Imagery in Macbeth

When the battle’s lost, and won.” Every word they speak seems to link them with evil and foulness. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air.” In Shakespearean England the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion was a powerful breeding ground for persecution and witch-hunts were common. People them days were induced to relate witches as rebels against God and the divine order. So starting the play with this dramatic scene is setting out to grip the audience’s attention from the very start of the play. The Shakespearean audience would therefore be immediately aware at the very start of the play that this drama concerns evil and foul deeds.

The agnostic part of the three witches is held with their examination to the Fates and the showcase their disagreeable behavious, for example, making potions. The witches are instrumental in beginning the action that prompts so much catastrophe. After Banquo and Macbeth discovered them and heard their expectations, Banquo is distrustful of their recognitions of Macbeth. He considers the witches to be fiends, by comparing them with evil. He senses mischief and misdirection in their tendency.

In line 45, the witches, when they hear Macbeth knocking, say ‘Something wicked this way comes’. This is ironic as the witches, who are evil are calling Macbeth evil. This shows that Macbeth is the most evil character in the play. In line fifty and onwards, Macbeth is... ... middle of paper ... ... he is so insecure. The witches do reassure him with the information that ‘none of woman birth shall harm Macbeth’ but this is not as straightforward as Macbeth thinks because of Macduff’s Caesarean Section.

Also reflective of the subtle order that the modern-day society complies to, the play outlines the chaos the world falls to as a result of the witches’ prophecy that prompted Macbeth to commit regicide. To place emphasis on the broken chain, Shakespeare uses the repetition of a phrase when referring to “foul and fair”. First appearing in the witches’ line at the beginning of the play “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.9),. Shakespeare reiterates the phrase in Macbeth’s entrance in Act 2 in the quote “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38). The witches’, portrayed/believed/identified as believed to be Satan’s representatives on Earth, therefore play?

There are multiple characters that either lit the fuse of Macbeth’s ambition, or cut the fuse to make it shorter, thus leading him along the path to evil. Although one could argue that both Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters affected Macbeth, they only played a minor role. The main fault lies with Macbeth himself, a man so blinded by ambition and rage that he resorts to murder to achieve his goal. The main source of evil is Macbeth due to his twisted reasoning on the prophecies that he hears, as well as the sinister feelings that are hiding inside of him even from the beginning of the play; illustrating that even those who seem most noble and valiant can have evil present within them. One of Macbeth’s greatest tricks is his power of deception, which he shockingly uses to betray his friends, colleagues, and even his king.

They have but harped upon what was already evil and stimulated these thoughts into acts (Corson 242). In his last scene, the Witches urge him on by more flattering equivocations, each turning false, luring Macbeth to an evil end.

The audience is allowed inside of Macbeth's conflicting mind and the imagery allows us to sense the conflict. There is a clear conflict between good and evil, and this makes the audience feel uneasy. The witches symbolise the force of evil and establish the atmosphere of conflict in the first scene, by using the oxymoron, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair,". The impact of this gives an initial outlook of the play, and the audience can see that conflict will be a major theme. In the rest of "Macbeth" we have seen this conflict in the form of light and darkness.

They meet in foul weather and talk of "thunder, lightning" and "the fog and filthy air", giving the audience a first impression that Macbeth is a dark, dangerous play in which the theme of evil is central. Only once in the play are the three weird sisters called 'witches', instead they are called "old hags" and "elemental forces". Shakespeare describes the witches in this way to make them sound more evil so that the audience would dislike them more. Shakespeare used the witches and supernatural influences to present evil scenes and events. As witches were hated at the time that Shakespeare wrote the play, he used the witc... ... middle of paper ... ...h after Guy Fawks' attempt to kill King James I in 1605.

It is continually building up until the end, when all the evil is unleashed upon the world. This song connects to the play because when Macbeth hears about the witches’ prophecies, something evil is born in him. He starts thinking about killing King Duncan and having horrid images of him doing it. His thoughts when he heard the prophecies were: “If good, why do I yield to that suggestion/Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair/And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,/Against the use of nature? Present fears/Are less than horrible imaginings./My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,/Shakes so my single state of man” (act 1, scene 3, lines 138-143).

The Weird Sisters of Macbeth are controlling and manipulative; more so than it might seem. They are agents of evil and frequently associate with evil spirits, along with worshiping the malignant goddess of witchcraft, Hecate. The play Macbeth focuses on the demise of a once noble Scottish Thane named Macbeth through the power of chaos. The evil that continually plagues Macbeth throughout William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is ultimately caused by the influence of the three Weird Sisters through witchcraft, prophecy, and unseen influence, revealing that humans faced with forces beyond their control will ultimately descend into a state of chaos. The three witches of Macbeth chant spells and cast charms recurrently in order to bewitch Macbeth so that he will throw the world into chaos.