Macbeth | Overview

In this excerpt, Mark Van Doren presents a broad survey of Macbeth, asserting that Shakespeare's triumph lies in his construction of a strange, dark, and shapeless world which from the outset pits itself against the protagonist. Van Doren also discusses the figure of Lady Macbeth, arguing that because she is less imaginative than her husband, her mind cannot withstand the torture of guilt as long as Macbeth's does. The critic also discusses symbols, including blood, fear, and sleep.

The brevity of Macbeth is so much a function of its brilliance that we might lose rather than gain by turning up the lost scenes of legend. This brilliance gives us in the end somewhat less than the utmost that tragedy can give. The hero, for instance, is less valuable as a person than Hamlet, Othello, or Lear; or Antony, or Coriolanus, or Timon. We may not rejoice in his fall as Dr. [Samuel] Johnson says we must, yet we have known too little about him and have found too little virtue in him to experience at his death the sense of an unutterable and tragic loss made necessary by...

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