Macbeth is a study in power corrupt

I don’t think that Macbeth is supposed to arouse our sympathy, I don’t think that’s a necessary part of tragedy. Catharsis, which I’m sure you have all heard of, is supposedly the arousal of the feelings of fear and pity, and the sort of catharsis of those things. That doesn’t include sympathy necessarily. Pity is not necessarily sympathy. We can pity Adolph Hitler, although we don’t, but you know what I mean, the warped mind.

I think Macbeth is a study in power corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely, the psychology of evil all of that stuff, and I think the secret of Macbeth. We all have a dark side, all of us have a dark side. We all know that we can. It’s in us all, that evil bestial thing. Sometimes we need to see that in front of us, to see somebody else doing it, to remind us of the fact of how awful it could be for us. We have to have the vicarious experience of watching somebody else.

With Macbeth we do exactly that, we watch him walk down this very dark evil road, and the sense is there but for the grace of god go I. Thank heavens I can go home at the end and go to bed. Macbeth can’t. He dies. I think that is really important. I don’t think that tragic heroes necessarily arouse sympathy, pity yes, sympathy not necessarily.

So I would work against trying to get the audiences sympathy in Macbeth, in fact the more cruel and horrible he becomes to me the better the characterisation is. So you know I didn’t work very hard to get sympathy at all.