Discuss the effectiveness of the opening three scenes of Macbeth

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Discuss the effectiveness of the opening three scenes of ‘Macbeth’

Macbeth is a thrilling tragedy based on a mans lack of control over greed. A play that shows his downfall from being a noble lord who was in a close circle with the king, to losing all his morals. This escalated into his death. Its set in Scotland as it is somewhat known to be a nation of things such as blood feuds. Macbeth is a play associated with the supernatural. It is a theme throughout the play because it has reoccurrences from beginning to end. Examples of this would be the three witches. They appear right at the start where Macbeth is first mentioned. They have visions and further on tell Macbeth he will become thane of Cawdor and then king.  This triggers off his arrogance. They then reappear to tell him that he will not die from anything human. The audience are repeatedly getting reminded that the play has a supernatural theme to it. A flying dagger also appears along with all of Macbeths strange hallucinations.

   Macbeth was written during the Elizabethan era. At that period of time the society had a very strong belief that witches and witchcraft was in existence. People would blame unexplainable events on witchcraft. These things would often include when people died from terrible diseases, an animals death, bad harvesting, and houses burnt down in fires. They didn’t have any knowledge on what was really happening so witches were an easy target to use. There were 270 witch trials during the Elizabethan times. 247 of those people were all women and only a mere 23 were men and I think this is mainly because men were known as being ‘all powerful’. The people that were normally accused for being witches were the old, the unprotected, the poor and single women or widows.

  Elizabethan women relied on the male members of their family. They didn’t have many rights and for that reason they were belittled by men and expected to obey them. The number of poorer people was increasing and old, poor and unprotected women needed to have some kind of support. Access to doctors and medicines was minimal. Women were expected to produce cures. 'Wise women' used herbs. The use of herbs and plants such as mandrake, datura, monkshood, cannabis, belladonna, henbane and hemlock were common ingredients in brews and ointments for medical purposes. As the fear of witches and witchcraft increased anyone with knowledge of herbs were thought to be having a pact with the devil. This would be resulted in execution.

   In act one scene one a dramatic atmosphere is automatically created. As Macbeth is a play, when the audience is watching this, the setting will set the mood to the scene. It’s set on a moor. This is telling us that it’s in a very quite, almost disturbing place as it’s a wasteland area. There’s thunder and lightning as the three witches enter. This allows the audience to have suspicions that something mysterious is about to happen. Thunder and lightning are also perceived as ghastly things which are associated with things that are awful or scary. This might set a tense atmosphere because the audience will now expect the witches to be like the thunder and lightning, something that will turn out to become awful or scary. In addition to this because the weather is unusual, its not like rain or clouds that we see near enough every day, it can let us acknowledge that something unusual will be at the entrance of the play. In this scene the witches are planning to meet again once the fighting is over to meet Macbeth. This would have made the Elizabethan audience a lot more frightened than our modern audience would ever be because back in that time there was a strong belief in witchcraft. They could have been alarmed and anxious to find out how the witches can be. But on the other hand they might think of the play as a re-enactment of things that have happened therefore being startled as the witches were a big fear in their lives. This is a peculiar scene because the witches saying things which are not normally supposed to happen. Things such as ‘when the battles lost and won’. We know that after a battle is either one or the other when it’s over. So saying that neither will happen makes the audience start to wonder. It gives the audience curiosity as they analyze what the witches words mean.  It doesn’t seem to make sense, so why are they saying it is a question that runs through my mind.  At the end of this scene the all three witches say a line together. ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair: hover through the filthy air.’ The language the witches use is often rhymes and riddles. This gives me several different interpretations of them. Either they want the audience to guess and attempt to solve the riddles in order to understand what they are talking about. They want us to be involved in the play by thinking of this as a game. Whoever solves the riddles will find their way to the plot the quickest. Or I think the witches are talking to the audience because they want us to wonder but they don’t want us to understand what they are talking about. Exactly like when a parents talks by spelling out words so that a young child does not understand. This is the witches’ way of communicating by making sure that no-one will understand what they are talking about and we are not  like them so we don’t grasp their way of talking. It could also be a way of stating that they are witches in the play. Talking in a different sort of language to us means they are not from the same place as we are. In the Polanski film the witches are represented to be very mysterious creatures. They give off an eerie sense to them, with their old, haggered faces surrounding a human arm buried in the sand. The images alone tell us that the witches are nothing like the majority of the society. They are portrayed to look like outcasts as they appear on the moor when no-one is around to be seen. They look as if they’ve been washed up from the sea from a whole other world.

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   In Act one Scene two there is a dramatic contrast to the opening scene. In the first scene there is a mysterious and quite a scary theme but in scene two it turns cheerful. The witches are gone and no elements of the supernatural are now presented. It seems like they have skipped a few scenes as it goes from the three witches riddle to then after the battle. There is no information about the battle except from this scene where they are only talking about its past events. The good king Duncan hears the news on how the ...

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