How evil is presented throughout the play.

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Aireville School

48263

Sidrah Sarfraz  

Mrs Rosser

Shakespeare Coursework Task

Show how Shakespeare’s sense of theatre supports the presentation of evil in “Macbeth.”

Shakespeare was born in 1564 at Stratford upon Avon, he was an English poet and playwright. He wrote 38 plays 154 sonnets. He began his successful career in London as an actor and a writer, and later became known as what many say to be the greatest writer in the English language. One of his most successful plays is ‘Macbeth’ it was written at the time king James I was on the throne at the time that  the Gunpowder Plot that took place in 1605, and plotted against king James I and tried to blow up the houses of parliament. This is quite significant to the play as it links to people plotting against the king, as Macbeth does. In the end Guy Fawks is burnt, and at the end of the play Macbeth is also murdered.  Shakespeare received patronage from the current monarchy if they were pleased with the play he had produced, so he made it appeal to the king or Queen he was writing it for. He did this when he wrote Macbeth, as he Put witches in the play and also based the play around witches and portrayed them as personifying evil this would have appealed to King James I as he wrote a book about witches called Demonology in this book he confirmed his conspiracy about witches being evil supernatural beings that made bad things happen. Shakespeare set the play in the 12th century when it was the17th century so that he could twist the facts of what happened to get across what he wanted to say, about the plot of the witches.

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Shakespeare tried to make things relevant in the play to King James I.  He did this at the start of the play where he used Thunder and Lightening, before the three witches came on this would have appealed to King James I as he expressed very strongly that witches conjured up storms in the book he wrote. Another thing that portrayed evil at the start of the play is that the chant that the witches do ;“Fair is foul and foul is fair,” this shows that evil is about good being bad and bad being good. This links to ...

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