The Imagery Of Blood In Shakespeare's Macbeth

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“...blood will have blood...”, Macbeth is a well known book written by Shakespeare. In it, a once loyal soldier to the king of Scotland starts to seek a way for him to get the crown for himself. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses the imagery of blood to represent the guilt of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, demonstrating the feeling of guilt has consequences of severe punishments. The imagery of blood shows Lady Macbeth wants to get rid of her guilt. Lady Macbeth states, “And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood” (1.5. 49-50). Lady Macbeth is saying that she wants be filled with cruelty from top to bottom and to thicken her blood because she knows that from what she is about to do, she will get guilt. He states, “We still have judgment here, that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague th’ inventor” (1.7. 8-9). Macbeth is explaining that when we commit a violent action such as a murder, we teach others to do the same, and then they will come back to kill them. The people that are going to get killed by Macbeth will be taught by his actions to get the idea of killing him, and then that’s where the “return To plague th’ inventor”, comes in. Their souls come back to haunt him until someone can kill him.Macbeth explains something from apparently ancient times, “Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ th’ olden time, Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been performed Too terrible for the ear” (3.4. 91-94). Before laws were ever made to make peace and land safe they had to have been lots of spilled blood, meaning the murders committed crimes were too awful to talk about. This sounds like he is trying to explain a meaning of what murders commit to and what it sounds like, he could be trying to sound unguilty by explaining this phrase he known about. Trying to state that they has to be crime before something good can happen such as he thinks that he being king is the good thing and that the death of Duncan and Banquo had to happen for this wonderful

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