“Macbeth: Archetypal Shakespearean Tragedy”
- February 27, 2018
- Posted by: RSIS
- Categories: English, Language and Literature
International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume V, Issue II, February 2018 | ISSN 2321–2705
“Macbeth: Archetypal Shakespearean Tragedy”
Dr. Deepa Tyagi1, Dr. Nishi Sharma2
1, 2 Assistant Professor, Department of English, JSS Academy of Technical Education, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
Shakespeare’s genius has an indefinable energy, something mobile and dynamic. That keeps his vitality undiminished even at the end of three and half centuries and seems to increase with every reading. What Enobarbus describes to Cleopatra is perfectly applicable and true about Shakespeare himself:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale;
Her infinite variety, other women do,
The appetites they feed but she makes hungry;
Where most she satisfies.
His uncontested supremacy rests on the spirit of his equal aptitude for tragedy and comedy, sentiment and burlesque, lyrical fantasy and character study of women no less than of men. Most of his characters possess the vital spark and signs of individual existence. Though they are differ from one another in age, in sex, in condition, in virtues and in vices. They possess the common gift of animation and life. He is one of the most conservative writers who have only refashioned subjects already used. Half his plays are revisions of works already acted. All the others are taken from chronicles or tales which he had read.
Shakespearean tragedies are the most beautiful piece of work in English Literature. All are the highest achievement of the creative master dramatist. In writing his tragedies, Shakespeare did not invent only theory of his own views at the same time he followed basically what the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle had laid down years back for the composition of a tragedy. Shakespeare wrote four great tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. He has written on almost the same pattern. If I examine the four great tragedies of Shakespeare, I will certainly find that they resemble few common characteristics. Shakespeare’s shortest and bloodiest tragedy, Macbeth is the story of Scottish General, named Macbeth, who receives a forecast from three inauspicious witches that one day he will become the King of Scotland.
