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New Historicist Criticism: Macbeth and Power
Title: New Historicist Criticism: Macbeth and Power
Category: Literature / European Literature
Details: Words: 1225 | Pages: 5.2 (approximately 235 words/page)
New Historicist Criticism: Macbeth and Power
Stripped of Shakespeare's poetic style and skilful characterization, Macbeth is revealed as little
more than a petty tyrant. Like Machiavelli's Prince, Macbeth seeks power as an end in itself and
sees any means as justified provided it helps him achieve his goal. It is a standard image of power: an individual, or small group, occupying a position of authority from which he (seldom she) attempts to force his will upon others. Today's equivalent of a feudal monarch is the power-hungry politician, the cult leader, or …showed first 85 words of 1225 total…
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…showed last 85 words of 1225 total…successful playwright.
According to new historicism, our own relationship to power is similar to that of Shakespeare's: we collaborate with the power that controls us. Without necessarily realizing what we are doing, we help create and sustain it, thus reducing the need for authority figures to remind us what to do or think. Once we accept the cultural limitations imposed on our thought and behavior, once we
believe that the limits of the permissible are the extent of the possible, then we happily police
ourselves.
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