2. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Acton
To what extent would Shakespeare agree with this statement? Use the play and your own experience as your support.


I think that this idea of power corrupting is a core theme in the play and so Shakespeare would agree to a large extent. 

As soon as the idea of having more power comes into Macbeth's head, he starts to do bad things. When he is told that he will become King, his first thought is to murder the current King. Without that prophecy and the idea that he would gain more power, he never would have done such a corrupt thing. This shows how even the idea of power starts to corrupt.

Now that he has absolute power, he becomes crazy. How crazy he is becoming can be seen in the dinner party scene. He sees something that is likely caused by the guilt of his actions. The ghost of Banquo comes back to where he would have been had he not been killed. This causes Macbeth to scream at the ghost and it is a very unsettling and powerful scene. The reactions of the other lords does a good job of showing just how crazy he is becoming. None of the lords know what to do and they are all very confused. They start grasping at straws trying to find explanations for what is happening as Lady Macbeth tries to cover for Macbeth. 

Because Macbeth is afraid of losing his power, he does more and more corrupt things to try to keep it. One of these things is the murder of Banquo. Banquo was his friend and at the start of the play they were very close and trusted each other. As the play goes on, Banquo starts to wonder if Macbeth is doing foul things to get all the power he has. This combined with the fact that Banquo's children will become king and Macbeth doesn't want that to happen, causes Macbeth to murder his own friend. The power he has has corrupted him so thoroughly that he has no problem with murdering his own friend.

As the play progresses, Macbeth's power increases but so does his willingness to murder and his lack of sanity.

As far as examples from my own life, I don't really have anything meaningful. No one in my life has corrupting power that they really are running away with. I could talk about how some teachers chose to have a day off in their class sometimes because they don't want to teach and they have the power to make that decision but that seems a little trivial.