strongly related to being a strong, courageous, and competent warrior. Closely connected with
this is the idea that men protect and avenge their families.
the news thathas had his wife and children killed. Part of this is the emotional pain he feels
on hearing the news.tells him "Dispute it like a man."
"feel" what happened as "a man," affirming the idea that masculinity
involves feeling and expressing grief over the death of loved ones. He speaks tenderly of the
wife and children who were "most precious" to him and wonders that heaven didn't
"take their part" or protect them:
... I must also feel it as a man.I cannot
but remember such things wereThat were most precious to me. Did heaven
look on,And would not take their part?
But masculinity also means using his strength as a warrior
to avenge their deaths. Macduff says, stereotyping women as overly emotional and given to
crying, that he "could play the woman with mine eyes" or cry many tears, but instead,
having expressed his grief, he will do the manly thing and fight Macbeth "this fiend of
Scotland" with his sword. He asks heaven to bring him face to face with Macbeth so they
can battle it out like men, hoping to kill him:
... front to front
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and
myself;
Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
Heaven forgive him
too!Malcolm says to Macduff that his vow of vengeance
"goes manly," affirming that masculinity means avenging one's family.
defines masculinity in terms of physical appearance, very confused early on in the
play over the strange appearance of the three witches. He says to them:
you should be women
And yet your beards forbid me to
interpret
That you are so.In other words, he
can't think of them as women because they have the beards usually associated with men.
In Act 3, scene 3, as he realizes he is being murdered, Banquo displays his masculinity
as he protects his son. He urgently tellsto flee. More importantly, as Macduff will later do,
Banquo defines masculinity as the ability to take revenge, telling Fleance that he should
"fly" so that he can return and avenge his father's death:
]]>Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!
Thou mayst
revenge.
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