Evil Reaps Darkness in Shakespeare's Macbeth

Evil Reaps Darkness in Macbeth

"By their deeds you shall know them" is a Biblical passage which seems to state a lesson reiterated in Shakespeare's Macbeth. We intend to examine closely the dark future which the Macbeths deserved because of their sinful conduct.

A.C. Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy comments on the darkness within the play:

The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, all come in night scenes. The Witches dance in the thick air of a storm or, 'black and midnight hags', receive Macbeth in a cavern. The blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and that which he feels becomes the spirit of the play. The faint glimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing: it is the hour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and when Banquo rides homeward t meet his assassins; the hour when 'light thickens', when 'night's black agents to their prey do rouse', when the wolf begins to howl, and the owl to scream, and withered murder steals forth to his work. (307)

In his book, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, H. S. Wilson identifies the darkness in the play with evil, hell, devils:

Mr. Kenneth Muir, in his introduction to the play - which does not, by the way, interpret it simply from this point of view - aptly describes the cumulative effect of the imagery: "The contrast between light and darkness [suggested by the imagery] is part of a general antithesis between good and evil, devils and angels, evil and grace, hell and heaven . . . (67-68)

In "Macbeth as the Imitation of an Action" Francis Fergusson states the place of darkness in the action of the pla...

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Warren, Roger. Shakespeare Survey 30. N.p.: n.p., 1977. Pp. 177-78. Rpt. in Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism. Stanley Wells, ed. England: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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