Macbeth Instruments of Perversion Essay - 1239 Words

Surreal, unexplainable, bizarre, dreamlike. Terms such as these are often used to describe the feelings associated with Shakespeares Macbeth. These unreal qualities are the result of numerous twisted perversions in the plot and characters. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are chased by equivocation, trying to balance out reality and their dream-world though they are entrenched in a fog of uncertainty and doubt. Macbeth himself quickly becomes an instrument of this distortion due to the influences of the Weird Sisters, Lady Macbeth, and the unstoppable chain of events his initial violence sets off. Macbeth is constantly in a state of dreaming, thought he does not realize it. In fact, most of the time, he cannot tell the difference between†¦show more content†¦Macbeth does murder sleep (2.2.47-48). Secondly, there is blood mentioned or spilled throughout the play; something that should be kept inside the body is repeatedly found outside. The play opens with Scotland at the end of a war and Macbeth as her savior. A soldier reports that Macbeth had personally unseamed [an enemy soldier] from the nave to th chops/ And fixed his head upon our battlements, displaying Macbeths ability to take part in violent acts (1.1.24-25). Macbeths ambition is the cause of this willingness to kill, and his ambition is materialized in the form of the crown of Scotland. The crown is the third found confusion because of the question of where the power behind the crown is from. Whether power comes from divine right, outside the body, or through the blood of the previous king, inside the body, is challenged in Macbeth, by Macbeth himself and his ambitions of taking control and by the Weird Sisters in naming Banquos sons the future Kings of Scotland (1.3.51-53). It is because of the prophecies of the Weird Sisters that Macbeth even starts thinking of taking control of the crown, though some still maintain he would have stumbled upon the notion of murder had they not put the idea into his head. Upon naming Malcolm the Prince of Cumberland, Macbeth decides to take matters into his own hands and begins the downward spiral of confusion (1.4.55-60). It should be noted that before meeting the Weird Sisters, MacbethShow MoreRelated William Shakespeares Macbeth Essay1887 Words   |  8 PagesThe Witches or Weird Sisters play a major role in the brilliant trage dy Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The role of the Weird Sisters represents that equivocal evil in the nature of things which helps to deceive the human will. They are not mere witches although they have some of the powers of witches. Even though they were produced by nature, they share with angels a freedom from limitation of space and time, a power to perceive the causes of things, and to see some distance into human minds (KermodeRead MoreMacbeth Dreams Visions and Hallucinations Rereading2477 Words   |  10 PagesThe influence of Dreams, Visions and Hallucinations in Macbeth and other Literary Texts â€Å"The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.† ---- Edgar Allan Poe Uncanny encounters with visions and hallucinations blur the presumed constraints of time and space. The ‘phantasms’ or sensory impressionsRead MoreEssay on Macbeth and the Gunpowder Plot of 16054662 Words   |  19 PagesMacbeth and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 Shakespeare’s Macbeth was influenced by the gunpowder plot of 1605. The equivocation that was inspired by this event played an important role in the play. The general theme of Macbeth reflects the mood of society at the time that it was written. This relationship is a direct reflection of the mimetic theory. This paper will examine the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the role of equivocation in the subsequent prosecutions during the time that Shakespeare was