Psychological Analysis of Macbeth's Character

The tragic hero displays a discrepancy between mind and feeling as well as between recognition and acting. Macbeth is the drama of self-alienation, derealization, loss of identity, expediency, nihilism and self-destruction; but at the same time, it is the drama of emotional intensity, intuitive self-insight and suffering (see Unterstenhöfer, p.187, l.5-8; l.16-20).

From Macbeth speaks the deep philosophical wisdom that, ultimately, the human is an un-explorable, impenetrable secret, which withstands the access of our regulative thinking and the attempt of rational mastery. In this tragedy, it becomes evident that there is a border, beyond which reason fails. Macbeth walks his path until this end and discovers the secret in the shape of his psychomachia – the conflict with himself and the not-understanding of himself – as an all the more darker and realer reality (see Unterstenhöfer, p.189, ll.1-9), namely his death.

In Macbeth, the decay of the tyrant is depicted in a psychological pathology. The experience of suffering as an inner process, namely suffering from evil, has entirely moved to the foreground (Unterstenhöfer, p.193, l.13-17). In general, both the story as well as the crime are shown completely through personal experiences (see Kott, p.111, l.1-3) – in accordance with the internalized character depiction that started with Shakespeare in that time.

With the emancipation of the individual, however, there is now also the possibility of freedom for evil, which ultimately causes the loss of the soul. The protagonist's disintegration begins with the conception of evil itself. In the manner of a psychomachia, Macbeth experiences his conscious decision to commit villainy as a conflict within his own soul (see Unterstenhöfer, p.193, ll.25-34).

What is central for the humanistic conception of man is the idea of the harmony of body and soul, a prerequisite for a well regulated soul as a God-given unity of the soul on the basis of a divine reason to which the passions are subordinate. However, this harmony is deeply disturbed in Macbeth's case due to his sacrilegious murder of the king since, as someone who is possessed by ambition, he acts without ethos and responsibility and surrenders the Ciceronian ideal of a just state governance entirely to his mania for power (see Unterstenhöfer, p.191, l.8-10; l.23-28).

With the capital crime of his regicide – which, especially for the Elizabethans, exhibits sacrilegious, almost blasphemous traits and for this reason alone can lastly by no means remain unpunished – the knot of the excited, torturing hesitation and procrastination has finally burst for Macbeth and the path is now free for numerous new crimes – since he now entertains various fears and hopes due to his misdeeds and his usurpation of the throne. These crimes are all to be understood as reactions to this crucial first murder. Thereby, in order to secure his power, Macbeth's felonies become more and more gruesome but, at the same time, also ineffective. The climax is the bloodbath of Macduff's family ordered by Macbeth. With increasing fear, which has to be overcome by ever more senseless, murderous bravery, the tyrant's self decays more and more (Unterstenhöfer, p.194, l.20-21; l.23-26).

In the end Macbeth becomes the victim of divine providence in the shape of the armies united against him and dies just the way he previously celebrated his greatest victory, namely in a duel, as a soldier, on the battlefield – as a tragic hero. In the process we, as the recipients, have difficulties to perceive Macbeth exclusively as a perpetrator or as a victim, since he possesses traits of both.

He finally conquers his fear, which depicts the characteristic state of the tyrant, through his bravery. However, the overcoming of fear is followed by despair, which the Elizabethan defines as a sin against the Holy Spirit (see Unterstenhöfer, p.194, l.15-19), and ultimately his death.

Like Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare too deviates from the, at that time, typical character description and counters it with his depiction of the figure as an individual. Through a strong differentiation of the mental processes of the tyrannic protagonist up into the fine ramifications of the figure – in this case Macbeth – he thus manages for the first time, to some extent, to create the portrayal of a 'self-identity' within the drama. Just like before with the figure of Hamlet, Shakespeare intuitively undertakes the attempt of a character analysis in a modern depth-psychological sense with Macbeth as well.