-Nor does he consult her on his barbaric plan to exterminate
Macduff's wife, children, and servants; we are left to infer
that
she identifies with this poor murdered wife, as she murmurs
in
her sleep, 'The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?'
(5.1.36-7).
- In comedies, and in plays by some of Shakespeare's
contemporaries, dramatic characters do not change
graduallyeither they are relatively static in their
behaviour,graduallyeither they are relatively static in their
behaviour,
or they undergo instantaneous character reversals such as
Duke Ferdinand's religious conversion in As You Like It.
-One of the hallmarks of Shakespearian tragedy is that
characters change over time, in believably gradual
modulations.
-Sometimes they grow, as King Lear grows from a petulant,
egomaniacal old tyrant into a humane man who worries about
the poor and whose gaze has turned outward: he dies not
justifying himself, but thinking only of Cordelia.
-Sometimes they shrink, as Othello dwindles from a
magnificent, heroic, self-possessed general into a cramped,
suspicious wife-abuser, shrivelled of soul. The Macbeths are
among those who shrink.
- Like other tragic heroes, the Macbeths suffer from
isolation:
each is left alone at the moment of greatest agony. The
crimeeach is left alone at the moment of greatest agony. The
crime
alienates the Macbeths from each other, and from the very
society they had sought the honour of leading.
- Before this happens, the two spouses together form a
complex whole, so in tune with each other (in early scenes)
that they echo each other's words and thoughts even when
they
are apart.
