There are some studies on Macbeth's tragedy at home and abroad.
In China, the interpretation of Macbeth's image and the nature of social tragedy has always occupied the leading position in the study of Macbeth. In Macbeth's research, the theory of social tragedy has the greatest influence, and in the 1980s and 1990s, quite a few domestic researchers held this view. Researchers generally believe that Macbeth's tragedy lies in the triumph of ambition over good nature. Shakespeare criticized the powerful corrosive effect of ambition in the real world, affirmed the humanitarian principle of "benevolence", called and affirmed "conscience" and pointed out the disharmony between ambition and love; Kindness is human nature, cruelty is against human nature. Macbeth is a "humanized" tyrant. He fought for his ideal, and only because his ideal degenerated into ambition did he develop into a heinous murderer. This is actually the true expression of his dual personality. Macbeth's tragic fate reflects the inevitable result of the infinite development of bourgeois personal ambition, which is fundamentally determined by his class nature. If you just think that this is a tragedy of fate, it is only a superficial phenomenon. The reason of Macbeth's inner contradiction is the storm that the sharp objective reality contradiction in the society blew in his heart at that time. The whole content of tragedy is not limited to personal fate, but a universal law and formula of court struggles and contradictions within the feudal ruling class. Shakespeare reveals that power wants to destroy people, but at the same time, he profoundly describes the disaster that tyrants and tyrannies bring to society and people by destroying the country. It shows the people's disaster and fate, and reflects the essence of the times by boldly revealing the tragic and horrible social picture and life atmosphere. Macbeth's sin is not only a great social disaster, but also has profound social roots. It shows the people's situation under the feudal tyranny and primitive accumulation of capitalism in Britain, and reflects the far distance between reality and ideal. Therefore, "the image of Macbeth is an artistic summary of political adventurers and careerists", and its image obviously constitutes the distinctive characteristics of the Renaissance and the primitive accumulation period of capitalism.
Abroad: From the 4th century A.D.14th century to the beginning of the 7th century A.D.17th century, the Renaissance first sprouted in Italy, and then swept the whole European countries with lightning speed. This social and political movement, under the banner of humanism in the ideological and cultural fields, fought against the spiritual shackles of the feudal system-church dictatorship. Literature has undoubtedly become a powerful weapon in this struggle. Many writers created their works with humanism as the guiding ideology, and gave a powerful blow to the feudal church with their unique perspective and spiritual connotation beyond the shackles of the times. At this time, Shakespeare came into being and became the greatest playwright and representative of outstanding humanist thinkers in Britain during the European Renaissance. Western researchers believe that Macbeth is a combination of three factors: Shakespeare, a classical western (British) traditional drama text; Experimental small theater-the style of modern drama (rather than tradition) in the west (generally referring to Europe and America) today. Studying Shakespeare's works from the perspective of post-modernism and post-colonialism enables people to look at Shakespeare's works in different ways. In recent years, some people have reinterpreted the origin of Macbeth's tragedy from the perspective of "the tragedy of language" and comparative literature, which has brought new changes to the study of Macbeth. Macbeth and his wife are careerists, and their ambitions and actions are the result of being surrounded and bewitched by dark forces. In Macbeth, the fierce conflict between human nature and demonism, the decline of human nature and the loss of life value make readers hate and fear Macbeth, but at the same time, they express sympathy and pity, showing the smallness and humbleness of people.
There are differences in the methods of studying tragedy between China and the West: the basis of China's tragic conflict focuses on the contradictions caused by ethics, while the basis of Western tragic conflict is mainly manifested in the struggle between characters and fate, personality and society; Western tragic figures are mostly great men in high positions, while China's tragedies include both high-ranking figures and ordinary people at the bottom. Both Chinese and western tragedies have "tragic pleasure" that can arouse the audience's thinking and pity. The main reason for the difference between Chinese and western tragedies is the different political attitudes of various nationalities and countries. Eyebrows pulled out? Fat farm?
Macbeth's tragedy has inherent inevitability, which is the vicious circle of his natural ambition and desire, guilt and false persistence and self-confidence. His tragedy is not only a social tragedy, but also a character tragedy.
Second, Shakespeare and his tragedy
Shakespeare (1564- 16 16) was a famous dramatist and poet in the English Renaissance. Although he only lived for 52 years, he left behind 37 great and immortal plays, 2 long poems and 154 well-known sonnets. His works are the most outstanding representatives of humanism, which have a far-reaching influence on later writers and occupy a very important position in the history of world literature. He was the chief playwright of the British Renaissance at that time, which coincided with the rule of Queen Elizabeth and the expansion of British maritime hegemony. Some people call this era "Shakespeare's era", which is enough to show the degree of admiration for Shakespeare. Until 400 years later, his charm still exists. Shakespeare's plays can often arouse people's imagination, and its description of characters' hearts and strong vitality enable us to explore the infinity of human inner spirit. Shakespeare's four tragedies, Hamlet, otero, Macbeth and King Lear, are like this. They were completed in the second period of Shakespeare's drama creation (160 1~ 1607). During this period, his creative style changed from optimistic and cheerful in the first issue (1590- 1600) to pessimistic and depressed, and his creative thoughts changed from praising humanistic ideals to exposing and criticizing all kinds of evils and darkness in society. Macbeth is the most concentrated and intense tragedy of Shakespeare, with more "pure" tragic characteristics. The hero is a young man with humanistic spirit. He is ambitious to develop or improve himself, but he can't overcome the limitations of the times and himself, and eventually he suffers inevitable failure and sacrifice in the disparity struggle with the environment and inner hostile forces. The reason why this tragedy is enduring is not only the story of conspiracy and usurpation that is common in history, but also the profound and vivid description of Macbeth, a character who is not a great evil in nature but has done a great evil, and the careful analysis of people's hearts. Macbeth's tragedy is different from the other three immortal tragedies: the cause of the tragedy in otero is the provocation of Ego and otero's own personality defect-jealousy; The endings of King Lear and Hamlet are also based on the weakness of human nature: vanity of the former, indecision and melancholy of the latter. Relatively speaking, Macbeth's tragedy, though it depends on Macbeth's own ambition and desire and his wife's malicious encouragement, embodies more fatalism and makes Macbeth's final death even more tragic. Usually, we think those "small" shortcomings are nothing serious. Yes, in the life of ordinary people, these shortcomings are just people's harmless personal qualities. However, if the position is as high as a king-a model of the people, then the scope involved is no longer a personal matter.
Shakespeare's works are treasures in the history of world drama and poetry. The world he wrote is so vast and breathtaking. The poet is shaped by his genius creation, but this creation can't be created out of nothing like God's creation. From the works of the poet's genius, we can feel the profound accumulation of the poet's life experience and the gestation of various cultures.
Third, Macbeth's personality analysis
3. The restless nature of1determines the fall of Macbeth.
Kazri believes that Macbeth's tragedy is caused by the environment. "He was pushed to the road of crime by luck, his wife and prophecy." But through the description of Macbeth in this article, we can see that there is great agitation in Macbeth's nature, and it is this restless nature that finally determines Macbeth's fall. Lady Macbeth accurately describes Macbeth in her works. "You want to be a great man. You are not without ambition, but you lack the evil related to ambition. " You have a great desire, but you just want to use proper means; On the one hand, he doesn't want to play tricks on the machine, but on the other hand, he wants to catch it. It can be seen that Macbeth has great agitation in his nature. Even without the witch's prophecy, his wife's instigation will eventually break out, and his "eager ambition" will one day sweep away all ideological and moral obstacles and appear during the day. Without external promotion, Macbeth will inevitably embark on the road of "killing the king"
Macbeth is the cousin of King Duncan. According to the succession system in Scotland at that time, he also had the right to inherit the royal family. More importantly, he has repeatedly made outstanding achievements in the battles of "conquering rebellion" and "defending the motherland". Duncan sighed, "your contribution is so extraordinary that the fastest return can't catch up with you;" If it is a little smaller, then maybe I can give you the thanks and rewards you deserve according to your birthright; Now I can only say that all rewards can't compensate for your great achievements. " At that time, Macbeth was already below one person and above ten thousand people. If he wants his achievements to be equal to his birthright, there is only the position of king. Duncan obviously deeply felt the threat of Macbeth to his royal family, so when he met Macbeth, he quickly announced that his eldest son "Malcolm was the Crown Prince and named him Prince Cumberland". Duncan's behavior undoubtedly poured cold water on Macbeth's eager ambition, shattered Macbeth's hope of satisfying his ambition by "proper means" and stifled Macbeth's idea that "maybe fate can crown me without its own efforts". However, he is not born a smug person, he wants to be a "greedy person". Duncan's pot of cold water, driven by Macbeth's ambition and desire expansion, makes the fire burn more and more brightly, just as the wind can extinguish small sparks, but it will make the wildfire burn more and more brightly. Uncontrollable ambitions and desires in nature will inevitably lead him to the road of "killing the king."
Many scholars accuse Lady Macbeth of "killing the king in one fell swoop", arguing that if Lady Macbeth kindly dissuaded Macbeth, the tragedy would not have happened. In fact, Macbeth's tragedy is tragic because no matter how kind people around him are, Macbeth will commit crimes, and his restless nature will inevitably lead him to take crazy measures of "killing the king". Macbeth is hesitating, hesitating, just looking for an excuse to commit suicide. Lady Macbeth's function is only to stimulate Macbeth to do "what men do", but not to find a so-called legitimate reason for herself. Because Lady Macbeth knew that there was "too much foresight" in Macbeth's nature, she just helped Macbeth seize an excellent opportunity to murder Duncan. Macbeth's regicide is doomed, and his restless nature is doomed to his madness.
On the other hand, we can infer from the creation background of the play that Shakespeare's purpose is to expose the greed of human nature and the resulting depravity. In the early Renaissance, humanists affirmed people's secular desires and emphasized people's personality liberation and subject value in view of the suppression of people's desires by dark medieval religions for more than 1000 years. However, with the development of capitalism, the inherent evil nature of the bourgeoisie is also expanding viciously. By the end of16th century, due to the expansion of human desires, all kinds of bloody evils were aroused, and the cross-flow of human desires brought a hell on earth. The enterprising spirit and personality liberation of the emerging bourgeoisie, which once played a great role in progress, developed and derived serious adventurism, money worship and egoism. People who are controlled by evil desires lose noble reason and virtue and become cruel and humble beasts. Specific historical conditions and social environment make them believe that only by climbing to the highest position of power can they become great people; Only having money.
And fame and fortune can realize the value of life. To this end, they do not hesitate to sacrifice the freedom and rights of others, even at the expense of blood on their hands. Faced with this upside-down social reality of "beauty is ugliness, ugliness is beauty", Shakespeare, who has always pursued truth, goodness and beauty, can't help but feel sad and angry when he sees the social tragedy that ugliness devours beauty and beauty surrenders to ugliness. He can no longer describe the image of the prodigal son like when he wrote Henry IV, nor can he describe the typical villain in order to expose the villain like when he wrote Charles III in his early years. What he wants to show now is that greed for power and ambition can turn an upright hero into a villain who brings disaster to the country and the people. It is also based on this creative thinking that we say that Shakespeare shows the evil of human nature and the tragedy caused by this evil. Therefore, we say that Macbeth's fall stems more from his restless nature.
3.2 The vicious circle of guilt makes him a murderous tyrant.
Aristotle thought that "no action is not a tragedy" [12](P3 14), and advocated expressing characters through actions. This paper attempts to analyze three main criminal acts in Macbeth's tragedy. If Macbeth had a little pity and hesitation in "killing the king", it was only cruelty when he assassinated Bangor and his son, and even more cruel and violent feelings were exposed when he slaughtered the Macduff family. Is it the inevitable result of a remorseful person changing from a "too human" person to a "cruel and violent" tyrant? How can a person who deeply blames himself continue to be cruel again and again and cover up his sins with sins? Obviously, Macbeth never regretted his behavior from beginning to end. Critics who think that Macbeth has been in remorse and even some mental disorders, and even think that Macbeth's tragedy lies in his inner "pity" while committing crimes, are full of remorse and obviously fail to see the inner essence of Macbeth.
We say that Macbeth's fear and disorder and anxiety of "killing sleep" are not because of regret, but because of deep guilt. Macbeth always has a clear sense of guilt about his own murder, but guilt is different from self-blame. Macbeth sighed after murdering Duncan. "What's wrong with me? What sound makes me lose my mind? " What kind of hand is this? Hey, gouge my eyes. Can't all the water in the ocean wash the blood off my hands? "Macbeth didn't notice the root of his evil. The pain of this fait accompli can only show that he has a clear understanding of his sins and cannot be transformed into complete "spiritual regret."
Macbeth's deep guilt has been tormenting him, and he continues his sins only to deserve his previous sins, so he must use greater sins to safeguard everything he got with his previous sins, which will inevitably make Macbeth more and more lost and crazy, and eventually become a crazy tyrant who kills people without blinking an eye.
To sum up, the inherent inevitability of Macbeth's tragedy is due to his restless nature, guilt after regicide and persistence in vanity. This is Shakespeare's profound and thorough understanding of human nature. Man's freedom is limited. Only the liberation and satisfaction of man's desire can not lead him to the ideal world of nature and equality. People must accurately grasp the natural desire and social moral law, ethical relationship, original desire and rationality, birth and entry into WTO, individual and group, man and nature, man and society.
Four. Concluding remarks
The characters in Shakespeare's plays are real, vivid and full of vitality, so he can always shock us and make us think. Macbeth's life was full of ups and downs. The excitement brought by desire is therefore satisfied, but it is also easy to lead him to lose his way and decline; How to deal with the ups and downs in our own lives is an important topic for us. In a word, Shakespeare's four tragedies not only inspired our policies, but also inspired our wisdom in life. The philosophical content in his literary works also leads us to think and explore what attitude we should adopt to face our life.