How Is Love Presented In Macbeth?

Firstly, I d like to express the importance of your answer being original to the examiner. An original and sustained essay is an essay which will only score well, this means that in both closed and open book exams the best form of preparation is prethoughtout arguments which can be applied to any question and make your essay seem as academic as possible.

Love in Macbeth? To score highly, think obscure but logical how did Shakespeare use love and why? Because this play is a body of work and is meant to be performed meaning Shakespeare consciously chose these elements and thus they were intended to further perform a point or image.

I personally would discuss the fact that love is being presented as the pinnacle of the human condition and that this is intended to show his Elizabethan audience the disastrous effects of love.

- Paragraph One: Romantic Love

Here I would expand of the lack of romantic love between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth - what is Shakespeare trying to showcase, the female protagonist in this play is almost an antonym of what a woman should be in literature of that time and yet she exerts power over her husband through manipulation and so forth why (the essay is writing itself at this point)

- Paragraph Two: Patriotic Love

Spoiler alert! Macbeth kills the King and then becomes King and is killed. We see him loyal to his King and yet he betrays him, the treason is a direct opposition to love of ones country. To us this isn t much I guess but think back to the instability of the monarch that the audience would ve witnessed. We had a dying prince, an executed queen and then a strong female monarch in a very short space in this era and perhaps Shakespeare is commenting on this disconnect the citizens of England felt towards their monarchy? Not disillusioned per say but not exactly besotted which the revolving door or Kings and Queens.

- Paragraph Three: Self Love

Finally I would end it on a very recycled point on how Macbeth is greedy much like Hamlet (link to other texts) and I would say this self gratification of greed, jealousy and manipulation is seen through many of the other characters but is culminated in Macbeth as he betrays himself effectively in pursuit of elevation. Shakespeare creates a character who is plagued by the inability to love purely and instead loves grand concepts of power and authority - contextually we have so many things at that time which would support to why Shakespeare is showing his audience this.

Now is this play political? - perhaps, but this needs to be written as an English essay not a political/historical observation however these are the bare bones of a good essay. A great essay will have quotes and literary devices to support all of this whilst questioning oneself but also stating why the point of the essay is right and by doing all of this succinctly and eloquently.