Macbeth, the protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy (c. 1606), does not begin as a villain: he is a brave and loyal Scottish general, heaped with honors for defending his king. By the end of the play he is a paranoid tyrant who has murdered his sovereign, his best friend and entire families, dying hated and alone. The question the tragedy leaves open—is Macbeth born a murderer or made into one?—has an ecological answer: Macbeth is explained neither by an “inner evil” nor by a single cause, but by the convergence of his layers, which Bronfenbrenner's theory lets us unfold.
// The theoryThe prophecy, the wife and the bloody throne
Let us read Macbeth's layers. His microsystem: a marriage in which Lady Macbeth, more ambitious and colder than he, goads him, shames him for his doubts and puts the dagger in his hand —“are you a coward?”—. A little beyond, on the border between the intimate and the symbolic, the three witches plant the prophecy that lights the fuse: “you shall be king”. His exosystem: the wars, the noble betrayals and the succession struggles that convulse the realm without his governing them. His macrosystem: a feudal political order in which the crown is not inherited peacefully but is often wrested away by force, in which killing the king is at once the supreme crime and a royal road to power. (That succession violence is historical; the character's butchery is not. The real Mac Bethad reigned in Scotland from 1040 to 1057, after a Duncan who, according to the Annals of Ulster, was killed by his own people rather than stabbed in his bed as a guest, and he was not the short-lived tyrant Shakespeare took from Holinshed.) And the chronosystem: a moment of war and ambition in which loyalties are bought and broken. None of these layers, alone, makes Macbeth a regicide. Together, they push the hero toward the dagger.
The mesosystem that pushes toward the crime
Macbeth is a magnificent case for seeing the mesosystem—the relationship between settings—in action. No layer on its own is enough: the prophecy without the wife would be a fantasy without an act; the wife without the prophecy, an ambition without an object; both without a macrosystem in which to reign means to kill, a mere wish without a path. The crime is born in the interaction between those layers: the witches give the goal, Lady Macbeth gives the push, and the feudal culture gives the method—the dagger—as a conceivable way out. There lies Bronfenbrenner's lesson: behavior is not produced by one factor, it is produced by the dialogue between factors. Shakespeare intuited this three and a half centuries before psychology, by building a tragedy in which the hero falls not from a clear inner vice, but from the way his circles—the home, the supernatural, politics—line up to make murder the logical door toward what everyone tells him he deserves. Explaining that alignment does not exonerate Macbeth: it illuminates why the loyal man ended with red hands.
// The subjectThe conscience that never goes quiet
What sets Macbeth apart from any ordinary villain is that his conscience never falls silent. He hesitates before the crime, hallucinates a floating dagger, sees Banquo's ghost at the banquet, cannot sleep. Unlike Lady Macbeth (who first pushes him and then collapses into the madness of guilt), he knows at every moment the enormity of what he is doing and does it anyway. That lucidity is precisely what makes him responsible: the layers pushed him, but they did not cloud his moral judgment—he had it, he faced it and he trampled it. Ecological theory does not erase that fact; it frames it. Macbeth is proof that one can read the whole system that manufactures a criminal and at the same time uphold his full responsibility, because the system pushes but the person, here more aware than anyone, decides. His tragedy is having had the conscience to know it and the weakness to give in.
Macbeth
Get the map of theories for free
Subscribe to the criminal archive —one case a week, no spam— and I'll send you The map of theories: the great currents of criminology on a single sheet.
// The crackNeither the witches' puppet nor a pure monster
The classic crack in reading Macbeth is to blame the witches or Lady Macbeth —“they bewitched him”, “she forced him”— and turn the protagonist into a puppet without will. It is as false as the opposite error: seeing him as a cold, ambitious man who was only waiting for the pretext, a monster whose circumstances make no difference. Bronfenbrenner corrects both. The witches force nothing: they only prophesy, and other characters—Banquo, who hears the same prophecy about his descendants—kill no one. Lady Macbeth pushes, but the hand holding the dagger is his. The system loaded the scene; the act was his. The honest reading holds both truths: a man shaped by a prophecy, a marriage and a culture of the bloody throne, and a lucid agent who, knowing exactly what he was doing, chose to drive in the dagger.
That is why Macbeth is an exemplary case of this theory: it shows that reading all the layers that push someone into crime is compatible with demanding of them full responsibility. Understanding why the hero became a butcher does not excuse him—it reveals where, in which layer, the tragedy could have broken.
Three key takeaways
- Macbeth is not a born tyrant: he is a loyal hero pushed into regicide by the convergence of his layers—the witches' prophecy, Lady Macbeth's ambition (micro) and a feudal order (macro) where the throne is wrested away with the dagger.
- He is a perfect case of the mesosystem: no layer alone is enough. The crime is born in the interaction—the witches give the goal, the wife the push, the feudal culture the method. Shakespeare intuited three and a half centuries before psychology that behavior is produced by the dialogue between factors.
- Neither the witches' puppet nor a pure monster: Banquo hears the same prophecy and does not kill. Macbeth's conscience never goes quiet (he doubts, hallucinates, knows), and that is why he is fully responsible. Understanding what pushed him does not erase that he drove in the dagger.
Sources · further reading
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Harvard University Press.
- Shakespeare, W. (c. 1606). Macbeth. (Edición de referencia: Arden Shakespeare, 2015).
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). “Ecological Models of Human Development”. International Encyclopedia of Education, vol. 3. Elsevier.
- Aitchison, N. (1999). Macbeth: Man and Myth. Sutton Publishing.
- Woolf, A. (2007). From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070. Edinburgh University Press.
- Mac Airt, S. and Mac Niocaill, G. (eds.) (1983). The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131). Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T100001A/
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Macbeth?
Macbeth (“—”) is a villain from Shakespeare, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. When the play opens he is a war hero, loyal and admired.
Why does Macbeth become a villain?
Macbeth and ecological systems: not a born tyrant, but a man pushed by a prophecy, a wife and a political order where the throne is seized with a dagger. The layers that turn the hero into a butcher.
Which criminological theory explains Macbeth?
Macbeth's case is analysed through Human ecological systems. Ecological theory reads the person across their nested layers. Macbeth, Shakespeare's general, does not kill by nature: he is pushed by the witches' prophecy, by Lady Macbeth's ambition (microsystem) and by a feudal order (macrosystem) where power is wrested away by force. The loyal hero becomes a regicide when those layers converge. Understanding what pushed him does not erase that he drove in the dagger.
