What examples of ethos are in Macbeth?

Answer 1

Apparently ethos means "the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution." Some definitions talk about "the spirit of an age". My question then becomes "whose ethos are we looking for: Macbeth's? Duncan's? Scotland's? the eleventh century's? the seventeenth century's? aristocrats'?"

To tell you true, I don't think it makes much sense to talk about the ethos of a person unless it is an artificial and flat character like Snidely Whiplash or one of the Power Rangers. Good characters and all real people do not have a single "distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs". They are much more complex than that.

Groups or institutions are easier, as they are often formed for a particular purpose, like a glee club or museum, or around certain definable beliefs, like religious bodies and political parties (sometimes). But you cannot talk about the ethos of a nation like Scotland without sounding silly. What are you going to say? The distinguishing characteristic of Scotsmen is that they come from Scotland. Period. That's the ethos. As soon as you start adding in stuff about being parsimonious, you are well down the road to racism.

Talking about "the spirit of an age" is maybe more coherent, because certain attitudes are typical (but of course not universal, and perhaps not even held by the majority) in particular times. Talking about paranoia and an obsession with conformity as the ethos of the United States in the 1950s does explain such things as Joseph McCarthy.

There is in Shakespeare's political plays, of which Macbeth is one, a strong endorsement of the notion of a hereditary monarchy. Invariably when people slip away from this idea in Shakespeare's plays, trouble and grief ensue (well, perhaps not invariably. Arguably Titus Andronicus is a counter-example). Macbeth caused chaos, not so much by murdering Duncan, but by assuming the throne when Duncan had two sons available. The ethos of the seventeenth century when Shakespeare was writing included a strong endorsement of the principle of hereditary monarchy. After the Wars of the Roses, who could blame them? However, and curiously, this idea was not part of the ethos of the eleventh century when the real Macbeth lived--at that time, Macbeth would have been the natural successor to Duncan, being a great warrior in sharp contrast to the feckless Malcolm. Eleventh-century Scotsmen were not great believers in hereditary monarchy.