Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 1

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Robert Nixon        GCSE media – Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 1

This scene of Polanski’s film “Macbeth” features 3 witches. He has to try and convey this to the audience that they are real witches, and has to make them appear that they are not normal people, because people would not understand who or what these people are, but also not so they are stereotypically like a witch that the audience would find them comical.

In Shakespeare’s time, witches were believed to exist as real people that lived in communities in England and Scotland, so when it was performed on stage in those times, it was not hard to convince the audience they were witches. Then, witches were perceived by society as evildoers and were responsible for crops failing or other such things that they could not explain, so they used witches as scapegoats to blame it on. Many thousands of people were executed for such deeds, despite there not being any proof of them doing anything.

Nowadays, witches are perceived very differently than the way they used to. They are now regarded as figures of a comical nature, often imagined to have pointy hats, broomsticks and pet cats, and appear in such things as fairy tales and pantomimes. This is why Polanski must be wary of these stereotypes, as he wants the audience to realise that these are people who are evil, and not something to be laughed at.

Polanski had a lot of material from the original script of act 1, scene 1 which he could use to perceive that the witches are evil to the audience. For instance, it says in the stage directions at the start of the scene that there is thunder and lightening. He could use this to show evil as thunder and lightening is often thought to be of a bad and perhaps evil nature. The witches lines themselves are short, and some of them rhyme. The rhyming represents a chant, which could be to conjure up evil spirits, and the short, snappy lines could be used to represent the attitudes of the witches, being snappy themselves. The second to last line of the scene, where all the witches say “fair is foul, and foul is fair”, could mean that they want to use the power of evil to corrupt the minds of the good, i.e. Macbeth and his wife.

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The witches only say that they are going to meet a person called

Macbeth. They don’t say what is going to happen, or what they're going to do to him. This means Polanski can interpret this to the viewer; make them wonder what will happen further on in the film.

This is my detailed analysis of Act 1, Scene 1.

The scene starts with a picturesque long shot of a pink sky and dusk (or dawn). This may give the impression to the audience that this scene is to be a scene of beauty or tranquillity, ...

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