The Essay 'The Many Faces Of Macbeth' By Maynard Mack

Maynard Mack, in his essay “The many faces of Macbeth” (1981), examines many of the central thematic concerns of Macbeth, including usurpation, witchcraft, pride, crime, the blurring of the real and unreal, the collapse of community, and final judgment. Mack develops his idea by discussing each thematic concerns of Macbeth into a different section and individually analyze them. In each section, Mack provided historical events followed by events in the play and uses them to interpret his hypothesis on why those central thematic concerns of Macbeth are in the play. His purpose is to show how Macbeth is indeed not a simple play about a brutal story of a Scottish usurper whom Shakespeare had read about, but a much deeper play in which many aspects of the play was influenced by factors like historical events and the views at the time. Mack positions his views in the context of a historian in which he utilizes historical events to support his …show more content…
In another central thematic concern of Macbeth, witchcraft, we realize that the play Macbeth has also been “colored” and “mirrors’ a number of contemporary interest and events of the time. Shakespeare mirrors the Gunpowder plot with the letter Macbeth gave to Lady Macbeth in her soliloquy. With substantial support and analysis, I do agree with what Mack said about how Macbeth mirrored and inspired by much of the world at that time and not just a medieval story about the rise and fall of a king. A probable allusion to the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate James can be found in Lady Macbeth's words, “look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't”(1.5, 57) and even more riveting is an allusion to a Jesuit priest named Father Henry Garnet, who had concealed his knowledge of the conspiracy. Another example of how Macbeth was mirror by current of that time