Shakespeares Macbeth - Macbeths Dark Quality :: Macbeth essays

Macbeths Dark Quality It is obvious to the proofreader of Shakespeares tragedy Macbeth that there are varying types and degrees of darkness in the drama. We shall intuitive feeling at this in detail within this paper. L.C. Knights in the essay Macbeth describes the moral darkness into which Macbeth lowers himself The main theme of the reversal of values is given reveal simply and clearly in the first scene - Fair is contaminating, and foul is fair and with it are associated premonitions of the conflict, disorder and moral darkness into which Macbeth will clunk himself. (95) Charles Lamb in On the Tragedies of Shakespeare comments on the images of night and their impact on the audience The state of sublime emotion into which we are elevated by those images of night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn prelude with which he entertains the while till the bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan, - when we no overnight read it in a book, when we dedicate given up that vantage-ground of outline which reading possesses over seing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before our eyes actually preparing to commit a muder, if the acting be true and impressive as I have witnessed it in Mr. Ks performance of that part, the painful anxiety about the act, the natural proneness to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing phantasy of reality,give a pain and an uneasiness . . .. (134) Roger Warren states in Shakespeare Survey 30 , regarding Trervor Nunns direction of Macbeth at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1974-75, how the witches represented the darkness of black dissembling Much of the approach and detail was carried over, particularly the clash between sacred purity and black magic. Purity was embodied by Duncan, very watery (in 1974 he was blind), dressed in white and accompanied by church organ music, set against the black magic of the witches, who even chanted Double, paradigm to the Dies Irae. (283) In Macbeth as the Imitation of an Action Francis Fergusson states the place of darkness in the action of the play It is the phrase to outrun the pauser, reason 2.3, which seems to me to describe the action, or motive, of the play as a whole. Macbeth, of course, literally means that his love for Duncan was so strong and so swift that it got ahead of his reason, which would have counseled a pause.