![]() ![]() As Act IV progresses, we begin to realise that Macbeth is threatened by the existence of Macduff because he is a respected and mature figure among the Scottish Thanes. He is emerging as a pivotal character, a king-maker, in mobilising the forces for good against Macbeth’s corrupt rule. It is clearly evident that Macduff’s role has become much more significant in terms of the play’s plot. He goes there to plead with Malcolm to return to Scotland and restore order and legitimate rule there. Lennox tells us in Act IV Scene i that ‘Macduff is fled to England’. The next time we hear about Macduff in the play is when he goes to England to interview Malcolm who is Duncan’s son and rightful heir to the throne of Scotland. Macduff’s moral courage and ‘manliness’ is shown in the fact that he takes a stance against Macbeth at a time when even Banquo has remained silent. Lest our old robes sit easier than our new’.Īn important aspect of Macduff’s role is now already becoming clear at this stage of the play: he is to be seen as the principled dissenter, too honest and too sincerely concerned with Scotland’s welfare to be capable of giving unquestioning allegiance to the new regime under Macbeth. ‘Well may you see things well done there… It is clear that he is already suspicious of the man who is going to succeed Duncan as king, and that he is not prepared to feign a loyalty he does not feel. This sense of integrity and loyalty is further ratified when we learn that he will not make the journey to Scone to see Macbeth crowned. We realise from the beginning that Macduff would never be capable of the equivocation that Macbeth has already begun the master following the death of Duncan. ![]() The lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence ‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! To Macduff, Duncan’s murder seems like the ‘great doom’s image’, it signals the end of the world as he had known it. His reaction is one of horror at the sight of Duncan’s body and it conveys clearly his profound sense of the sacredness of majesty, of that ‘divinity that doth hedge a king.’ This emphasises for us the enormity of what has just happened and that the murder of a king is no ordinary crime. It is Macduff who is the first of the innocent bystanders to discover the fact that Duncan has been murdered. He is without any vestige of personal ambition and is simply content to loyally serve Duncan, his King. He is also a man of ‘high degree’, a Thane and as such he represents a role of freely given allegiance and service to his King. He is a man of great integrity yet he is portrayed as very one-dimensional in the play. Next Obi-Wan Kenobi vs.Shakespeare uses the character of Macduff largely as a foil to show the shortcomings of his tragic hero Macbeth. In the end, Macbeth’s death seems almost an accident, a fatalistic comment, some have suggested, by Polanski on the dark absurdity of violence and those who live by it. It’s clumsy, awkward and brutish, devolving at times into a childish wrestling match. Despite their shiny armor, there is nothing glorious about the duel. In the end of the play and the film, Macbeth is confronted by Macduff, the Scottish noble whose wife and child Macbeth has brutally killed - an echo of Polanski’s own torment. The Shakespearean play already brims with madness and violence, but Polanski’s acclaimed staging shocked audiences with its nudity and gore. Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth followed the darkest moment in the controversial director’s life - the savage 1969 murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child at the hands of Charles Manson and his followers. Cast: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayler, John Stride Get This Movie
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