Shakespeare and the Boundaries of Human Kindness

Abstract

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, ideas of predetermination and divine election constitute, especially in the gradual establishment of Puritan culture, the main frame of reference of the theology and ethics of evil, which, on principle, removes from the self any potential source of pleasure or seduction by excluding free will and, therefore, individual choice. Yet the experience of evildoing does not end in this closure of the subject within a fideistic perspective. Contemporary theatrical culture problematises the question by exploring in tragic play and participation in theatrical gameplay the limits and potential of freedom as an act of will recognisable in the assumption of guilt-as-doing as the foundation of one’s being. Shakespeare explores a whole range of possibilities of doing evil as cases of conscience as well as in relation to the reactions to evil done (or being done), from fear to terror and horror. It has been noted that the experience of horror threatens not just individual human lives, but the very essence of what it means to be human – rooted in the singular vulnerability of each embodied person. This encompasses the full range of violence, from overt atrocities like massacres and torture to more subtle, insidious forms of harm. In this sense, violence on the body has been interpreted as a violation of the human condition. This article explores how Shakespeare probes the boundaries of the human condition through the experiences of horror in Macbeth – distinct from fear and terror – focusing on the psychological, ethical, and symbolic dimensions at the outer limits of tragic catharsis.