Macbeth
“How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is’t you do?”
The murder is committed at around midnight, which adds to the dramatic tension and is considered the “witching” hour; dark and mysterious, this makes Macbeth look even more suspicious, walking around at such a late hour.
To add to the originality of the play, Shakespeare chooses Lady Macbeth to be a very strong person, ordering her husband around. This was highly irregular as women’s roles were to be “house-wives” – never to have a job and to be “seen and not heard”; they weren’t even allowed to act on stage! However Lady Macbeth breaks this stereotype she is a strong character and even orders her husband around, this makes Macbeth look insecure and diminishes his stereotypical image.
The play opens with a scene of three witches, as shown above, and leads the audience through a series of emotions from humour to anxiety to name a few. Macbeth is prophesied by the Witches to become King; he is persuaded by his wife Lady Macbeth to murder the present King, Duncan. The scene that I am concentrating on is the immediate few moments after Macbeth has committed the murder, showing his great guilt, it is full of tension and keeps the audience’s attention, as it is the premature climax of the play. This contrasts with the scene immediately before it, where Macbeth has concluded that he would murder the king and is succumbed to the idea. Similarly the scene proceeding provides relief from the climax, and in some ways becomes an anti climax – as Macbeth has not been caught “in the act”. Shakespeare introduces an unusual character at this point, the porter, whose humour and strangeness takes the edge off the tense atmosphere of the scene before it.
Shakespeare using a variety of dramatic devices throughout ‘Macbeth’ to absolute the play. One of his most popular devices is the soliloquy; this is used to show the audience a character’s feelings and emotions through a personal speech, and can sometimes show madness - This is taken from Macbeth’s soliloquy at the end of Act II Sc 1;
Macbeth
This is showing Macbeth in an almost manic mood; as he professes to himself that he will murder the King, however only the audience have heard this and so adds tension, as the audience sits helpless, forced to watch.
Shakespeare uses soliloquy to change the viewpoint of a scene. Viewpoint changes a lot during the play, as seen in Act II; at the end of Sc 1 all attention is focused on Macbeth, and his willingness to kill. However when Sc 2 begins the viewpoint changes to Lady Macbeth as it opens with her calm and controlled but then quickly turns and becomes jumpy and worried, completely out of character, this captures the audience’s attention;
Lady Macbeth
“What hath quench’d them, hath give me fire.
[An owl shrieks]
Hark, Peace!”
Shakespeare has set out this piece in then way he has because we read from left to right, and by having the text flowing in this way makes the scene run faster, and shows more clearly that the character’s lines are shared.
As shown above Shakespeare uses off-stage noises to add incredible tension to the scene, in the example above and owl’s hoot is heard off-stage; an owl being an omen and considered “creepy” this adds more drama to the scene, and introduces animal imagery into ‘Macbeth’.
Another example of off-stage action is the murder of the King; this is the single most important part of the play. Not only is it committed using pathetic fallacy and at midnight (the witching hour), it being shown off-stage introduces all sorts of questions into the audience’s minds; “Did Macbeth do it?” “Was it someone else?” “How did he do it?” By killing Duncan in such a suspicious way, Shakespeare lets the audience picture for themselves how the murder was committed, and so makes the play personal, and also at the time the stage effects were very poor, and so the murder would have been less effective if shown onstage. Another more social reason to why the murder was committed offstage was as so not to offend King James, who would have been watching the play, and some may have seen showing the murder as treason.
Usually every scene has a dominant character, who usually has most dialogue and is usually in control of the scene and the characters in it. In Ac II Sc 2 Lady Macbeth is the dominant character, because she has the clearest mind, and is not troubled by the murderous events, she shows her dominance by ordering Macbeth to “Consider it not so deeply”. She also becomes quite bold,
“ My hands are of your colour, but I shame
To wear a heart so white. [Knock.] I hear a knocking
At the south entry; retire we to our chamber”
During this scene she seems unaffected by the murder
“A little water clears us of this deed.” However later on as we see, she becomes obsessed with the hand washing, and eventually kills herself because of her guilt.
Lady Macbeth
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why then ‘tis
time do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier,
and afeard?”
All of Shakespeare’s plays were written as poetry not prose, and throughout them he used a system called iambic pentameter, or blank verse. Iambic meaning five, which indicates that sentences were usually spoken in five beats, with the predominant beat falling on the second syllable. However when characters spoke in iambic, they were usually high-ranked on the hierarchy. For example when Macbeth speaks to the murderers in Act III Sc 1, he does so in prose,
“Ay, in catalogue ye go for men,
As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept
All by the name of dogs”
Also when people were nervous they would in effect ‘share’ their lines – meaning that the iambic pentameter was shared between two characters, as shown here in Act II Sc 2,
Lady Macbeth
“Did you not speak?
Macbeth
When
Lady Macbeth
Now
Macbeth
As I descended?”
Not only does this create tension, it also moves the plot along very quickly.
Notice how descended is used and not “come down” so that it fits the iambic rule.
I have thoroughly enjoyed studying Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’
