William Shakespeare's use of dramatic techniques in the play Macbeth.

Authors Avatar

        

William Shakespeare was a seventeenth century playwright who wrote many interesting and entertaining plays.  Some of his work included ‘ Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Macbeth’.  Shakespeare wrote his plays for the everyday person in the seventeenth century so they had to capture the audience’s attention.  He caught their attention by the elements of surprise, special effects and exciting story lines.  He was familiar with all the tricks of the trade, when he wrote the plays as he intended them to be watched.  He wrote the play so that people would want to continue to watch and as a result the plays were successful with his audiences.  Shakespeare wrote ‘Macbeth’ and included many special techniques throughout the duration of the play.  He included three witches in the play.  Witches in those days and still today represent evil so people were made to feel afraid.  In my opinion Macbeth is a tragedy as it is a story of a good man turned evil.  This is a questionable comment, as many people disagree.  Shakespeare knew this and used this to play his audience.  Macbeth undoubtedly wishes to become king.  However, when he achieves this it has the boomerang effect.  This means that his plans have a totally different effect to those that he originally had expected.  Macbeth had expected to be happy through his achievement in being king but this brought misery and then disaster at the end for him.  However, at the conclusion Macbeth realises that he has done many things wrong along the path to becoming king and he may feel remorse for his actions.

William Shakespeare builds up reader expectation in Act one scene one by the way he opens the scene.  The scene opens with thunder and lightning.  This grabs the attention of the audience as something usually happens after the thunder and lightning.  Shakespeare cleverly uses this old trick to introduce the witches.  This shocks the audience because there was no indication of them being introduced this increases the element of shock.  In those days many people, through religious beliefs thought that witches represented evil and they thought that they were agents of the devil.  If you were involved in witchcraft the maximum penalty was death and judgement was passed quickly.  During the reign of king James God’s natural order was upheld at high cost to those who transgressed.

When the witches mention a meeting with Macbeth this has a number of effects upon the audience.  It arouses their interest in the play because they hear the name ‘Macbeth’, the person after whom the play is named.  So their interest is naturally aroused.  It would also suggest to them that Macbeth and the witches are friends, as they appear to have arranged a rendezvous on the Heath later.  Shakespeare deliberately did this because the mere suggestion of Macbeth being a friend of the weird sisters suggests he too is evil.  The first scene concludes with the witches’ chanting-

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”

This would suggest that for them Good is bad and bad is good.  This may mean that there are two perspectives to everything.  Things may not always be what they seem.  This is a key aspect of the play in that appearance and reality may be clouded.  We can see this when Macbeth is presented as a noble person, then turns to evil.  

Join now!

Shakespeare also uses various other ways to create reader expectation by not introducing the major character until later on thus encouraging the audience to continue to watch developments.  At this point people can only make assumptions about Macbeth’s’ character. By introducing the witches Shakespeare also introduced the idea of evil in the world at this early stage of the play.  This also grabbed the attention of his audience and this set the tone for much of what was to happen in the later stages of the play.  The audience would not have doubted the credentials of the witches because they ...

This is a preview of the whole essay