Mental illness plays a large role in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Melancholy, ecstasy, and phantasma are the three main pathologies, the causes and effects of diseases, that contribute to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s deteriorating mental health over the regret and remorse of killing King Duncan. Melancholy, ecstasy, and Phantasma are the three pathologies that lead Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into their downhill spiral. Each pathology causes a different mental illness. Melancholy causes Major Depressive Disorder, which is just the beginning of it all. After killing King Duncan, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are consumed with remorse and regret. The guilt begins to affect them, and they become depressed. Macbeth is terrified, and believes that he will never be able to sleep again. The text states, “Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep,
…show more content…
One, two—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (5.1.30–34). The couple’s sadness turns to fear, caused by Phantasma. “Melanchoic symptoms gave rise to erroneous phantasma in the brain, which in turn induced misperceptions.” (Modern philology p. 208.) There are several cases of phantasmic events in Macbeth. For example, vanishing witches, the floating dagger, and the ghost of Banquo in the banquet hall. Phantasma also causes paranoia and hallucinations. Macbeth is described as “A prisoner of his own mind, bound into doubts and fear.” (R. A. Foaks, Modern philology p. 217.) The King and Queens madness ultimately lead to their own deaths. Lady Macbeths insanity drove her to end her own life. MacDuff took Macbeths life as revenge for killing his family. As each mental illness worsened, they were pushed closer and closer to the end. Power, in the end, would be the death of them
One, two—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (5.1.30–34). The couple’s sadness turns to fear, caused by Phantasma. “Melanchoic symptoms gave rise to erroneous phantasma in the brain, which in turn induced misperceptions.” (Modern philology p. 208.) There are several cases of phantasmic events in Macbeth. For example, vanishing witches, the floating dagger, and the ghost of Banquo in the banquet hall. Phantasma also causes paranoia and hallucinations. Macbeth is described as “A prisoner of his own mind, bound into doubts and fear.” (R. A. Foaks, Modern philology p. 217.) The King and Queens madness ultimately lead to their own deaths. Lady Macbeths insanity drove her to end her own life. MacDuff took Macbeths life as revenge for killing his family. As each mental illness worsened, they were pushed closer and closer to the end. Power, in the end, would be the death of them