In Macbeth we see both of these codes on display, and the play demonstrates the need for individuals to respect both codes in conjunction with each other.
#Chivalry code of honor code
This may not seem like a problem, but the events of the play show that neither the individual or external code can stand on its own. The external, societal code was becoming less important, and more emphasis was being put on the internal code, the individual conscience. When Macbeth was penned, early modern England was experiencing a shift in the way people approached and lived out the code of honor. It was extensive and specific, but for the purposes of this website we will focus on the ways in which the honor code is relevant to Macbeth. It served to define right action in court, battle, and daily life. By his death in 1916 one obituary referred to him as "the last of the dashing figures of the war between the states.The code of honor had its roots in the Renaissance code of chivalry. The more we hear of him the prouder the Southern people may feel of such a knightly soldier." One writer, George Cary Ellington, described Mosby as a "gallant and chivalric spirit," while noting Mosby's modesty prevented him from acquiring "that boyish vanity which has distinguished most of the world's great cavalry leaders" (). In a January 1895 clipping, one article gushed about Mosby's military spirit "too restless to be totally confined to strict discipline. Mosby frequently told the story of a wounded young soldier on the battlefield - who refused water, instead instructing the bearer to take it to his colonel - as a "model of chivalry" and therefore worthy of emulation (Daniels, p.37).Īfter the war newspapers merely enlarged the myth surrounding Mosby. Blazer "passed anything that had been done in the Shenandoah campaign and recalled the days when Knighthood was in flower" (Memoirs, p.370). A skirmish fought late in the war between Mosby's men and Union soldiers under Capt. The tears and lamentations of the scene aroused our sentiments of chivalry, and we went in pursuit" (Memoirs, p.158). Mosby described chasing some Yankees, who reportedly rode into the small town of Middleburg, Va.: "Women and children came out to greet us - the men had all been carried off as prisoners. Allusions to classical figures also supported Mosby's claim as a part of a greater historical continuum. Support of his mother state Virginia urged Mosby to fight, but age-old examples of gallant knighthood reinforced his actions during the war. This fact, however, merely served to heighten the importance of creating a postwar example of Mosby to keep such notions of honor active. The close of the Civil War sealed off further possibility to actively uphold the chivalric code of honor. Others ascribed to this belief as well, especially after the war. Mosby tapped into an ancient, romantic heroic ideal through his daring wartime raids and self-conscious "virtuous" conduct. The Civil War, however, took place at a time when these notions of primal honor still survived.
Modern times unfortunately provide few instances for this opportunity. To actively defend one's ethical code, one must be at war.
In medieval times, the knight upheld society's honorable virtues. It is one in which a ritual, tragically common in the American South but at one time more widespread in the Western world, helped a community to overcome its fears and reassert its primal values" (Wyatt-Brown, p.3,4). It sprung, rather, from an ethic "deep in mythology, literature, history, and civilization. The code of honor did not exist solely within antebellum Southern culture. Chivalry and Mosby The Tradition of Chivalry
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