Watching Macbeth recently, it became clear that the plot turns on one line:
‘All Hail Macbeth! That shalt be King’
Three witches deliver a prophecy – and Macbeth is never the same man.
Their prophecy is certainly unsettling, planting a possibility Macbeth doesn’t seem to have considered up to this point. But in that moment, nothing has actually changed. Duncan is still king. Macbeth is still a respected general whose courage and loyalty have earned him admiration. If the prophecy is true, there seems little reason to do anything at all. In fact, the wisest response might have been to carry on becoming the sort of man who could one day make a good king — to learn from Duncan, continue serving him well, and trust that the future will unfold in its own time.
Instead, Macbeth becomes captivated by the future. He doesn’t simply hear the prophecy. He becomes fused with it.
Instead of holding it as one possible future, he begins to experience it as the truth about who he is.
Almost immediately, his attention shifts away from the life he is actually living and towards the role he now believes he is destined to inhabit. As the play unfolds, his choices become increasingly organised around that imagined identity. Each decision narrows the next, until actions that would once have been unthinkable begin to feel almost inevitable.
Here’s the strange part: Banquo hears a similar prophecy: ‘thou shalt get kings, though thou be none’ and responds very differently. He is unsettled, but he carries on with his life. The prophecy remains a possibility rather than becoming an identity. Shakespeare never tells us why these two men respond so differently, but I found myself wondering whether that difference lies at the heart of the tragedy.
Our minds are extraordinarily good at producing stories. Some are uncomfortable: I’m not a natural leader. I’m hopeless with conflict. Others are more flattering: I’m the person everyone depends on. I’m the one who always has the answers. We all have stories about ourselves, and that doesn’t have to be a problem. The trouble begins when we stop relating to these stories as possibilities and start treating them as certainties.
Once that happens, our behaviour starts to organise itself around the story. We notice different things. We interpret situations differently. Gradually, the range of choices available to us narrows, because we are no longer responding simply to what is in front of us — we are too focused on the person we believe ourselves to be.
The tragedy isn’t simply that Macbeth becomes ambitious. Ambition, on its own, is not especially dangerous. The tragedy begins when he becomes so certain about the future that he loses the freedom to respond wisely in the present. Rather than letting the future remain uncertain, he fixates on a particular outcome and bends his behaviour to fit it. Instead of asking, ‘What is the right thing to do here?‘ He increasingly asks, ‘What must I do to make the prophecy come true?‘ Those are very different questions — and the future stops being something that might unfold, and becomes something he feels compelled to force into being.
We can all get caught in a similar trap — thankfully, in much less dramatic ways. A leader becomes attached to being decisive, and stops noticing the moment when people actually needed more time to think. Another becomes attached to being the visionary, and stops being curious about the views of colleagues who ask difficult questions or point out practical risks. Those descriptions may once have reflected something true about them, but over time they can quietly harden into rules. Instead of responding to the situation in front of them, they start responding to the story they tell themselves about who they are.
Banquo shows more psychological flexibility than Macbeth. He can hold the prophecy lightly. He neither dismisses it nor becomes consumed by it. He lets uncertainty remain and stays present to what is actually happening. He continues to live according to his values rather than his ambition.
Shakespeare’s tragedy begins long before Duncan is murdered. It begins the moment Macbeth’s behaviour stops being guided by his values and starts organising itself around a future he thinks he must force into being.
So here’s the question worth sitting with: what’s the story you have about yourself that you have started treating as fact?
Where has “I’m the decisive one”, or “I’m the one everyone depends on”, stopped being a possibility and started making your decisions for you? Banquo’s answer wasn’t to ignore the prophecy. It was to keep living his life in line with his values. What would that look like for you?
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