SOURCE: Cunningham, Dolora G. “Macbeth: The Tragedy of the Hardened Heart.” Shakespeare Quarterly 14, no. 1 (winter 1963): 39-47.

In the following essay, Cunningham views Macbeth in terms of his repudiation of his own humanity and subsequent surrender to a compulsion for evil.

At the closing of the fearful scene in which Macbeth decides to murder his king, he himself foresees the tragic distortion to which he has committed his human nature (I. vii. 79-82):

I am settled and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show; False face must hide what the false heart doth know. 

He has given his heart away to the worst, to that which is beneath human love. From now on, he is bound to a false appearance and to a false reality in which his moral sensitivity will be considered weakness and his callousness will be...