The ‘Great Chain of Being’ and the Politics of Kingship in Macbeth
The concept of the “Great Chain of Being” was central to the Elizabethan worldview, presenting a divinely ordained hierarchy that connected God, angels, kings, and all living beings in a fixed cosmic order.
Academic Details:
Name:Sandipkumar A. Jethava
Roll No.: 28
Enrollment No.: 5108250020
Sem.: 01
Batch: 2025-27
E-mail: sandipjethava9081@gmail.com
Assignment Details:
Paper Name: Literature of The Elizabethan and Restoration Period
Paper No.: 101
Paper Code: 22392
Unit: 3 - William Shakespeare's Macbeth
Topic: The ‘Great Chain of Being’ and the Politics of Kingship in Macbeth
Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Submitted Date: 10th November 2025
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Words: 2468
Table of content:
Abstract
Research question
Hypothesis
Introduction
1.The great chain of being in elizabethan thought
2.Kingship, Divine Order and Regicide in Macbeth
2.1 Duncan as the Image of Divine Kingship
2.2 Regicide as Metaphysical Violation
2.3 Tyranny and the Breakdown of the Body Politics
3. Gender, Supernatural, and the political Cosmos
3.1 The Witches: Agents of Disorder
3.2 Lady Macbeth and the Inversion of Gender Hierarchy
3.3 The Supernatural and the Collapse of Reason
4. Restoration of Order and the Legitimate King
5. Conclusion
References:
Abstract:
This paper examines how William Shakespeare’s Macbeth dramatizes the collapse of the Great Chain of Being — a metaphysical and political hierarchy central to Elizabethan worldviews — through the act of regicide. By exploring the interplay between divine kingship, ambition, and supernatural disorder, the study argues that Shakespeare presents the murder of King Duncan not merely as a political transgression but as a cosmic violation that disrupts natural and moral harmony. Drawing on György E. Szönyi’s (2012) discussion of the gendered hierarchy in Renaissance thought and S. L. Carr’s (1981) observation that Macbeth rejects the notion of a unified cosmic order, this research situates the play within the theological and ideological frameworks of early modern England. The analysis further incorporates insights from G. Foran’s (2015) eschatological reading and D. L. Kranz’s (2003) study of supernatural sounds demonstrates that the regicidal act fractures not only political legitimacy but also the moral universe itself. Ultimately, the paper argues that Shakespeare uses Macbeth to reaffirm divine justice and the restoration of order through Malcolm’s rightful kingship.
Research Question:
How does Shakespeare’s Macbeth represent the disruption of the Great Chain of Being and divine kingship through the act of regicide, and what does this reveal about the Elizabethan understanding of political legitimacy and moral order?
Hypothesis:
The study hypothesizes that in Macbeth, Shakespeare portrays regicide as an act that ruptures the divinely ordained hierarchy of the Great Chain of Being, leading to cosmic, social, and psychological disorder. The play suggests that human ambition, when severed from divine law, destroys both political stability and moral harmony, but that divine justice ultimately restores the broken order through legitimate succession.
Introduction
The concept of the “Great Chain of Being” was central to the Elizabethan worldview, presenting a divinely ordained hierarchy that connected God, angels, kings, and all living beings in a fixed cosmic order. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, this idea shapes the politics of kingship, portraying the monarch as God’s earthly representative who ensures moral and natural harmony. Macbeth’s regicide thus becomes not only a political crime but a cosmic violation that plunges Scotland into chaos. Through the disruption and eventual restoration of order, Shakespeare explores divine legitimacy, moral corruption, and the consequences of defying the natural hierarchy.
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the act of murdering a divinely appointed monarch does more than alter the succession of the Scottish crown—it ruptures the moral and cosmic equilibrium of the universe itself. The tragedy dramatizes the Elizabethan conviction that kingship was sacred and that any rebellion against it invited chaos on both earthly and celestial planes. This idea was anchored in the medieval and Renaissance cosmology known as the Great Chain of Being, a hierarchical vision of creation extending from God and the angels to humankind,
A scene from the play after which the pub is named (that's the one by William Shakespeare). This is entitled "Macbeth's Banquet". In The Macbeth, Hoxton Street.
Image source:Wikimedia Commons
animals, plants, and minerals. Within this scheme, each creature had a fixed place ordained by Providence; to disturb one link was to imperil the entire chain.
By killing King Duncan, Macbeth shatters that divinely ordered harmony, and Shakespeare translates the metaphysical violation into social, psychological, and natural disorder. The play’s world of “fog and filthy air” becomes an emblem of moral inversion, where ambition usurps loyalty, night devours day, and blood begets blood. S. L. Carr observes that “Macbeth’s choice reminds us how resolutely our whole history since Shakespeare has rejected the notion of a great chain of being” (Carr). Carr’s remark captures how Shakespeare exposes the fragility of that cosmic framework even as he relies on it to structure the tragedy. G. Foran, focusing on the theological dimension, notes that “king-killing, Macbeth is driven not only to commit regicide, but to catapult himself into the hopeless position of the soon damned” (Foran).
This essay explores how Shakespeare represents kingship as both a political office and a divine vocation, and how Macbeth’s regicide becomes the instrument through which divine and social orders collapse. It begins by examining the intellectual background of the Great Chain of Being in Elizabethan culture; then it analyzes Shakespeare’s construction of Duncan’s kingship and the sacrilegious implications of Macbeth’s ambition. The discussion subsequently turns to gender inversion and supernatural interference as extensions of cosmic disorder, before concluding with the play’s reassertion of moral and political order through Malcolm’s ascension.
1. The Great Chain of Being in Elizabethan Thought
The Great Chain of Being was one of the most pervasive intellectual frameworks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originating in Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and systematized by Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas, and later Renaissance thinkers, the Chain envisioned all creation as a continuous hierarchy descending from God to inert matter. Every being occupied a fixed station determined by divine wisdom. Kings, as God’s earthly deputies, were therefore indispensable links between the celestial and the temporal realms.
In the Elizabethan world-view, political obedience mirrored cosmic harmony. Any violation of that order—whether social rebellion, disobedience to parents, or murder of a sovereign—threatened to unravel the very structure of existence. György E. Szönyi explains that “the concept of the Great Chain also led to Shakespeare being seen as a supporter of a conservative order in which religious, moral, philosophical, and scientific notions corresponded with each other in a strict hierarchy” (GYÖRGY E. SZÖNYI). The Great Chain therefore naturalized monarchy: just as the sun ruled the heavens, the king ruled humanity.
Against this backdrop, Macbeth becomes not merely a domestic or political tragedy but a cosmic one. When Macbeth contemplates murdering Duncan, he recognizes the enormity of the act: “He’s here in double trust; / First, as I am his kinsman and his subject… / Then, as his host.” The piling of obligations dramatizes the multiplicity of bonds—kinship, fealty, hospitality—that sustain order. To violate them is to challenge God’s design.
Shakespeare’s audience, conditioned by sermons on divine right and by the political theology of the Tudor state, would perceive regicide as a sin against nature itself. As E. M. Tillyard later summarized, the Elizabethan mind saw “a complete correspondence between order in heaven and order on earth.” Shakespeare translates this idea into dramatic imagery: storms, darkness, and unnatural portents that follow Duncan’s murder are outward manifestations of a spiritual cataclysm.
2. Kingship, Divine Order, and Regicide in Macbeth
2.1 Duncan as the Image of Divine Kingship
Duncan represents the anointed monarch whose authority emanates from God. His language is suffused with grace and paternal benevolence—qualities that signify his alignment with the divine will. His court is characterized by reciprocity and loyalty; he rewards valor, recognizes merit, and embodies the principle of just governance. When he declares, “I have begun to plant thee, and will labor / To make thee full of growing,” he positions himself as both gardener and shepherd, echoing biblical metaphors of divine kingship.
In contrast, Macbeth’s ambition subverts the theological notion that kingship is bestowed, not seized. The moment he resolves to “o’erleap” moral constraints, he rejects the providential hierarchy that defines the Great Chain. D. L. Kranz observes that Shakespeare “ironically handles the Great Chain of Being … questioning providential politics” (Kranz). Macbeth’s act of self-elevation becomes, in theological terms, a reenactment of Lucifer’s rebellion.
2.2 Regicide as Metaphysical Violation
The murder of Duncan is presented not as a single political crime but as a cosmic rupture. “The heavens, as troubled by man’s act, threaten his bloody stage,” says Ross, as darkness obscures the day. Horses devour each other; an owl kills a falcon; and the natural world mirrors the moral inversion within Scotland. These omens visualize what the Elizabethans feared most: disorder spreading from the moral to the physical universe.
Foran’s theological reading situates Macbeth’s crime within an eschatological framework: regicide becomes an act that “catapults [him] into the hopeless position of the soon damned” (Foran). The horror of the act lies not only in its political consequences but also in its defiance of divine ordinance. Shakespeare’s imagery of blood and darkness functions as sacramental inversions—symbols of baptism and light turned into their corrupted opposites.
2.3 Tyranny and the Breakdown of the Body Politic
After seizing the throne, Macbeth transforms from subject to tyrant, reversing the moral economy of kingship. Where Duncan’s rule nurtured fertility and peace, Macbeth’s reign breeds sterility and fear. His Scotland becomes a diseased body, echoing the Renaissance metaphor of the king as the body’s head. “Bleed, bleed, poor country!” laments Macduff, articulating the sense of national decay.
Carr (1981) remarks that the play “reminds us how resolutely our whole history since Shakespeare has rejected the notion of a great chain of being” (Carr). The modern reader, Carr suggests, perceives the tragedy not as divine punishment but as psychological disintegration. Yet within the play’s own metaphysics, the two are inseparable: Macbeth’s inner chaos reflects the outer disorder of a universe bereft of hierarchy.
Shakespeare thus constructs a political theology of kingship: the king’s moral integrity ensures the world’s stability, and his violation of divine law invites apocalypse. The regicide scene in Macbeth dramatizes what might be called the “anti-sacrament” of power—a ritual of desecration through which the sacred bond between heaven and earth is severed.
3. Gender, Supernatural, and the Political Cosmos
The disruption of the Great Chain of Being extends beyond the political into the natural and the gendered spheres. The witches and Lady Macbeth embody forces that invert established hierarchies of gender, morality, and reason.
3.1 The Witches: Agents of Disorder
The three witches occupy an ambiguous space between the human and the demonic. They speak in paradoxes—“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”—that dissolve the distinctions upon which the Chain of Being depends. Their “soliciting” of Macbeth, as Kranz argues, introduces “supernatural sounds” that unsettle both audience and protagonist (Kranz). In Elizabethan cosmology, witches represented rebellion against divine order; they served the devil, the great subverter of hierarchy.
When Macbeth hails them as “imperfect speakers,” he acknowledges their violation of natural categories. Yet he also succumbs to their equivocations, aligning himself with forces outside providence. Their prophecies exploit his ambition, suggesting that destiny can be manipulated—another challenge to the fixed order of the Chain.
3.2 Lady Macbeth and the Inversion of Gender Hierarchy
Lady Macbeth’s invocation to “unsex me here” explicitly rejects the biological and moral categories of the Chain. Szönyi observes that Shakespeare’s concept of hierarchy was deeply gendered, reflecting the assumption that men, reason, and spirit occupied higher levels than women, passion, and body (Academia.edu). Lady Macbeth’s desire to exchange nurturing femininity for masculine cruelty therefore dramatizes the violation of both natural and divine law.
Her partnership with Macbeth also inverts the marital order prescribed by theology. Instead of obedience and complementarity, their relationship becomes one of mutual destruction. By urging her husband to kill Duncan, she becomes the moral catalyst of cosmic rebellion. Shakespeare frames her sleepwalking and eventual death as a psychological corollary of metaphysical dislocation—the mind’s inability to inhabit a universe where order no longer holds.
3.3 The Supernatural and the Collapse of Reason
Throughout the play, Shakespeare entwines the supernatural with political ambition. The apparitions in Act IV—an armed head, a bloody child, and a crowned child with a tree—embody the fragmentation of meaning. Macbeth’s desperate faith in these equivocal signs illustrates his detachment from rational and divine guidance. The world becomes a hall of mirrors, where prophecy replaces Providence.
The witches’ manipulations echo Lucifer’s temptation of Eve: they promise knowledge and power but deliver damnation. By yielding to them, Macbeth renounces the hierarchical structure that once governed his moral universe. The result is not liberation but entropy—a descent into the “heat-oppressed brain” where nature and conscience dissolve.
4. Restoration of Order and the Legitimate King
Despite its darkness, Macbeth concludes with the reassertion of order. Malcolm’s victory and coronation signify the restoration of the broken Chain. Shakespeare’s audience would have recognized in this resolution the providential design that underwrites tragedy: sin produces suffering, which in turn leads to renewal.
Malcolm embodies the virtues that Macbeth perverted—moderation, justice, and humility. His testing of Macduff’s loyalty recalls the moral trials of biblical kingship. When he declares, “by the grace of Grace / We will perform in measure, time, and place,” he reintegrates divine will with temporal governance. The triad “measure, time, and place” evokes the balanced cosmos of the Chain, where every element acts according to its ordained role.
Foran’s reading underscores this eschatological closure: Macbeth’s damnation enables “a providential re-assertion of divine justice” (Foran). The final tableau of Malcolm’s ascension thus functions as both political settlement and spiritual restoration.
Nature, too, resumes harmony. The sun returns, and the moral atmosphere clears. Shakespeare closes not with cathartic triumph but with solemn order—the recognition that the cosmos, though wounded, has healed. The moral lesson aligns with Tudor and Stuart political theology: rebellion may prosper temporarily, but Providence inevitably restores hierarchy.
5. Conclusion
Macbeth transforms the political act of regicide into a metaphysical catastrophe. Through the lens of the Great Chain of Being, Shakespeare presents ambition as rebellion not merely against a king but against the structure of creation itself. Duncan’s murder ruptures the sacred correspondence between heaven and earth, leading to moral, natural, and psychological chaos. The witches’ equivocations and Lady Macbeth’s gender inversion intensify this disorder, illustrating how the violation of hierarchy infects every sphere of life.
Yet the play also reaffirms the resilience of order. In Malcolm’s coronation, the Great Chain is symbolically repaired, and the world regains its axis of divine legitimacy. Shakespeare thus combines tragedy with theological reassurance: the universe punishes those who defy its ordained limits, but it also restores balance through grace and rightful authority.
As Carr’s and Foran’s readings reveal, the enduring fascination of Macbeth lies in its tension between the medieval vision of a divinely ordered cosmos and the emerging modern consciousness of individual will. By dramatizing the consequences of regicide, Shakespeare not only mirrors Elizabethan anxieties about succession and legitimacy but also interrogates the moral foundations of power itself. In the end, Macbeth stands as both a warning and a meditation on the perilous desire to “o’erleap” the place that Providence assigns—a timeless reminder that in the Great Chain of Being, every link, once broken, trembles through eternity.
References:
Carr, Stephen Leo, and Peggy A. Knapp. “Seeing through Macbeth.” PMLA, vol. 96, no. 5, 1981, pp. 837–47. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/462127. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
Foran, Gregory. “ESCHATOLOGY AND ECCLESIOLOGY IN ‘MACBETH.’” Religion & Literature, vol. 47, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24752949. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
Kranz, David L. “The Sounds of Supernatural Soliciting in ‘Macbeth.’” Studies in Philology, vol. 100, no. 3, 2003, pp. 346–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4174762. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
Szönyi, György E. “Contending with the Fretful Element: Shakespeare and the (Gendered) Great Chain of Being.” Academia.edu, 2012, https://www.academia.edu/87247403/_Contending_with_the_Fre
The Original Text Play Macbeth: Click Here
Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture. Macmillan, 1943.
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