Another way Shakespeare in which he makes the scene dramatic is by the use of his stagecraft. An example for this is whilst Lady Macbeth is on stage making a speech, the audience & Lady Macbeth are wondering “is he going to go through with it?” & “will he get caught?” This is answered when Macbeth makes a dramatic entrance carrying two bloody daggers, this makes the audience visualise a horrific, bloody crime. Macbeth murdered Duncan whilst he was asleep, the murder was considered worse because Duncan was killed while he slept & he had no way of defending himself & sleep was meant to be seen as a state of innocence. People of this time believed that before you die you are suppose to confess your sins so you wouldn’t have them held against you & Duncan didn’t have the chance to this.
At this very point Lady Macbeth is getting anxious about getting caught, Shakespeare emphasises this by making Lady Macbeth not noticing that Macbeth is carrying the two bloody daggers even though he is standing right in front of her, he was suppose to leave the daggers with the guards to show it was them who murdered Duncan, “why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there. Go carry them & smear the sleepy grooms with blood.” Macbeth is being told to take the daggers back to Duncan’s room but he refuses to go as he feels guilty & scared of what he has done, “I’ll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on’t again, I dare not.”
Lady Macbeth seizes the daggers from Macbeth when he refuses to return to the brutal murder scene, this dramatically represents that Lady Macbeth is clearly in control of the situation, even though men back then were more in control this is proven wrong in this case as Lady Macbeth is the strong character from when we met her at the beginning & still is. Women back then use to do what they were suppose to do but here the tables are turned, at one time earlier on at the beginning of the play, she mocks Macbeths masculinity, we also know that she is a cold-blooded person but near the beginning of this scene Lady Macbeth reveals her feminine side when she says she couldn’t kill Duncan herself because he looked like her dad when he was asleep, “ He could not miss ‘em. Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.”
Shakespeare also makes the scene dramatic by how the characters act. Lady Macbeth acts all innocent when around king Duncan but really she was plotting to kill him all along.
When Macbeth wouldn’t go back to the murder scene, Lady Macbeth shows her cold-hearted side by saying that if Duncan is still bleeding, she will cover the guards faces with his blood, “If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the the grooms.”
At the beginning of the play, Macbeth was seen to be the war hero & loyal to the king (who is also his cousin). He has second thoughts about going through with the murder but goes through with it in the end because of Lady Macbeth who kept on mocking his masculinity. After the murder Shakespeare shows Macbeth’s guilt & conscience, which is the theme of the play. He also keeps hearing voices in his head, “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep” & “still it cryed, ‘ sleep no more, ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep & therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.” These voices could be seen as Macbeth’s conscience.
Macbeth also shows his guilt when he says,” will all great ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” & “The multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red,” he is saying that the ocean is green but after he washes his hand in the sea it will turn bloody (red), this is a recurring image.
Another one Shakespeare’s theme is appearance & reality. One example of this is when Lady Macbeth frames the guards by making them drunk & by taking the daggers & planting them next to Duncan. This is to make it appear that the guards did it but in reality they are innocent. Lady Macbeth also appears to be feminine & loyal when Duncan arrives by welcoming him into her home but she is really plotting on killing him.
When Macbeth has committed the murder they both wash their hands in order to make themselves look innocent, “A little water clears us of this deed.” They also get dressed into their night clothes to make it appear as though they had been sleep the whole time whilst Duncan was murdered.
Another way in which Shakespeare makes the scene look theatrical is by the structure of the scene. The audience is expecting to see the murder but instead we see Lady Macbeth on stage alone making references to death in order to reflect on what’s happening off-stage. When she goes off-stage to place the daggers to the murder scene even though she’s not on stage she is still in control of the scene, Macbeth in this case is shown as the weak one. Lady Macbeth states, “ my hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white,” she is again mocking his manhood & this is the turning point of the scene she clearly becomes the strongest character.
The final way in which Shakespeare makes the scene dramatic is through social & historical context (references back then in which the audience at that time would understand). An example of this is when Macbeth hears voices the audience would associate this as a sign with him being possessed by evil.
My conclusion is that Shakespeare makes the death of king Duncan dramatic by the use of his language, stagecraft, different themes, characters personalities, social & historical context & the structure of the scene in order to make the scene more effective.
