Macbeth Is a Fall (From Grace That Is)

Rory: It's not the Wall Street Journal, but there's a quiz in there that determines whether you're a summer or a fall.
Rory: So, what's the verdict?

Richard: I am most definitely an autumn.

This Gilmore Girls reference brought to you by the following prompt:

3. Do you believe events in your life have been guided by fate or chance? Why or why not? Based on the text, what do you think Shakespeare's attitude was towards fate? Does Macbeth have any choice in his actions or was everything predetermined? Use examples from the text as your support.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can't make a decision to save my life. Where do I want to go for dinner? Doesn't matter. What movie do I want to watch? I haven't a care in the world. What time should we meet for coffee? Whatever time works. So, how do I respond to the question of fate or chance? 

 Quite simply, I don't. I let the little taco girl do it for me.

Pourque no los dos? Pourquoi pas les deux? Why can't I ask the question in both languages? Why can't I believe that my life is influenced by both fate and chance? 

Albert Einstein says life is like a bicycle. Anna Nalick says life is like an hourglass. Forrest Gump says life is like a box of chocolates. 

See? Forrest Gump likes the philosophy of both!

I say life is like a magazine quiz. 

Work hard, play hard

A dual venue for fate and chance. Just hear me out. You have a predetermined fate. Well...actually...you have LOTS of predetermined fates. Your fate is like those three options at the bottom of the magazine quiz. Your chance (or rather, your freewill) is all the options you're given along the way. No matter which combination you choose, you're going to end up at one of those three options. 

I don't like the idea of some celestial being controlling every aspect of my existence. However...I also don't like the idea that we're all just meandering around, alone. Hence, my simile which blends fate and freewill into a perfect harmony. 

In reading and taking examples from Macbeth, I personally think Shakespeare views fate as one giant joke. Macbeth receives his "fate" from the wyrd witchy sisters who always speak in rhyme. Shakespeare reflects the influence of the witches through other characters' lines. When a character is acting under the influence of the witchy women, they also speak in rhyme.

Macbeth does speak in rhyme at the most pivotal of plot points, when the decisions are most important, such as in Act I, Scene VII when Macbeth settles on the decision to kill King Duncan:

MACBETH: I am settled, and bend up 

 Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away and mock the time with fairest show;

False face must hide what the false heart doth know. 

And in Act II, Scene I right before the murder is committed:
  

MACBETH: I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven, or to hell. 

Seems like enough evidence to deem that Shakespeare views fate as the reason for Macbeth's treachery, right? 

Wrong. 

Macbeth entertains these ideas of murder long before the witches set the ideas concretely in his skull. In  Act I, Scene VII, before Macbeth utters the line above, he states:

MACBETH: Will it not be received,

When we have marked with blood those sleepy two

Of his own chamber and used their very daggers, 

That they have done't? 

And again, in Act II, Scene I, in Macbeth's hallucinatory soliloquy about the dagger:

MACBETH: I see thee yet, in form as palpable 

As this which now I draw.   

These sections of the play are prime examples for Shakespeare's expression of Macbeth's exercise of freewill. He contemplates killing Duncan on his own, before reaching the determined "fate" given to him by the witches. Macbeth made the choices, and has now arrived at his predetermined fate. He is the geeky one, the murderer, the autumn (fall) from grace.