Account for the lasting appeal for the play (Macbeth)

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Pete Bromfield

4/4 Miss Bent

Account for the lasting appeal for the play

In this essay I am going to explain why ‘Macbeth’ is still such a popular play to watch. This play has many different appeals that have made it so popular even though it was written 400 years ago. I am going to tell you about the different themes, staging and how rhymes and language come into effect. These points will prove why ‘Macbeth’ has had such a lasting appeal.

One of these appeals is the fact that there are so many themes in the play; this keeps the audience interested throughout the whole play. One of these themes is ambition, this is the main theme as it drives most of the passion that they play has as it makes the eventual downfall of Macbeth. Ambition makes him kill the king as after thinking of all the reasons not to kill Duncan the two things keeping him even thinking about it is ambition and Lady Macbeth, but Lady Macbeth can get him to kill the King by the ambition being there in the first place. ‘I have no spur… but only vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself’ (I, v, 25-27). These lines prove why ambition plays such a big part as in the end it gets Macbeth killed, without this there wouldn’t be a plot as none of the murders would take place.

Lady Macbeth wants him to be King so that she can be Queen although she doesn’t act as though she wants to be feminine ‘of direst cruelty; make thick my blood’ (I, v, 41), ‘unsex me here’ (I, v, 39) and ‘come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall’ (I, v, 45-46) except in 5, 1 when she is the opposite. In Act 5 scene 1 Lady Macbeth is a lot more feminine than she has been in earlier scenes. This is shown by the following lines, ‘all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O’. (I, v, 42-43). Lady Macbeth is referring to the hand that she had got King Duncan’s blood on. This is a more ‘lady like’ view than the view she had earlier when she said to Macbeth ‘Go get some water and wash this filthiness off your hands’ (II, ii, 49-50) and ‘a little water clears us of this deed’ (II, ii, 70). These two sections of lines completely contradict themselves as one says nothing will ever wash the blood off of their hands and they will forever have the murder in their thoughts. Whereas the other says that if they just wash their hands then all of the blood will come off and they will be cleared of the murder, the filthiness will just wash off. In the stage directions it says that Lady Macbeth enters holding a taper. This shows that she is scared of the dark but the strong and unwomanly Lady Macbeth in earlier scenes wouldn’t have needed a taper because she wouldn’t be scared of the dark. Lady Macbeth plays such a big part in the play because without her harassing Macbeth, he probably wouldn’t have thought twice about killing Duncan. This is good for the play as without the presence and evilness of Lady Macbeth then the play wouldn’t be as good. Lady Macbeth being such an important character adds appeal to the play because it creates tension as sexism is a modern occurrence and it is good for a wife to have such power over her husband.

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Another is good and evil and the continual struggle between them. This is shown by Lady Macbeth saying to Macbeth ‘look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t’ (I, v, 63-64). This is saying that he should look like he is innocent and good but really be as evil as Lady Macbeth. In this passage she is also trying to convert Macbeth from being good to evil so he kills the King. Another section that has evil in it is the witches’ prophecy (I, iii). When the witches make the prophecy you don’t know if you want ...

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