How would Shakespeare’s audience have reacted to the ‘supernatural scenes’ in Macbeth and how would this compare to your reaction?

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Sumera Qureshi                                                                                                  07/01/01

How would Shakespeare’s audience have reacted to the ‘supernatural scenes’ in Macbeth and how would this compare to your reaction?

‘The Scottish play’, ‘THAT play’ or ‘The King’s play’. Even today, when we distance ourselves from the contemporaries of Shakespeare’s time, by claiming that we are aren’t superstitious and believe in free will, actors still see ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ as an ominous or unlucky play. However, as two different societies, both the Jacobean and the twenty-first century audience would have very different reactions and responses to the supernatural portrayal of evil.

“Macbeth”, as a play, contains very universal themes, which are explored to a certain degree through Macbeth’s own character i.e. ambition and desire. The main theme, however, is the struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Characters such as Banquo and Duncan represent the ‘good’ while characters, such as Lady Macbeth and the witches, represent ‘evil’. Macbeth, however, is shown to be a multifaceted and very complex character, in that he begins as a ‘noble’ and ‘worthy gentlemen’ however, by the end, has become a ‘merciless butcher’ and we, as the audience, can appreciate these gradual changes in his character much more clearly.

The biggest influence on Macbeth’s changing attitudes and the most powerful supernatural force in the play are, perhaps, the witches. They enter in Act 1, Scene 1 and as an audience, we are immediately rapt by the appearance of the witches; their skinny lips, wild attire and the curious riddle-like language used to speak to each other. The language Shakespeare used for the dialogue of the witches is also distinctly different from the normal iambic pentameter he used in blank verse. The witches speech is often spoken in a four beat rhythm, which is an almost spell like and incantatory style;

        ‘A drum, A drum, Macbeth doth come’ (Act 1, Scene 1, line 18)

Which helped create a sinister and foreboding atmosphere of mystery; the perfect backdrop to the scene’s of the witches. Their actual speech was also very different as they often used antithesis;

‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (Act 1, Scene 1, line 18)

and equivocation, which served to confuse and mystify the audience and later on with the second set of predictions, give Macbeth his fatally false sense of security.

Where the modern day audience would have been less inclined to believe that they were witches - as we know that this cruel persecution and stereotyping of alleged ‘witches’ was actually an ugly mixture of misogyny, superstition and a belief that religion was being upheld, the Jacobean audience would have seen this as almost undeniable proof that they were – thereby provoking a mixed feeling of fear and hate.

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At that time, the common man or woman were uneducated and learnt everything from the church. Although there were deep divisions between Catholics and protestants, nearly everyone believed in Heaven or Hell literally and lived in fear of eternal damnation; a consequence of witchcraft. Pamphlets and books were printed crediting witches with diabolical powers; predicting the future, cursing people with muscle-wasting diseases, bringing on night in day or even sailing in sieves. Indeed Shakespeare used these examples in the conversation between the witches,

        But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

        And like a rat without a tail,

I’ll do, I’ll ...

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