The setting that the witches are in is a barren moor with thunder and lightening in the dark, this darkness adds to an ever-growing aura of evil. The language accentuates this “hover through fog and filthy air” gives a feeling of dirt and bad, but do not overlook the fact that they may be on about clouding his vision with evil.
Darkness has an extremely big part to play in ‘Macbeth’ both as a play and to the actual main character.
The play is basically about Macbeth, how he moves from strength to strength driven in his success by evil, this evil eventually overtakes him and his greed finally kills him.
The evil in him emerges from the witches, they tell him of the things he would or could become, thane of Cawdor, thane of Glamis and also king, and the lust for power inside him acts on these prophecies.
The imagery all around Macbeth is very symbolical. Shakespeare describes the scene through the characters words to tell the audience of the light or dark. “The King comes here tonight”, this is said by a messenger the day before King Duncan is murdered. The night is associated with evil the evil is the murder. Shakespeare uses characters words because he could not show weather effects on his stage only sound and costume could be used.
Because the play is very much dark based there are not a lot of references to light in the play because Shakespeare wanted an evil image portrayed throughout making the play more entertaining. The characters in this play associated with good are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at the beginning, Macduff, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo and the noblemen of Scotland and other generals. Characters associated with evil are the three witches, the three murderers, Macbeth and lady Macbeth soon after meeting the witches.
In order for the dark for the dark presence to make an impact Shakespeare uses characters light and dark roles to contrast each other, thus making the dark seem more evil and the good more innocent. This seems to make the play better because the audience can sympathise with the good characters and start to hate the bad characters, which makes the play more entertaining.
During the play Macbeth references are made to light and dark which we know symbolise good and evil, these symbols are used for different reasons, firstly o shock the audience, and to accentuate the storyline, boosting the sense of evil in ‘Macbeth’. The ways Shakespeare does this is by describing the light or dark through the characters words and by contrasting the light or dark nature of the characters.
He does this generally to incorporate an immense sense of evil about the play, why he does this is for the audience, to easily show what is happening and how the characters change in the play and to entertain the audience by shock tactics.