SOURCE: Blits, Jan H. Introduction to The Insufficiency of Virtue: “Macbeth” and the Natural Order, pp. 1-7. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996.

In the following introduction, Blits studies Macbeth’s concern with the limits of virtue and the violation of human and natural order.

Macbeth depicts the life and soul of a Christian warrior who first becomes his kingdom's savior, then its criminal king, and finally its bloody tyrant. Set in eleventh-century Scotland, the play portrays Macbeth within the context of a moral and political order rooted in a natural order that is established by God. Far from being merely a backdrop for the play (as is often suggested), this natural order decisively shapes both the characters and the action of the drama. Shakespeare shows that what a character thinks about the natural order affects how he understands the moral and political world, and hence himself and his life...