ABSTRACT
Macbeth, which represents in more ways than one a crucial stage in the development of Shakespeare's art, exhibits the conflict between reason and passion, the constant theme of the great tragedies, on a scale notably more universal than any he had hitherto attempted. Macbeth's murder of Duncan is, accordingly, in the first place a crime against the natural foundations of social and moral harmony; it is at the same time an attack by the destructive elements contemplated in Shakespeare's experience upon those which make for unity and untrammelled maturity. The positive values of the tragedy are concentrated on the symbolic function of Duncan's royalty and upon the intensely individual poetry in which it finds expression. Macbeth's attitude toward death cannot be identified with that of Shakespeare in this play, though the dramatist no doubt felt it keenly and persistently as an element in his experience.
