HELL AS THE NATURE OF ONE’S CHOICES: The following excerpts illustrate the Renaissance belief that Hell can be a psychological place within one. Macbeth makes his own hell; hell is not a punishment in the afterlife, but a current state of being. Macbeth’s sense of meaninglessness stems from his own choices; he has extinguished within himself that which connected him with God and with meaning. (That perhaps explains why the play is so full of mutilations, of severing one part of the self from another.)

Excerpts From Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (about 1592)

Faustus: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

Mephistophiles: Why this is hell nor am I out of it. . . .

F: . . .where is the place that men call hell?

M: Under the heavens.

F: Ay, so are all things, but where abouts?

M: Within the bowels of these elements

Where we are tortured and remain forever.

Hell hath no limits nor is circumscribed

In one self place, but where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be. . . .

F: I think hell's a fable. . . .

M: But I am an instance to prove the contrary

For I tell thee I am damned & now in hell!

F. Nay, and this be hell, I'll willingly be damned---

What, sleeping, eating, walking, and disputing?

Excerpts from Milton’s Paradise Lost (about 1667)

Book I (Satan, immediately after the fall,

talking to other fallen angels)

. . .fardest from him [God] is best [because]

. . .force hath made [him] supreme

Above his equals. . . .Hail horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

Book IV (Satan's self struggle later)

. . .horror and doubt distract

His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir

The Hell within him, for within him Hell

He brings, and round about him; nor from Hell

One step no more than from himself can fly

By change of place:

. . . .

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

. . . .

While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,

With Diadem and Sceptre high advanc'd

The lower still I fall, only Supreme

In misery; such joy Ambition finds.