William Blake´s Pity based on Shakespeare´s Macbeth

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William Blake's colour print painting filled with watercolors and ink is known as Pity, it is one of a large group of paintings known as "Large Colour Prints". In Pity, a woman lying on the ground appears to be deceased, while two figures riding horses fly above her with a young baby in hand. This painting was completed in 1795, but the painting relates more to the characteristics of renaissance style drawing. Sense the woman figure lying down does not appear in Macbeth’s simile on Pity, the woman figure lying down creates difficulties for commentators who draw conclusions on Shakespeare’s text in their interpretations of Blake's painting. By exploring the influences of Blake’s own visual and verbal imagination of which he acquires from Macbeth’s lines, we find the sources of the confusion that reveal the true meaning of Pity. The majority of the confusion originates from the woman lying down, which will become clearer when we look into the Pity concept in Blake’s poetry and examine his other works from the 1795 series. These sources can bring new thoughts and reveal new concepts when viewing the painting. The presence of the dead woman along with the live infant allows Blake to create ambiguity between life and death as a simile to Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.
The sense of uncertainty appears in Blake's painting because at first glance it is not obvious what the painting is portraying along with the characteristics and body language of each figure. This painting is originating from Blake's imagination and visions. It is not known if the vision was stimulated by Blake reading Shakespeare’s play Act I, Scene 7 of Macbeth:
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked n...

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...ercises his power. In the painting her misguided mindfulness is seen in her face as she reaches down to grasp a hold of the baby with the possessiveness that characterizes the Enitharmon of Europe. (Within Blake's myth, Enitharmon is a female character that represents female domination and sexual restraints that limit artistic imagination.) The airstream that blows her hair obliquely upwards but leaves Urizen's untouched may represent "The winds of Enitharmon," which Blake also mentions in his myth as the agency by which souls are carried into mortal birth in the fallen world.
In painting Pity, Blake painted a simile that refers to some of Shakespeare's work. Blake’s central idea from this painting originated from a scene out of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Blake uses the deceased woman lying down to add contradiction between Macbeth's lines and his own imagination.

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