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In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, there’s more than enough tragedy to go around. There’s death. There’s deception. There’s Macbeth’s moral decline. But that’s not all. You can find out why Macbeth is really, really tragic … just give us 60 seconds of your time.

Video Transcription:

Shakespeare called Macbeth a tragedy. And between all the death and Macbeth’s moral decline, it’s easy to see why. But that’s not all. The truly tragic part of The Tragedy of Macbeth—coming up.

You know the feeling. It’s the feeling you get when you do something that you know isn’t in your character to do. You do it because your friends convince you to, or some little voice inside your head helps you justify it. But you know it’s not right.

Well, that’s tragedy right there. It’s the tragedy of not being true to your morals—or to yourself. It’s the tragedy of Macbeth. Not being true to yourself might be the biggest tragedy of this play.

Shakespeare doesn’t give us much time to get to know Macbeth before all the killing starts. But we do know this: Macbeth doesn’t come up with the idea to kill Duncan. Macbeth doesn’t want to kill Duncan. And he doesn’t even really come up with the ideas for the other killings—you could say the prophecies lure him into it. Macbeth does commit horrible crimes. But you could still argue that it’s not in his nature to act this way.

This is not to let Macbeth off the hook, but it is to show how this play is a metaphor for the way evil tries to work. It tries to convince us that there are reasons to act badly.

But here’s the lesson from Macbeth: Redemption is hard to come by, so better to just avoid evil in the first place.