Macbeth as a tragedy
1. It describes a fall from good to bad fortune
The "hero's" character is important as it would be too terrible if a really
good person had some dreadful bad luck so it is desirable, according to
Aristotle, to have the hero as a man with faults so his fall won't be
too unjust. Macbeth fits this adequately.
2. Events terrible and pitiful
The aim of tragedy is to give a peculiar kind of pleasure which accompanies
the release of feelings - that tragedy is necessary to purge the emotions.
It offers emotional relief and release by exciting "...pity and fear,
this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation." Certainly the events
in Macbeth are terrible and pitiful. Macduff's reaction on hearing of
his wife and children's murder is searing - painful beyond belief. IV,
iii, ll. 204-227
3. It contains a tragic incident
"The Tragic Incident is a destructive or painful action, such as death
on the stage, bodily agony, wounds and the like." There's plenty of that
in Macbeth though of course Macbeth's death itself is offstage. Ambition
is a major factor that leads to Macbeth's downfall, because it can be
shown clearly that Macbeth's dire ambition exists ["Good Sir! Why do you
start and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?].
At the ending, we can see a few things:
We see that he still has the courage to act on his convictions, desperate
though that courage may be. And it is not merely an animal courage. For
he knows now that he must die. He fights as a man. At the conclusion of
the play, although we have come to abhor Macbeth, we cannot help but feel
a certain admiration for him. But much more we have a sense of irony and
waste: irony because some sterling qualities have been put to such evil
use, waste because Macbeth was a potentially great man who was lost.