Macbeths Images and Imagery :: GCSE English Literature Coursework

Macbeths Imagery William Shakespeare in the tragedy Macbeth very skillfully uses imagery to support other aspects of the drama, particularly the theme. In this essay let us examine the imagery, including literary critical comment. Roger Warren comments in Shakespeare Survey 30 , regarding Trervor Nunns direction of Macbeth at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1974-75, on opposing imagery used to support the opposing nonions of purity and black magic Much of the approach and detail was carried over, particularly the clash between ghostlike purity and black magic. Purity was embodied by Duncan, very infirm (in 1974 he was blind), dressed in white and accompanied by church reed organ music, set against the black magic of the witches, who even chanted Double, double to the Dies Irae. (283) L.C. Knights in the essay Macbeth explains the supporting role which imagery consorts in Macbeths descent into darkness To learn to the witches, it is suggested, is like eating the insane root, That t akes the reason prisoner (I.iii.84-5) for Macbeth, in the moment of temptation, function, or intellectual activity, is smotherd in surmise and everywhere the imagery of darkness suggests not only the absence or withdrawal of light but - light thickens - the presence of something positively oppressive and impeding. (101) In Fools of Time Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Northrop Frye shows how the playwright uses imagery to reinforce the theme This theme is at its clearest where we are most in sympathy with the nemesis. Thus at the end of Macbeth, after the proclamation the date is free, and of promises to make reparations of Macbeths tyranny Which would be planted newly with the time, there will be a renewal not only of time but of the entire rhythm of nature symbolized by the word measure, which includes both the music of the spheres and the dispensing of human justice . . .. (94-95) In his book, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, H. S. Wilson interprets the imagery of Macbeth Macbeth is a play in which the poetic atmosphere is very important so important, indeed, that some recent commentators give the impression that this atmosphere, as created by the imagery of the play, is its determining quality. For those who cave in most attention to these powerful atmospheric suggestions, this is doubtless true. Mr. Kenneth Muir, in his introduction to the play