Culture in a Clash of Opposing Forces in Macbeth

Abstract

Similar to scores of other critics of culture, Raymond Williams, as one of the founders of cultural materialism, maintains that the phenomenon of ‘culture’ is not something fixed and given. It is, indeed, in his belief, the outcome of a permanent struggle between ‘dominant’, ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ elements. Hence, culture is a wholly dynamic phenomenon. The current paper conducts a survey into the crusade of such currents in Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Macbeth. Consequently, we see, as Williams believes, that culture is the battleground of the aforementioned elements. In the world of Macbeth, ‘divine kingship’ as the dominant cultural from gives way to the ‘contractual theory’ for a period of time to be changed with the ‘residual’ elements of the previous generation which were active, not passive, though without, or at most with limited authority. The point is that the residual form of the previous generation, which was the dominant form before, is now forced to break with its regulations in order to get dominant once more. Macbeth ventures to depict a territory where the dominant element of the culture becomes defeated in an affray with the residual element. Shakespeare’s Macbeth anticipates the time when ‘contractual theory’ became strident and absolute as the Stuart monarchy lost more and more of its power and influence in the 1630s.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1s1p293