Macbeth and modernity

Horst Breuer writes in a 1976 articles from the Modern Language Review : “Strange as this may seem to readers unaccustomed to this kind of historical perspective, Macbeth’s murder is a historically progressive act, an emancipation from feudalism and Catholicism, a violent plunge into the doubts and solitude of the New Age. Shakespeare, however, is clairvoyant enough to show that this liberation from medieval bondage may lead to an even more horrible kind of enslavement, namely to inhumanity and self-alienation. The New Age has forfeited the comforting safety of life under the tutelage of God’s holy church and the king’s feudal lords, and spiritual loneliness and insecurity take the place of the old stability and maturity.”

On this reading, Macbeth is about the new world of the post-Reformation era, and prophesies its hazards and confusions, leading ultimately to the despair of “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.”