The tragedy and desperation of MacbethMacbeth is one of Shakespeare's best-known works. It is commonly classified, along with Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, among Shakespeare's four great tragedies. After reading Macbeth, several significant aspects of the play come to mind: the central characters (Lady Macbeth and her husband) and their development, the treatment of gender issues, the nature and conflict between good and evil, the final triumph of the forces of goodness and life, and the disturbing implications of that triumph. One way to approach the play's main characters is to see how they fit into Aristotle's ideas about tragedy. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't fit Aristotle's ideas very well. Aristotle wrote that a tragic character should be more good than evil, and that the character's downfall should be the result of a mistake or misstep (the likely meaning of the Aristotelian term hamartia) rather than moral depravity. Lady Macbeth and her husband, by contrast, are more evil than good and deliberately commit or arrange several horribly depraved acts: among others, the murder of King Duncan, the murder of Macbeth's friend Banquo, and the murder of his wife and of the sons of Macduff. . Their motivations are purely selfish: they want power and all the personal benefits that come with it. It doesn't seem like Aristotle's ideas work very well in Macbeth. But despite the fact that the play doesn't fit the ideal Aristotelian mold (and Shakespeare probably didn't intend to, anyway), looking at the play this way sheds light on it. We must ask ourselves, "Is Macbeth purely evil? Is his wife evil?" The more I look at the play, the more I am convinced that its power comes from... middle of paper... the Tuesdays we commonly associate with women and children - or with Christ - have not received adequate attention.Macbeth shows us characters who have succumbed to despair: Lady Macbeth, who comes to believe that "What is done cannot be undone" (5.1.68), and Macbeth, who claims that since "I am in the blood / I have come this far", repentance is useless: "not I would have to wade further, / the return would be as boring as the going" (3.4.135-37). The work shows these characters defeated, but not redeemed. Works Cited Cooke, Patricia. "Macbeth: The Origin of Despair." Online publication. November 20, 1996. SHAKSPER: The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference. 5 March 2001 .Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry and drama. Ed. XJ Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longmann, 1999.