Mental Illness In The Tragedy Of Lady Macbeth By William Shakespeare

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both show signs of what would today be diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as “long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation”. There are three major symptoms of this disorder: not knowing the difference between reality and fantasy, jumbled conversations, and withdrawal physically and emotionally. The most common and most well known symptom of schizophrenics is when they can’t make out what is real and what isn’t.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth’s visions and hallucinations play a significant role and contribute to the development of his character. In the play Macbeth, a man is driven to murder his king and his companions after receiving a fairly ambiguous prophecy told by three witches. Although the witches triggered the series of events that later aid Macbeth’s descent into complete insanity, Macbeth is portrayed from the very beginning as a fierce and violent soldier. As the play goes on, several internal conflicts inside of Macbeth become clear. After he performs several bloody tasks, the madness inside of Macbeth is unmistakably visible to everyone around him. As a result of this insanity, he sees visions and hallucinations. Each time Macbeth

Macbeth can be further diagnosed as a schizophrenic paranoid type, which is a subdivision of schizophrenia. This category is defined by its criteria of: Preoccupation with one or more delusions or frequent auditory hallucinations. Macbeth frequently and vividly hallucinates during the play. The first indicator into his hallucinogenic illness is when he struggles to decide whether or not to kill his good friend, Banquo. As he argues to himself, he begins to imagine a dagger in front of him. Hay says, to himself, “Is this a dagger which I see before me...” (II, 1, 33) “Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” (II.2.35-39) In this passage, Macbeth even admits to himself that he is beginning to see things that are not only unreal, but a projected figment of his tainted mind. Soon after, as he returns to see the three witches, who started this whole masquerade, he sees another vision. This time, it is a vision of his future. He sees an armed child, a bloody child, and a child with a crown holding a tree branch. (IV.1) This is meant to represent Macbeth’s future and to warn him of what will happen with MacDuff. He then proceeds to vision all of the former Kings of Scotland

In the beginning of the play, Macbeth was in a great state of mind, he won the war for the people of Scotland, and was seen as a hero. On the way home from war, Macbeth meets three witches who prophesied that he will become The King of Scotland, which led to the ultimate downfall of his mental health. Throughout the rest of the play, you start to see him struggle with insomnia, hyperarousal, hallucinations, paranormal schizophrenia, and anxiety which we see throughout the play, that gradually gets worse. Just before Macbeth goes into Duncan‘s room, he envisions a bloody dagger which is one of the many psychotic episodes that he’s bound to have. Macbeth's actions, thoughts, and need to keep his masculinity in order, lead to the fall of

In the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is both equally ambitious and evil as she urges her husband to kill King Duncan in order to fulfill the witches’ prophecies by gaining social power on the throne as king and queen. Lady Macbeth calls upon the spirits to give her emotional strength in order to help her husband go through with the murder plot, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty,” (1.5.39-42). She asks the spirits to take

Macbeths shows very clear and severe symptoms of insanity when he sees Banquo’s ghost sitting in his place at the table (III, iiii, 39-40). Lady Macbeth rushes everyone out of the room and says he has sudden bursts of insanity and you’ll get used to them (III, iiii, 53-58). Further deepening the suspicion of insanity. Just after he sees Banquo’s ghost in his place at the table, the ghost returns and Macbeth says you are dead go back into the earth (III, iv, 93-96). Then he says that if the ghost took any other from than Banquo he wouldn’t be scared (III, iv, 99-107)

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy in which the main characters are obsessed by the desire for power. Macbeth’s aspiration for power blinds him to the ethical implications of his dreadful acts. The more that Shakespeare’s Macbeth represses his murderous feelings, the more he is haunted by them. By analyzing his hallucinations it is possible to trace his deteriorating mental state and the trajectory of his ultimate fall. Throughout the play Macbeth is never satisfied with himself. He feels the need to keep committing crime in order to keep what he wants most: his kingship. The harder Macbeth tries to change his fate the more he tends to run into his fate. His ambition and struggle for power was Macbeth’s tragic flaw in the play.

Macbeth's first hallucination of the bloody dagger leading him to Duncan's room was a way for Macbeth's mind to release some of its anxieties concerning the act of murder.  Although Macbeth had killed before, he had never killed for the purpose of improving his position.  His previous killings were in battle where he was killing his enemy, not a man he had no substantial problem with.  I feel that this hallucination was definitely the result of Macbeth's own anxieties coupled with the extreme level of stress he was experiencing.

Macbeth shows several symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms are techniques that Shakespeare uses to create the idea that Macbeth has a mental illness. Macbeth's main symptom is detachment from reality. While contemplating killing Banquo to secure his fate, Macbeth begins to see an imaginary dagger in front of him. He asks, "Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" (II.2.35-39) Then after Banquo is dead, Macbeth believes he sees his ghost during a dinner with the country's nobility. Macbeth says, "The table's full." (III.4.46) Lennox points to the seat where Macbeth sees Banqo's ghost sitting and tells him that it is empty. Puzzled, Macbeth asks, "Where?" (III.4.48) He

Throughout the play of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth has many different emotions. She is very demanding and in control of what she wants people to do. She is very confident in her plans that they will get done. But also, there are times when she may feel weak or scared to do something. She forces Macbeth to go along with the plan to kill Duncan so he can be King and she will be Queen. Lady Macbeth is sure that they will not get caught witheir plans and they will be safe. She is nervous though when it is time to kill Duncan because he looks like her father. Lady Macbeth shows lots of emotions during the play.

Macbeth, Lady Macbeth seems to be perhaps the most mentally unstable character of them all. Lady Macbeth’s mental problems have been apparent since the first time the reader is introduced to her. As soon as Lady Macbeth hears about the witches’ ‘prophecy that her husband, Macbeth, will become King of Scotland she immediately expresses her intentions to kill the current king. Her intentions are first brought up in Act 1, scene 5. “The raven himself is

The mind of each and every individual is unique in its own special way; some, of which, are steadfast and can roll with the punches, while others bend, conform, or break with the many psychological and physical influences in life. In the play The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Macbeth is introduced by the wounded sergeant as a person of battlefield valor and who showed great loyalty for his king, Duncan. His mind, at the time, expresses an authentic adamant and patriotic persona which seems hard to be swayed. It is later revealed that Macbeth expresses a lack in strength of character and is easily corrupted by his lust for power. Encouraged by his wife, nerve racked by the witches, and plagued by his thirst for authority, his

Mental illness is a big theme throughout the story, and the two key characters seem to be suffering greatly. If we observe this from a technical perspective, the visions (Banquo’s ghost), the paranoia (the prophecy) and sleepwalking (Lady Macbeth) all point toward a delusional/psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia. Both Macbeth and his wife could have been “driven mad” from the guilt and stress of their murder and the isolation of Dunsinane

The play, Macbeth was written by William Shakespeare in the year 1606. At this time, mental illnesses were not diagnosed or treated. People spent their whole lives with a mental illness and did not know it. At the time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, he probably did not realize that he was writing the main character, Macbeth, as a person with a mental illness. Macbeth showed the most symptoms to be diagnosed with a person with schizophrenia.

Dramatic stories of people with mental health conditions appear pervasively in almost every media outlet, beginning generations ago, and continuing steadily in modern society. These themes--of violent madmen, hysterical witches, insane criminals, and every other generalization of the mentally ill--perpetuate the harmful misrepresentation and stigmatization of mental illness, which is a common element in modern everyday life. One of the greatest factors contributing to this situation today is the presence of said misconceptions in printed media--not just modern works, but also the appraised classics, such as William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. Even as centuries pass and contemporary society advances, it is evident that ultimately, as the reader analyzes both Macbeth and Frankenstein, definitive British literature strengthens the negative stigma surrounding mental health, as it similarly misrepresents the legitimate issues regarding mental illness.