Shakespeare’s Drama
The Man Who Wasn’t There:
An Analysis of “Manhood and Valor in Macbeth”
by Eugene M. Waith
Jon “Ngamer” Barber
_______
November 18, 2004
“But I must also feel it as a man.
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.”
Macduff, Macbeth (Act IV. Scene III. 221-223)
If the frequency with which he made use of the technique is any clear indication, then
William Shakespeare must have taken great delight in the creation of foil characters while
penning the best of his dramatic works. Likewise, if the amount of time that has in subsequent
years been spent on in-depth analyses of these character pairings is any indication, it could safely
be said that the Bard’s mastery of this same technique was nothing short of unparalleled. Taking
this into account, it is duly impressive that a case could be made that the sharp contrasts between,
and underlying themes behind, the pairing of Macbeth and Macduff makes them one of the most
resoundingly effective set of foils ever to spring from the mind of Shakespeare. Though a
comparison of the two is dramatically at the very heart of the work, one is given the impression
that Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy Macbeth has maintained its immense popularity mainly because
of the suspense created each time a new audience is allowed to fully experience this engaging
tale of a once-heroic character, driven past the brink of madness to his own self-destruction. In a
way, the natural human reaction to Macbeth is not altogether unlike that with which we would be
forced to contend while driving past the site of a recent train wreck: you don’t want to stare, yet
you find you cannot look away. In the opinion of noted Shakespearean scholar Eugene M.
Wiath, the train that was the life of Macbeth did not become derailed as a result of mere
ambition, as many critics have too-simplistically theorized. Much more significant to his fall
from grace, though perhaps not as easily identifiable, was the Thane’s constant obsession over
proving himself to be “a real man,” a trait that, while harmful enough in itself, became all the
more sinister due to his severe misunderstanding of what the display of manhood truly entailed.
As damaging as this obsessive-compulsive behavior no doubt was, it seems unlikely that
Macbeth could have successfully completed his descent into utter madness without the help of
his equally flawed wife. Though the couple may not exactly have been a match made in heaven,
they at least shared several common viewpoints, one of the most interesting, and as it turned out,
disastrous, being the idea that a man need not worry one whit about his conscious or any moral
issues, so long as he can advance his own position and hopefully put his epic valor on display in
the process. The downfall and ruin of these two is counterposed brilliantly against the rise to
glory of the drama’s real hero, Macduff, a soldier with a firm understanding of what it means to
be a complete man, as society today understands the term. Macbeth was correct in his
assumption that it is very important to be courageous in the face of overwhelming odds, and to
display a willingness to fight for, perhaps even die for, one’s strongest beliefs. So much more,
however, depends upon having the strength of conviction to never stand up for any belief that is
not fully morally justifiable, no matter how much you expect to be personally benefited by such
an action. Inside the bedchamber of the defenseless King Duncan, Macbeth was proven to be
seriously lacking in this most critical of regards, whereas the unyielding conscious of Macduff
was more than enough to see him through an equally difficult test later on in the play. Waith
feels that it was this same strength of character, this display of true manhood, which makes it
clear that Shakespeare sincerely wished for each man in his audience to attempt to exemplify in
their own daily lives what the valiant Macduff had just displayed on stage.
At the very outset of Macbeth it would seem unthinkable for the play’s main character to
become, by the time the final curtain is drawn, the cruelest villain his nation had ever known.
Before the audience is allowed to draw their own conclusions about the man, they first hear line
after line of praise being showered upon this Macbeth by his fellow countrymen. After his great
victory over the treacherous Macdonwald he is described as “brave Macbeth” (I. i. 16), “noble
Macbeth” (I. i. 67), and “valiant cousin,” “worthy gentleman” (I. i. 24). Even the harshest of
critics would have to agree that these descriptions, gaudy though they may have been, were
indeed to the mark; never in his life did the Thane cease to be, at least in the soldierly sense of
the phrase, a “man’s man.” It was because the society of his day valued this particular strain of
manhood so highly that Macbeth had been able to lead a hugely successful military career up
until that fateful “foul and fair a day” (I. iii. 38). For proof of this overemphasis on manliness we
need to look no further than the rather glaring, and perhaps to modern readers slightly offputting, example of Siward of England, who seemed not especially grieved over the death of his
young son, so long as the boy had taken his wounds on the front, and thus, “like a man he died”
(V. viii. 43). Likewise, if a man in this society were ever to momentarily lose his courageous
composure, as when Macduff’s startling cesarean revelation “cowed” Macbeth’s “better part of
man” (V. viii. 18), then he deserved no less than to die as a coward.
What the modern reader would likely find most politically incorrect of all was the
rampant anti-feminism of the era. Macbeth is under the impression that baby boys are meant to
be composed of naught but “undaunted mettle” (I. vii. 73), and his wife, far from asking what,
pray tell, little girls where to be made of (undaunted submission, perhaps?), actually buys into
this stereotypical “manliness” more so than any other character in the play. Would she have
begged, “unsex me here” (I. v. 42), to the evil spirits taking possession of her body had she
believed that as manly an enterprise as regicide could be accomplished in her current, feminine
form? It hardly seems likely. She is even more demanding of her husband, for whom each
temporary loss of fortitude throughout the course of Macbeth is met with humiliating accusations
of acting womanish, or fearing such things as would only frighten toddlers when expressed by
their grandmother around a cold winter’s campfire. Macbeth realizes that it is a moral nature
which separates man from beast, and to his credit, he does undergo a severe internal struggle
before deciding do away with Duncan (an act which, deep down, he understands to be both
immoral and, frankly, beastly). Yet for all this, it was Macbeth’s overweening pride in his own
manhood that allowed his wife, and likely anyone else who understood what made him tick, to
lead him along by the nose with the slightest well-timed insult.
The drama’s other very strong male character, Macduff, resides on the exact opposite
side of the moral spectrum. For all his good traits, it seems a fairly safe assumption that this was
a man whom Lady Macbeth would have hated to have been stuck with as a husband, firstly
because he did not conform to her personal definition of what a man should be, but more so
because he would not have been affected in the least by what surely would have been her daily
repetition of this fact. Like Macbeth, Macduff had the imagination and foresight necessary to
weigh the morality of his actions well ahead of time, but unlike the title character of this tragedy
he did not lack the personal conviction to stand steadfast in his resolve to at all times act
according to his conscious. The surest display of the kind of truth and honor present in the man
took place when he was put to a very difficult test by young Malcolm. The soon-to-be King
refused to be led into battle by a man who would not express, to his very face, outright
horrification over his morally reprehensible (though, thankfully, only imaginary) thoughts and
actions. Yet even this cautious young King was shown to have something left to learn, namely
the third, and admittedly most difficult, qualification for true manhood: the ability to freely
express one’s feelings. When Macduff beings to get emotional after learning the worst has
befallen his loving wife and children, young Malcolm, seemingly somewhat embarrassed for the
sake of his new field general, gently reminds him to “dispute it like a man” (IV. iii. 219), to
which the play’s one true man famously replies, “I shall do so. / But I must also feel it as a man”
(IV. iii. 220-221). Macduff is able to first take time to fully express his grief over this
monumental loss, and then continue by saying, “Not for their own demerits, but for mine, / Fell
slaughter on their souls” (IV. iii. 226-227). Amazingly, he is not afraid to accept responsibility
for his actions, even when he could so easily, so naturally, have placed all the blame for the
death of his family on the head of the hateful Macbeth. Nevertheless, we must not be fooled into
thinking that the illegitimate King is going to getting off quite so lightly. Macduff finishes with
a solemn oath, swearing, “Within my sword’s length set him. If he ‘scape, / Heaven forgive him
too” (IV. iii. 233-234)! Thus Shakespeare has, in a single speech, displayed Macduff’s
possession of all three of the traits required of a true man: courage and valor, humane feelings,
and most importantly, moral responsibility. Thanks to the new insights offered to me by Waith, I
am now convinced that it was the Bard’s sincere intention for his audience to recognize the
import of what had just been so dramatically spoken, and that the playwright hoped they would
be willing to react with a response identical to that of Malcolm: “This tune goes manly” (IV. iii.
235).
After being thoroughly compared against the better half of his foil relationship, and in all
things found wanting, it seems clear that the primary cause of Macbeth’s self-ruination was that,
aside from his soldierly courage, there was simply nothing praiseworthy about the man’s
character. In Waith’s mind, the King’s decision to strive for manhood only in this most narrow
of senses, and against his better judgment and the outcry of his conscious, so diminishes
whatever positive qualities he did have that by Act V he becomes “one of the most important
manifestations of the evil which dominates the entire play: to his subjects Macbeth now seems a
devil” (Waith 65). Eventually the corrupted mind of this villain becomes so morally diluted, and
his heart is left so emotionally bankrupt, that even the death of his wife can create nothing more
than a careless “Oh well, we all have to go sometime; life’s meaningless anyways” response.
Meanwhile, Lady Macbeth’s suicide goes to show that she also had been unprepared to live with
the guilt of her multitude of past sins. In a cruel way, the fact that this deeply flawed woman was
slowly tortured to death by the very conscious she had formerly denied, constantly detested, and
at one point even asked the Lord of Darkness himself to relive her of is deliciously ironic. If
Macbeth could be said to have a saving grace (a possibility that is very much in doubt, in my
mind), it would be that, after faltering temporarily, he does at least manage to “die like a man.”
Though this bodes somewhat positively for the King’s legacy, I think any reader would agree
that even after this meager accomplishment is taken into account Macbeth still pales in
comparison to his arch-nemesis Macduff. The later had not only earned his well-deserved and
fully justified revenge, and not only shown great courage in striking down in single combat a
man who some had believed was an invincible warrior, but he would also get to continue living
like a man, all the while displaying a true manhood the likes of which Macbeth could never have
dreamed of. We would all do well to try and emulate the principles of Macduff in our own
lifestyles, and thanks to the new insights into this matter of manhood which Waith provided, I
feel that this was one of Shakespeare’s primary intentions when he first brought to life the
Macbeth and Macduff of this play, in all respects two of his greatest foil characters.
Works Cited
Waith, Eugene M. “Manhood and Valor in Macbeth” Twentieth Century Interpretations of
Macbeth. Ed. Terence Hawkes. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1977. 63-66.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. G.B. Harrison. New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.
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