Discuss the dramatic effects achieved in this extract, and comment on its importance to the play.

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Discuss the dramatic effects achieved in this extract, and comment on its importance to the play.

This extract is located in the scene where it dramatises a feast, which is the first formal and community occasion of Macbeth's reign. It is also the famous ghost scene and is one of the most dramatic scenes in the play. Onstage stands a table heaped with a feast. This extract started by the ghost of Banquo enters anew. This extract can be divided to two halves: the return of the ghost again and when all the nobles have left, the conversation Macbeth had with Lady Macbeth.

The first part of the extract is the banquet that is going on and is when the ghost reappear. At the beginning of the banquet we expect a harmony as a feast like this shall express the harmony between the king and his subjects. But by now Macbeth has violated this, and as Banquo's spectre reappears and it shocks Macbeth into further reckless outbursts. In the BBC Video Version of Macbeth, we start to see there is this sudden physical separation between Macbeth and the nobles. While Macbeth talks in great horror and bursts into madness at an empty seat, the nobles watch in great horror and are quite surprised as they can't see the ghost. This is illustrated by the long silence of the nobles, contrasting to earlier in the play they were all talking in great pleasure. It is quite surprising that Lady Macbeth can't see the ghost, as in the BBC Video Version she seemed just as shocked and surprised as the other thanes. The image of only Macbeth can see the ghost is very important and effective in the play. What makes it so effective is the terrible tension between what Macbeth can see, the murdered, mutilated body of his old friend, which is, like the earlier 'air-born dagger', all in his own mind, and the apparent normality of everyone else. 'This confusion could be an allusion to King James's work on witches, called Daemonologie, which contends that ghosts were punishment for the guilty or faithless.' [From Cliff's Note] In line 99, Macbeth's challenge to the ghost - "what man dare, I dare" - echoes an earlier line in he play, "I dare do all that may become a man" (I.7.46). Both of theses lines come in response to threats to his masculinity, in Silo Theatre's Stage Version of Macbeth, we even see that Macbeth has drawn his dagger that is trying to slash the ghost, indicating Macbeth's sensitivity to threats and implications that he is not a "man."

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We can also see in defiant rage Macbeth asserts the emptiness of the vision. He is angry at feeling frightened and resents any suggestion of cowardice. He even seems to accuse the Ghost of cowardice for appealing insubstantially. He urges it to appear as a bear, rhinoceros or tiger so that he could fight it as a soldier so here we have the image of Macbeth the warrior, which is the only honour that is still in him.  When Macbeth speaks of 'Unreal mock'ry', he recognises that he is the victim of some sort of grim joke that the supernatural ...

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