-Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the Macbeth-world is that it contains a strong, effective principle of retributive justice in operation throughout the play. This is not something which our experience with the worlds of Shakespeare's tragedies would lead us to expect
-In Macbeth, Shakespeare focuses his attention fully upon a problem he had dealt with peripherally in Hamlet and Measure for Measure: that of the criminal who is deeply aware of his own criminality, is repulsed by it, but is driven by internal and external pressures ever further into crime. What differentiates such villains as Claudius, Angelo, and Macbeth from Richard III, Iago, and Edmund is that the former fully admit the validity and worth of the moral laws they violate, while the latter dismiss the ethical standards of the world as so much folly and delusion
-In Macbeth, Shakespeare focuses his attention fully upon a problem he had dealt with peripherally in Hamlet and Measure for Measure: that of the criminal who is deeply aware of his own criminality, is repulsed by it, but is driven by internal and external pressures ever further into crime. What differentiates such villains as Claudius, Angelo, and Macbeth from Richard III, Iago, and Edmund is that the former fully admit the validity and worth of the moral laws they violate, while the latter dismiss the ethical standards of the world as so much folly and delusion.
-The latter three relish their superiority over their victims, while the former judge themselves from the same ethical perspectives as their victims. The descendants of the Vice believe in what they do, while the conscience-stricken criminals are in the agonizing position of being committed by their actions to one set of values while committed by their beliefs to quite another. Macbeth dramatizes this predicament as experienced by a man who possesses the fundamental qualities of the Shakespearean tragic hero.
-For all its emphasis upon blood and violence,...