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Give the character sketch of Macbeth.

Macbeth’s character sketch: For Macbeth’s there are two opposite views character. There are those who make him a hero, and those who make him a vilain. Shakespeare made the bold experiment of making a hero out of a villain and a villain out of a hero. Though this seems to be a paradoxical statement it is really not so. It merely illustrates a view that men are a strange mixture of good and evil. The best of us have some bad traits, and it is a nice question. who is good and bad or uphold them as wholly good. A natural view of life will hesitate to be so emphatic on this debatable questions.

Those who say that Macbeth is a bad man speak what is superficial fact. Macbeth is presented murdering several people and it is easy to prove that he is bad. Macbeth is a criminal like Richard III and like Claudius in Hamlet

So though Shakespeare let us say when he conceived the character of Macbeth. He conceived it, therefore, as a noble and gifted man who falls into treachery and crime, for there is no such person in life. He is not even a man with predisposition to crime, for that would make him an absolute villian (like Richard III) he is on the other hand, an ambitious person who thinks that murder is lesser evil than failure to achieve his ambitions. That is the reason for his choice of evil means to gain his ends. Tragedy in his case arise out of a sacrifice of better faculties and qualities which do not promise the fulfilment of his ambition. This is the conception of Macbeth’s character. And it is worked out accordingly.

That Macbeth is a noble and gifted man worthy of honour and respect is made abundantly clear before he falls a victim to evil powers. His soliloquies as well as the reference of other characters testify to this goodness of his character. Even if we discount Duncan’s praise of him as worthy gentleman worthiest cousin, because he has no art to read to mind’s construction is the face, we cannot dismiss the evidence of other characters. By them he is, described as brave Macbeth ‘Valour’s minion and Bellona’s bridegroom. He is shown to be royal, risking his life in battles fought against traitors and enemies to the state and securing it for his king. This personal courage and loyalty bring him honours and he gratitude of his king. He is worthy indeed of these honours and rightly ambitious to achieve and retain those honours. This is how we see him in the beginning. Macbeth is virtually king of Scotland lacking only in title. He is the king de facto though not de jusre and according to the custom of age he had, as a cousin even the right to be elected to the throne. And we are made to realise that the state exposed to rebellion and invasion of traitors and enemies needed a ruler of Macbeth’s calibre, strong, valliant and irresistible. Such is Macbeth when we meet him first time in the play, seen from without and testified to by impartial observes.

But we are shown what Macbeth’s outlook on life is his inner life is distinguished from his outer life. And this is revealed by one who knows him best his own wife who is his better-half in several ways. Her words, therefore. are very important for judging his character. Commenting on the letter in which he has communicated to her his meeting with the weird sisters, his wife says.

This analysis of his character and motives of action by his wife is plainly suggestive of no predisposition to crime. Macbeth is in other words, one who shrinks from doing an unnatural act. He is too full of this human nature to permit himself to do anything which is in human and unnatural. He is in other words disposed to be benevolent and good towards others. He is in a word, a good man in every sense of the word, practical strong, benevolent and sensitive. He is meant by nature, to be a hero not to be a villain. This is what he is.

At the root of all the internal conflict of Macbeth lies his strong imaginative faculty. Macbeth imagination is both is strength and his weakness He is sustained by it, and he also suffers by it. Macbeth’s imagination is excetable and intense but it is also narrow. The only thing which stimulate his imagination are the thrill of sudden and supernatural fear. Macbeth’s imagination makes him a natural coward and also moral and the weakness of his moral courage is seen in verse proportion to his physical bravery.