Comparing and Contrasting Macbeth and Rachel Duncan
Many parallels exist between Macbeth, the title character of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Rachel Duncan, the primary antagonist of the television series Orphan Black. For one, both Macbeth and Rachel see visions meant to guide them to a turning point in their respective lives. In Act II of Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth sees a bloody dagger before him, causing him to question if it is truly real or not, but it proves just to be a hallucination of his fretful mind, drawing him closer to the murder that his hands are only moments away from committing. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?...Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from …show more content…
Lady Macbeth subjects Macbeth to a whirlwind of manipulation, sparking within him the temptation and desire to commit a crime that he previously lacks the courage to go through with. “Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?...When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more than the man….I have given such, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as to you have done to this….screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail” (I. vii. 39-61). Rachel, on the other hand, uses her feminine charms to manipulate the men around her to do her bidding, namely Paul Dierden, a man goaded by Rachel into framing Felix Dawkins, the foster brother of one of Rachel’s identical sister, for …show more content…
Macbeth saves much of his disdain for Banquo, for Banquo represents all of the honorable qualities he lacks, striking a fear within Macbeth that he may only quell by ordering Banquo’s assassination. “Our fears in Banquo stick deep, and in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be feared. ’Tis much he dares, and to that dauntless temper of his mind he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor to act in safety. There is none but he whose being I do fear, and under him my genius is rebuked, as it is said Mark Anthony’s was by Caesar” (III. i. 49-57). Rachel, fed up with the annoyances of her more virtuous sisters and their constant attempts to thwart her diabolical plans, proposes to the Neolution board a plan that consists of using her siblings as disposable lab mice, in order to further the evolution of newly-introduced, technological implants and permanently rid her of the sources of her
Many parallels exist between Macbeth, the title character of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Rachel Duncan, the primary antagonist of the television series Orphan Black. For one, both Macbeth and Rachel see visions meant to guide them to a turning point in their respective lives. In Act II of Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth sees a bloody dagger before him, causing him to question if it is truly real or not, but it proves just to be a hallucination of his fretful mind, drawing him closer to the murder that his hands are only moments away from committing. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?...Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from …show more content…
Lady Macbeth subjects Macbeth to a whirlwind of manipulation, sparking within him the temptation and desire to commit a crime that he previously lacks the courage to go through with. “Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?...When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more than the man….I have given such, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as to you have done to this….screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail” (I. vii. 39-61). Rachel, on the other hand, uses her feminine charms to manipulate the men around her to do her bidding, namely Paul Dierden, a man goaded by Rachel into framing Felix Dawkins, the foster brother of one of Rachel’s identical sister, for …show more content…
Macbeth saves much of his disdain for Banquo, for Banquo represents all of the honorable qualities he lacks, striking a fear within Macbeth that he may only quell by ordering Banquo’s assassination. “Our fears in Banquo stick deep, and in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be feared. ’Tis much he dares, and to that dauntless temper of his mind he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor to act in safety. There is none but he whose being I do fear, and under him my genius is rebuked, as it is said Mark Anthony’s was by Caesar” (III. i. 49-57). Rachel, fed up with the annoyances of her more virtuous sisters and their constant attempts to thwart her diabolical plans, proposes to the Neolution board a plan that consists of using her siblings as disposable lab mice, in order to further the evolution of newly-introduced, technological implants and permanently rid her of the sources of her