Show How Shakespeare Makes Us Feel Horror, Pity and Fear by Examining Three of the Deaths in the Play

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Show How Shakespeare Makes Us Feel Horror, Pity and Fear by Examining Three of the Deaths in the Play

I will show how Shakespeare makes us feel horror pity and fear by examining three of the deaths in the play. These are the three main components to any tragedy, dating back to the ancient Greek tragedies.

I will look at the murder of King Duncan and that of Banquo as well as the killing of young Macduff and his mother.

The play was Macbeth was probably first performed in front of King James at Hampton Court Palace in 1606; six centuries after the birth of the real Macbeth on whose life the play is loosely based. Most of the other characters also existed but Shakespeare has moulded them to suit his purposes.

There is a great build-up to Duncan's death. This creates an atmosphere tension, suspense and fear. You fear for the King, and the consequences of what Macbeth is about to do. For this reason you not only feel sorrow and pity for Duncan but also for Macbeth, who started off a good man, noble and just, with a courageous heart. He has been led by the witches and his wife to commit the terrible act, and we have perceived for him because we know this story is a tragedy. Macbeth will eventually go mad and have to pay for what he has done with his own life.

A very important element in both Duncan's and Banquo's murder is the night. It plays on the childhood fears of the dark and has always been traditionally associated with evil and wicked goings on. Things happen in the dark that should not, secret, unseen deeds from which only bad can come. The good people of the world were in the beds, that was where Duncan was, unaware that his host was about to do the unspeakable to him, who trusted completely. It was at night that Jesus Christ was betrayed by Judas Iscariot. Macbeth, Duncan’s trusted follower and friend does an equally bad deed in murdering his King, “wicked Dreams abuse The Curtain’d Sleep”.

His just and good-natured character made Macbeth's regicide even more horrible. The horror of someone murdering the King is immense. At the time the monarch was seen as being chosen by God himself. This divine right as it was called raised their status above all others and the concept of a normal mortal killing the King would have been a horrifying prospect.

Yet in the year prior to the play's first performance a group of Catholics had tried to blow up the Protestant King James I and Parliament in the gunpowder plot. Shakespeare plays on people's fears of what might have happened had Guy Fawkes succeeded. Shakespeare would also have known of the King's dislike of King killers and has incorporated this into the play where Macbeth is finally dealt justice.

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In the dark, starless night upon which no moon shines, Macbeth creates in the hallucination of a dagger, it's blade covered with "Gouts of blood". His Conscience tries to warn him of what he himself describes as "Bloody Business". They are using the cover of darkness as a mask. This is not really who they are, Macbeth has been coerced into this atrocity and even the ambitious Lady Macbeth has to call on "Spirits that tend on mortal Thoughts" to "Fill me from the Tow, top full, Of direct cruelty" and to drink to give herself courage.

And owl screech ...

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