Macbeth, By William Shakespeare

Shakespeare personalised the text, so the audience is given access to Macbeth’s thoughts both conscious and subconscious. Throughout the whole play Macbeth was feeling pressured to determine his position of kingship by murdering the current king and anyone that stands in his way of guaranteeing that leadership role. Macbeth, generally kind-hearted in nature, felt restricted and uncomfortable about this task that his wife, Lady Macbeth, pressured him into. Lady Macbeth, a cruel, witty and overly controlling wife, questions his manhood and leadership skills to convince him to take upon this role. After committing such crimes Macbeth led into a state of depression However, strangely, Lady Macbeth was the one towards the final acts of the production to display the considerable amount of grief. She constantly had a cloud of guilt surrounding her. A motif used in this instance is Blood. Shakespeare constantly used this motif throughout the text to constantly remind the audience of the guilt and how serious their actions are. As the guilt of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth intensifies so does the use of blood throughout the text being used as an imagery technique, showing the consistent guilt laid upon them. Showing the theme guilt and the motif blood throughout the script, Shakespeare has once again achieved the power of kingship overshadowing the use of guilt for Macbeth, disregarding Lady Macbeth’s severe guilt that she encounters in the final acts of the

No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red" Macbeth Quote (Act II, Sc. II).

Shakespeare employs a great deal of imagery to depict certain situations, for example he uses the image of blood many times. At this stage in the play Lady Macbeth is confident while Macbeth is subject to frightened loyalty. However, what Macbeth fears is evil of committing the evil deed rather than the evil deed itself. It is al this stage that one can first realise a chink of humanity in the originally confident and cold lady Macbeth. The murder has just been committed and Lady Macbeth relates to Macbeth how the assassinated Duncan appeared to her. “Ha he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done’t.” Suddenly through the hard exterior that Lady Macbeth possesses, she sees her father as the old man lying murdered on the

In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, imagery is used to set the tone of a passage, provide contrast and irony to scenes, and help to display character. Shakespeare applies the imagery of clothing, darkness, and blood in an exceptional manner to describe his play. Each one of these is an important symbol used throughout the play. They add to a complete understanding of a passage or the play as a whole.

In Shakespeare play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s character progresses in an interesting manner. Lady Macbeth is made to act as an incentive to Macbeth's immoral actions. Even though Macbeth is generally the person to have a final say before killing someone, Lady Macbeth plays the role of his “sidekick”. She mocks her husband if he worries over a sinful deed (which usually she instructs him to do), saying he would be less of a man if he does not follow through with their plan (I. vii. 56-57). She gives Macbeth a short lecture in deceptiveness when they are planning to kill King Duncan (I. vi. 73-78). She also prepared the daggers for Macbeth to kill Duncan in advance (II. ii. 15-16). Although her husband was still having doubts, she was always ready to go in for the kill. She did not think twice about it or feel any remorse. This shows that Lady Macbeth evolved into looking like a humble and quieter person on the exterior, but being an insane woman and criminal due to the events that have affected her.

Everyone has a quality that they do not like about themselves. Some people struggle to be social, others may be too controlling of people. The list goes on and on, but the point is that everybody has a particular quality that they must learn to control or else that particular quality can get out of hand. Of course, one could write a list of characters that have major flaws. There is no better example than William Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Anyone who has ever read it, could easily identify the fatal flaw that the character Macbeth possesses which is greed. Even though many readers can all agree that greed is Macbeth’s fatal flaw, the argument as to whether or not

As the play goes, Macbeth shows a character of free will. Although his destiny was pre-determined for him by the witches, he took action to believe and to make sure that his prophecies will come true. Macbeth is a strong character with many deep desires that include gaining power, and so throughout the play with the many crimes he had committed, there was no turning back for him. In all, his decisions help shape the future ahead of him.

The women figure is often perceived as passionate and loving but it was used as a sign of trouble, jealousy, and evilness in old literature pieces such as the Homer’s Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where the storylines couldn’t take places without the intervention of a female character. Both pieces of literature share the appearance of intriguing actions of a female character more than once in the plot. In the Odyssey, we have the female appearance that make an impact to the story three time: Helen of Troy (cause of the 10-year long war), Calypso (kept Odysseus captive on an island for 7 years) and his wife Penelope (Odysseus longed for her, men wanted to marry forcefully to take over Odysseus castle). In Macbeth on the other hand we

The play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, presents many societal issues, such as the influence of superstition and the supernatural, as well as the continuous desire of the human race for progress and ambitious fulfilment. What a person chooses to do in order to fulfil those desires depends on the individuals themselves, and in the case of Macbeth, he turns to murder in order to advance his social and political standing. The audience’s perception of Macbeth changes throughout the play, beginning with feelings of admiration and approval of his deeds and character, and ending, with the play and as well as his life, as feelings of contempt and disgust at his treachery. This is achieved mainly through the progression of Macbeth’s character development, as well as through the dialogue of himself and other characters.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the motif of night is aggressive like the murders they plot and commit. Night dominates day throughout the play since they commit murders which disrupt the natural order of the world. Macbeth “plays God” by taking someone else’s life and therefore they challenge the Elizabethan order of the world. Acts of chaos, like earthquakes and supernatural events, break loose. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth think the night will cover their treacherous deeds. At first, the idea of murdering Duncan frightens Macbeth, but after he kills the two guards, he begins to lose his humanity. In the beginning, Lady Macbeth feels no remorse for the deaths they are responsible for but as the play progresses, Lady Macbeth starts to feel remorse for her and her husband’s actions. Although Lady Macbeth and Macbeth hope the night will conceal their sins, instead it illuminates their actions and worsens their guilt. Their actions can never fully hide since they disrupt the natural order of the world and cause chaos.

On the other end of the spectrum, Macbeth must deal with the moral uncertainty of the actions he does commit. When he goes to kill Duncan, the dagger appears, which he judges to be “A dagger of the mind, a false creation /Proceeding from the heat oppressèd brain” (II.i.38-39). It is something that has materialized because he has a humoral imbalance. This is the “psychic distress” Roychoudhury says, “threatens often to undo the protagonists” (218). Because his mind is not right, Macbeth goes down a path of self-destruction. Macbeth does not murder all of his possible enemies at once, it takes four separate murders until he is finished. This goes against Machiavelli’s prescription in The Prince: “Violence must be inflicts once and for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful” (32). Though the audience does not get a chance to see whether the people are resentful, Macbeth is resentful of himself. He has “terrible dreams / that shake us nightly” (III.ii.18-19), violent nightmares, because of his guilt from murdering Duncan. His own rumination contains the same idea: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly” (I.vii.1-2). The repetition of the “w” sound evokes the madness behind Macbeth’s thoughts. This is not easy to get out when spoken. His words are more than his tongue can handle, he cannot manage to get everything done all at once. The state Macbeth usurped to obtain is in trouble by Machiavelli’s standards

Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare in the year 1606, is a prominent tragic play that is notoriously recognized for its excessive use of violence. The author mainly elaborates how Macbeth, who used to be a proud hero of Scotland, spreads his turmoil throughout the whole kingdom. In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is widely regarded as an honorable hero because he is a valiant warrior who wants to protect the kingdom to the best of his abilities. As the play progresses, however, Macbeth’s personality, motives, and character start to vary dramatically. His personal greed and overconfidence to fulfill his ambition for power leads him to commit malevolent actions that brings upon remorse, despair, and guilt within him and for the

At one point in the story, one half of Macbeth’s witch prophecy has come true, and he believes that the other half will come true soon. Macbeth is very happy and goes into a daze. When he is in this daze, he thinks about killing King Duncan, so he can become King. Banquo, Ross, and Angus are all standing with Macbeth and soon realize that Macbeth is experiencing a daydream. As a result, Banquo states, “new honors come upon him, like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold but with the aid of use.” (I: iii,160-162). Banquo is trying to justify why Macbeth is acting the way he is. Banquo is saying that the reason Macbeth is daydreaming is because, only a few moments ago, Macbeth was told he would become Thane of Cawdor, and therefore Macbeth is in shock. In the phrase, “Like our strange garments,” Shakespeare uses the word “strange,” in place of the word “new,” to represent new garments; signifying the new title Macbeth was just given. In the text, Shakespeare uses the phrase: “Cleave not to their mold.” He uses “cleave” to mean stick and mold to mean Macbeth’s character. Shakespeare uses “but with aid of use” to denote that over time, Macbeth will get used to his new title. Essentially this whole line means that Macbeth was given this new title and will only get used to this new rank by being in the role of king after he has been in this position for a certain amount of

Macbeth is a tragedy written in the 17th century that shows what the desire for power can do to a man. Macbeth is expressed as being the villain. But, Macbeth is in fact a tragic hero, doomed by fate from the beginning into the madness he put himself in. If it not been for meeting the witches and persuasion of his wife, the play would have had a very different ending.

In all of Shakespeare's plays he uses many forms of imagery. Imagery is the art of making images, the products of imagination. In the play 'Macbeth' Shakespeare applies the imagery of clothing, darkness and blood. Each detail is his imagery, seems to contain an important symbol of the play, symbols that the audience must understand if they are to interpret either a passage or the play as a whole.