This study will compare the madness of Don Quixote with the madness of Macbeth. Essentially, the madness of Don Quixote is a madness expressed in the name of goodness, whereas the madness of Macbeth is a madness expressed in the name of evil.
Both characters are mad in that the world they imagine is one which is not real. Macbeth sees the world as full of forces which will prevent him from achieving his ambitions unless he destroys them. In seeking his own glory and honor, he becomes a god unto himself, loses all knowledge of good and evil and becomes utterly mad and self-destructive as a result. Don Quixote, on the other hand, is mad in that he romanticizes the world. He sees enemies where they do not exist, but he is in a state of grace in which his madness is expressed benignly. His is a comic and harmless madness, in contrast to the tragic and destructive madness of Macbeth.
Don Quixote's madness is benign. He aims not to do evil, not to destroy, but rather to abide by the chivalrous standards of behavior which emphasize bravery and gentility, heroism and valiant struggle for good against evil.
It is true that Don Quixote did want to gain rewards from his behavior. He was not selfless. He wanted Dulcinea as his lady. He sought victory over real and imagined foes in part to bring honor to himself. He was well-deceived by his illusions about the nature of the world in his pursuits, but he always believed that he was seeking good and fighting evil.
Macbeth, on the other hand, was an ambitious man who believed that he would have his rewards in time. Confronted by the threatening prophecies of the witches, however, that ambition was swiftly transformed into full-blown evil. It is true that Macbeth hesitated when carrying out the first stage of his plan to ensure his power and glory, and it is true that he needed the evil encouragement of his wife to carry out the first murder of the tragedy.
However, once he had spi...