In the final speech in Macbeth, Malcolm proclaims the Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, “this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen” (V.viii.69). We know that those who win get to tell history (Or as in Hamilton, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.”). According to our ol’ friend the Oxford English Dictionary, a butcher is “One who slaughters men indiscriminately or brutally; a ‘man of blood’; a brutal murderer” (“butcher, n.; 1.a.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press, June 2016. Web. 30 June 2016.).
But is that really an apt description of the man we meet in the play?
Continue reading “Murderous Macbeth”