ABSTRACT
Coming to Macbeth one of the major issues, at least as posited in psychoanalytic writing, is the principal characters' childlessness. Instead, it is often commented, the parent–child relationship is played out within the marriage of Macbeth and his wife. Macbeth, a heroic Scottish chieftain, learns from the oracular pronouncements of three witches that he is to succeed first to the title of Thane of Cawdor, and then become King of Scotland; at the same time he is told that the progeny of his companion Banquo will eventually accede to the throne. The relationship between them seemed to indicate that the husband saw in the wife someone who was an aggressive woman, much like his own mother; and she seems to have seen in him the father whom she had never had. The Macbeths are not unique. Neither, despite the horror of their actions, are they unique in Shakespeare as a couple whose love ultimately destroys them.
