SOURCE: Bernad, Miguel A. “The Five Tragedies in Macbeth.” Shakespeare Quarterly 13, no. 1 (winter 1962): 49-61.

In the following essay, Bernad offers a thematic survey of Macbeth, emphasizing five distinct aspects of tragedy—physical, psychological, moral, social, and theological—within the play.

One of the most remarkable things about Shakespeare's Macbeth is the artistry with which the playwright has woven five distinct tragedies into one. Hamlet is intriguing, King Lear is profound, but Macbeth is complex, and it is this complexity which gives the play its richness, making a study of it so rewarding and every stage performance a new discovery. Paradoxically, the play is complex despite an extremely simple plot. There are no sub-plots. But the action is made to advance at five different levels, each of which may be called a distinct tragedy because each involves a reversal of fortune in a particular order.

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