
proclaimed king expresses:
“MACBETH: To be thus is nothing,
But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature
 Reigns that which would be fear'd.” (III.i.50-53)
Banquo was present when the witches prophesied Macbeth would become monarch and thus
might be subject to suspicion. Besides, his valiant and noble nature is not unknown to the new
king, who fears Banquo would not hesitate to confront him, were he to find out the truth. Another
factor to take into considerations is the witches’ promise that it would be Banquo’s descendants
who would follow Macbeth in the line of power. The king’s mind is plagued by these worries, which
make him intolerably miserable7, and thus he decides to have Banquo and his son killed. As
Thomas Whately referred to this behaviour, “he gets rid of fear by guilt, which, to a mind so
constituted, may be the less uneasy sensation of the two”8. Macbeth cannot stand being in a state
of constant fright and consequently tries to eliminate the source of his dismay, only to find another
reason to be frightened.
The final act to be analysed is Macbeth’s assassination of Macduff’s family. When the first
apparition tells him to beware the Thane of Fife, the King admits he was already concerned about
his threat. However, the second apparition seems to assume there is no reason to fear. At this
point, nevertheless, Macbeth is too paranoid to remain inactive:
“MACBETH: Macduff; what need I fear of thee?
But yet I'll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live;
That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,
And sleep in spite of thunder” (IV.i.82-86)
He once again decides to take his destiny into his own hands, out of fear and distrust. Macbeth
expects to conquer his fears by exterminating the Macduff family. His attempt to overcome his fear
and guilt and escape the nightmares which haunted him since the assassination of Duncan not
only were proven futile but also gave Macduff enough motive to dethrone the tyrant.
Even though ambition is a major theme in the play, it is our conclusion that the engine
which drives Macbeth’s actions is not lust for power but fear. He panics and bases his decisions
on his feelings, rather than on his reason and experience. What he does is always for fear of
being discovered and, in the end, his actions make his worst fears come true.
Lady Macbeth

In Out of the Hurly-burly of Genders and Still Feminine: a Cixousian Reading of Lady
Macbeth, Zahra Amini refers to Macbeth's wife as "more woman and more feminine than any
other Shakespearean character.9 However, her figure does not embrace female power but, on the
contrary, perceives womanly characteristics as a synonym of weakness 10. The purpose of this
paper is to examine the role of Lady Macbeth and prove she is not a revolutionary, gender-
bending female character because, in order to become who she is, she must get rid of every trace
of what is regarded as femininity.
Lady Macbeth tries to leave behind her womanhood by suppressing every trait she regards
as feminine, including both her biological and behavioural traits. In her first appearance, Lady
Macbeth utters what is possibly her most famous soliloquy:
"Come, you spirits
[...] unsex me here,
[...]Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose..." (I.v.30-36)
Here, she intends to get rid of two bodily functions typically attributed to the female sex:
menstruation and milk production. In the seventeenth century, it was common to refer to
menstrual discharge as women's "naturall visits"11, so this appears to be a straightforward plea to
release her of her period. Following this interpretation, her petition to spirits to make her blood
thick and "stop up the access and passage to remorse" is another reference to amenorrhea. The
neck of the uterus was often called "passage" in Renaissance medical books 12, and there was
mention of a condition in which "an interception of that accustomary evacuation of bloud, which
every moneth should come from the matrice" occurs, "making the bloud viscuous and grosse,
condensing and binding up the passages, that it cannot flow forth”13. Lady Macbeth plans to gain
courage and strength by eliminating what supposedly made women weak: their menstrual cycle.
In this same soliloquy, Lady Macbeth asks the spirits to suppress her natural capacity to
produce milk:
"Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall..." (I.v.37-38)
This biological process was -at the time Macbeth was written- directly linked to the concept
of menstruation. The production of milk was explained in the following manner:
"the childe, while it is in ]the matrice is nourished with (menstrual) bloud; and it [...] being
out of the womb, it is still nourished with the same; for the milke is nothing but the menstruous
bloud made white in the breasts, and [...] womans milke is not thought to bee venomous, but of a
nutritive quality, answerable to the tender nature of an infant"14. This explanation of human
anatomy reinforced the idea of the gentle and harmless nature of women, whose task was to
nurture their children and from whom nothing poisonous could ever come. Lady Macbeth is
decided to abandon her female characteristics and become treacherous and toxic.
Lady Macbeth's "unsexing" is not, however, limited only to her body. She transcends the
limits of the humane when she completely abandons maternal tenderness and embraces the idea
of infanticide. When Macbeth is still uncertain of his decision to murder King Duncan, he
compares pity to a "naked newborn babe" (I.vii.21). His wife, nonetheless, uses the image of a
child in a much different way:
"I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out..." (I.vii.55-59)
Infanticide was an acute problem in Elizabethan-Jacobean times, so much so that in 1624
an Infanticide Act made it a criminal offence to conceal the death or secretly bury a newborn. In an
era of great religious turmoil, not only the killing of a healthy child was considered an unforgivable
sin, but even stillbirth was seen as punishment for the parents' wrongdoings 15. Thus, Lady
Macbeth's twisted fantasy becomes even more outrageous when one takes into account how
sensitive a topic infanticide was at the time the play was first performed. By stating she would -
violently and unhesitatingly- murder her own child for the sake of keeping her word, Lady Macbeth
abandoned not only the last traces of her femininity but also of her humanity.
As it has been discussed, Lady Macbeth asks for the suppression of everything that makes
her a woman, including her biological, behavioural and moral qualities. Thus, it is our conclusion
that she cannot be regarded as a strong female character that challenges gender stereotypes
since she is herself convinced that, as a woman, she is not capable of going through with her
plans and fulfilling her ambitions. The moment she decides to become a masculine figure, she no
longer represents female power but reinforces male dominance and worth over women’s.

1 Kemble, John. “Macbeth Reconsidered; an Essay: Intended as an Answer to Part of the

Remarks on Some of the Characters of Shakspeare”. London: T. and J. Egerton. 1786. Kemble
writes: “The usurper, then, does not plunge into fresh crimes to get rid of personal fear—ambition
impels him to the murder of Duncan; and the same ambition urges him on the destruction of
Banquo and Fleance, who seem destin'd to degrade him and his house from the splendors of
monarchy to the obscurity of vassalage. [...] Macbeth is not wrought by personal fear, to destroy
Macduff, but by the knowledge of his disaffection...”

2McEachern, Claire, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy. Cambridge:

Cambridge U Press, 2003. 65
3
Pattee, Fred Lewis. "Fear in Macbeth." Ed. Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke. Comp. Frank
Holmes. Poet Lore. Vol. 10. New York: AMS Reprint Company, 1898. 95
4
Richardson, William. “Criticism of Shakespeare”. The Journal of English and Germanic
Philology. Vol. 28. Ed. Babcock, R.W. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1929

5 "Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return / To plague th’ inventor" (Macbeth, I.vii.9-10)
6
Pattee, Fred Lewis. "Fear in Macbeth." Ed. Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke. Comp. Frank
Holmes. Poet Lore. Vol. 10. New York: AMS Reprint Company, 1898. 94

7
"Ere we eat our meal in fear and sleep / In the affliction of these terrible dreams / That shake us nightly"
(Macbeth, III.ii.17-19).

8
Whately, Thomas. Remarks on Some of the Characters of Shakpeare. London. 1808. 43

9Amini, Zahra. “Out of the Hurly-burly of Genders and Still Feminine: a Cixousian Reading of
Lady Macbeth” Fundamental Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Gender, Psychology and
Politics. Ed. Ali Salami and Maryam Beyad. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing. 2016. 146
10Gilbert, Sandra. “‘Unsex Me Here’: Lady Macbeth’s ‘Hell Broth’”, The British Library. 2016.
www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/unsex-me-here-lady-macbeths-hell-broth-macbeths-hell-broth.

11 Brugis, Thomas. Vade Mecum: or, a Companion for a Chyrurgion. London. 1651

12Raynalde, Thomas. The Byrth of Mankynde, Otherwyse Named The Womans Booke. London.
1545.

13 Sadler, John. The Sick Womans Private Looking-Glasse. London. 1636. 14-15

14 Sadler, John. The Sick Womans Private Looking-Glasse. London. 1636. 10

15Chamberlain, Stephanie. “Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in
Early Modern England”. College Literature, Vol. 32, No. 3. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press. 2005. 72-91