Macbeth (Vol. 44) | Michael Davis (essay date 1979)
Michael Davis (essay date 1979)
SOURCE: "Courage and Impotence in Macbeth," in Shakespeare's Political Pageant: Essays in Literature and Politics, edited by Joseph Alulis and Vickie Sullivan, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996, pp. 219-36.
[In the following essay, originally published in 1979, Davis reads Macbeth as a play that demonstrates the implications of understanding life solely in terms of valor and manliness. From this perspective, the critic argues, a man must be master of his fate, and thus when Macbeth trusts in the witches' prophecies he is emasculated. In order to escape the threat of being unmanned, he defies fate and chooses a course of action that he knows must end in his defeat.]
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First impressions are important. Even if not always correct, they are the stuff out of which our later opinions are fashioned. They may be confirmed, altered, or rejected, but in each case they must be...
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