Abstract

Macbeth (1606) is often considered William Shakespeare’s most mature perception of evil within human nature and also a play falling within that period of the dramatist’s life that probably saw a crisis in personal realms, a hypothesis that also includes the other three tragedies within this cycle. Centering around a hero-villain who relentlessly murders and creates an anti- utopian state-of-affairs in the Scottish kingdom, this paper would like to unveil traces of dystopian impulses in the play. The narrative not only shows the presence of a massive surveillance force maintained by the protagonist, but following M. Keith Booker’s assertion that any text with social or political criticism has the possibility of dystopian readings, depicts entire Scotland reeling under a despotic monarch after the death of a kindly one. As such, Macbeth is not only the story of a “vaulting ambition” but also that of the “tragedy of a nation” whose society has become ‘dystopian’ for the time being, witnessing novel methods of surveillance, information control and the genesis of new subjectivities.

Keywords: Dystopian, Evil, Utopian, Narrative