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Macbeth As A Brave Character Example Answer

Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a brave warrior in the opening scene through descriptions from the Captain of his victory in battle against the Norwegian army. Macbeth is portrayed as strong, determined, and skilled with his sword. However, as the play develops, his ambition and misdirected courage lead to his downfall, as he commits regicide and more murders. While Macbeth displays bravery in battle, his courage fails him at times and it takes Lady Macbeth's persuasion for him to carry out their plan. Ultimately, Shakespeare shows that courage without honor has lethal consequences.

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166 views2 pages

Macbeth As A Brave Character Example Answer

Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a brave warrior in the opening scene through descriptions from the Captain of his victory in battle against the Norwegian army. Macbeth is portrayed as strong, determined, and skilled with his sword. However, as the play develops, his ambition and misdirected courage lead to his downfall, as he commits regicide and more murders. While Macbeth displays bravery in battle, his courage fails him at times and it takes Lady Macbeth's persuasion for him to carry out their plan. Ultimately, Shakespeare shows that courage without honor has lethal consequences.

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CraftyZaid
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Starting with this exchange, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents

Macbeth as a brave character.

Write about:
 how Shakespeare presents Macbeth in this speech
 how Shakespeare presents Macbeth in the play as a whole.

In this extract from Act 1 scene 2 of Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as
a brave character who has been successful in a bloody battle. The extract is a conversation which
takes place between the Captain and King Duncan in which they discuss Macbeth and Banquo’s
recent victory against the Norwegian army. What is interesting about this presentation is that it is
the first time the audience hears any detail about Macbeth, building on the enigmatic reference to
him in Act 1 Scene 1 by the witches. This builds up the audience’s expectations of the eponymous
character before they even meet him, since they learn from the Captain that he ‘well deserves’ to be
called ‘brave’. Other positive adjectives such as ‘valiant’ (emphasised by the ‘o’) and ‘worthy
gentleman’ are also used, thus reinforcing the image of a warrior hero who is also a good man.

Shakespeare uses a range of war imagery to further emphasise how brave Macbeth is in
battle. He describes his ‘brandished steel’ sword and how it ‘smoked with bloody execution’. This
suggests that Macbeth killed many of his enemies in battle- the friction of his sword against metal
and flesh causing it to ‘smoke’. This exaggeration symbolises the violent battles that Elizabethan
audiences would have been so familiar with (for example England’s war against Spain in 1604) and
adds excitement and relevance from the very beginning of the play.

Macbeth’s bravery is confirmed when he is described as ‘Valour’s minion’. The


personification of Valour and the suggestion that Macbeth is a servant to Valour suggests the lengths
to which he will go in battle to serve his master. Again, the bloodiness of the battle is emphasised
through imagery as the Captain describes how Macbeth ‘unseamed’ his enemy ‘from nave to th’
chops’. This implies that Macbeth literally cut his enemy in two, once again showing his bravery,
strength and determination in battle. Elizabethan audiences were particularly fond of and familiar
with blood and gore and would have enjoyed this reference and thought highly of Macbeth’s military
achievements.

The dialogue between the Captain and Duncan is in the form of a report that is peppered
with requests for further information. Duncan asks whether Macbeth and Banquo were not
‘dismayed’ by the new attack from the Norwegian Lord (line 19). But the Captain goes on to reassure
him that they were not by using further animal imagery of ‘sparrows’ and ‘eagles’, ‘hares’ and lions’.
The implication here is that though Macbeth and Banquo were outnumbered, they did not submit
nor succumb to the strength of their opponent, like little sparrows or frightened hares, instead they
responded to these circumstances with ‘double cracks’, in other words, they simply fought twice as
hard. The repetition of ‘doubly redoubled’ emphasises the strength and bravery with which Macbeth
fought on. The report is an effective dramatic device used by Shakespeare to introduce a character
in a way that works well for the Elizabethan theatre since to stage the battle itself would have been
extremely difficult as this would have required many actors, props, scenery and effects which were
neither practical nor possible when this play was thought to have first been staged, in 1606.
With Macbeth clearly established early on in the play as a brave character, Shakespeare
succeeds in creating a typical tragic hero who, as the play develops, heads inevitably towards his
own destruction, following the typical Aristotelian model. Whilst Macbeth may indeed be brave, he
is also flawed by his excessive ambition and this proves to be a potent and deadly combination.
What is also interesting is that Macbeth may be a brave soldier on the battle field, but at times, his
courage can fail him and it takes his wife, Lady Macbeth, urging him to ‘screw your courage to the
sticking place’ to convince him to carry out they dire plan to murder King Duncan in the pursuit of
power.

Shakespeare seems to suggest that courage is not always a good thing, especially when it is
directed towards evil doings rather than in the pursuit of honour. In the case of Macbeth, the
courage he shows during and after the murder of King Duncan leads directly to his downfall. Perhaps
the real bravery would have been had he rejected Lady Macbeth’s plan in the first place rather be
drawn into proving his masculinity.

Furthermore, a central theme of Macbeth is the difference between appearance and reality. Whilst
Macbeth may indeed be brave, but when that bravery is misdirected, it can have lethal and perhaps
eternal consequences. In Macbeth’s case, his courage soon turns to guilt and he is tormented by his
conscience and yet is driven towards further destruction by his ‘vaulting ambition’.

In the final scene of the play there are echoes of the first version of Macbeth that we meet
in Act 1 Scene 2. He refuses to give up his usurper’s crown in the face of his enemy and instead fights
to the death. Perhaps Shakespeare is leaving audiences with a reminder of the ‘valiant’ and ‘brave’
Macbeth that he first introduced them to, or perhaps he is saying that without honour, no amount
of courage is enough, thus leaving a warning to future usurpers and a pleasing message for the
Protestant King James 1, Shakespeare’s sponsor, whose own position as King was challenged
throughout his reign, most notably perhaps (and still fresh in the audience’s mind) would have been
the Gun Powder plot of 1605 – another brave but ultimately failed attempt to take the crown.

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