Negative Empathy in Shakespeare’s and Verdi’s Macbeth

Abstract

This essay explores the concept of negative empathy in literature, with a focus on William Shakespeare’s theater and Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth. Negative empathy arises when readers or spectators engage emotionally with morally troubling characters, oscillating between identification and ethical distancing. The analysis begins with a theoretical discussion of the idea of negative empathy and then shifts to literature and Shakespeare’s Othello and Richard III, highlighting how characters like Iago and Richard fail to evoke genuine negative empathy due to their (almost complete) lack of inner torment. In contrast, Macbeth – both in Shakespeare’s play and Verdi’s opera – provides a compelling case study. The protagonist’s psychological depth, inner conflicts, and mad descent into tyranny generate an aesthetic experience where the audience simultaneously empathizes with and recoils from his plight. Through an interdisciplinary and intermedial approach that combines aesthetic and literary theory with textual and musical analysis, the essay shows how Shakespearean theater creates a space where negative empathy emerges as a powerful, unsettling aesthetic experience.