Abstract
Basing your essay on specific extracts from the play, would you say that, according to Shakespeare, fate determines man's action, or that man is always free to choose his own course of action?
According to masters of literary theory, a tragedy draws the destiny of extraordinary people fallen down from their upper status into the common world because of their faults. Typical of tragedy is the influence of extraordinary forces out of human control on the action, which contributes to the idea of fate acting against human will. Tragic heroes, as Racine says, are “ni tout à fait innocents, ni tout à fait coupables” for they partake of their misfortune without always being conscious of that. In this sense, this quotation raises an important issue of tragic literature: the question of the ambiguous responsibility of tragic heroes in their own fates. In 1688, Shakespeare tells us in his play Macbeth the story of an ambitious man who becomes a murderer to be the king of Scotland. Is Macbeth, the sanguinary king, only a victim of a horrible fate, or does not Shakespeare rather imply that he also contributes to his own fall? To answer this question, let us first analyze the role of fate in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, to wonder then whether Shakespeare thinks that his heroes are responsible for their own actions or not.
