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What are the main sources of evil in the play? How does Shakespeare get this across to an audience? The witches are the main evil in the play even though they only appear 4 times in the story, but each time they appear they always create an evil atmosphere. When I say 'the main evil in the play' this is my opinion, I feel they are the main because they are pure evil incarnate and they are what trigger the whole thing of. I feel when Shakespeare wrote Macbeth he meant it to be on two levels, one level being that the witches are real and there to be seen, this was for the less educated.
The other level being that the witches are just a figment of his imagination or hallucinations as he does go on to hallucinate later on in the play when he says "Is this a knife I see before me" he sees a knife covered in blood also Banqouos ghost could also be a hallucination as his guilty conscience gets to him for killing his best friend. Shakespeare makes a clever choice in putting the witches in to the play at all as without them 'Macbeth' would be about a man who thought he could be king and so went around slaughtering people to get to where he wanted to be. It still would have been a play but it wouldn't have been as good because the spooky, eerie effect wouldn't have been created. The old hags are supposedly really ugly, as Banquo says in 'act 1 scene 3 ' "so withered, and so wild in their attire, that look not like th " inhabitants o'th " earth, and yet are on't? Live you? Or are you aught that man may question?
You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying upon her skinny lip: You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. " This suggests that they are old, wrinkly hags with beards, which are not nice things to see. In a way you could call them freaks, and people are afraid of freaks. They " ve got strange powers and can tell the future as they predict that Macbeth will be king and that a man born of a woman cannot kill him, these are the powers that give us the creeps and create a supernatural presence. Hecate is the head of the witches she is the boss witch or goddess of the underworld as she calls herself; she controls the spirits and is like something out of a nightmare.
Shakespeare succeeded in frightening his audience as they were great believers in the supernatural and so when the witches are making a potion round the cauldron and through things in such as toad, "liver of a blaspheming Jew, nose of Turk and Tartars lips, " the audience would have been more scared than we are now as they believed that these things really happened (it's a wonder how Shakespeare himself was never accused of being a male witch as he describes things so vividly. It's as if he had done these things himself, or seen them done. ) Another thing they do that is shocking was when they make the three apparitions appear out of the cauldron and tell Macbeth half-truths about his future. It isn't just the fact that they make three spirits appear it's the fact of what the apparitions are. One is of a bloody child the other an armed head and the last a child crowned with a tree in his hand. The sprits that appear from the cauldron are the witches' masters and each has warning or prophecy for Macbeth. The armed head warns Macbeth of Macduff by saying "Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth: Beware Mucduff, Beware of Thane of Fife: dismiss me.
Enough. " The seconded apparition is of a bloody child, said to be more potent than the first said by one of the witches, it tells Macbeth "Be bloody, bold, and resolute: Laugh to scorn the power of man: for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth. " This is another half truth as Macbeth is killed in the end by Macbeth wasn't given birth to; his mother had had a cesarean. The third and final spirit is of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, It tells Macbeth "Be lion-mottled, proud, and take no care: Who chafes, who frets, or where conspires are: Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood, to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him. " Here we have another half-truth, as we no forests can't move. Another thing Shakespeare deals with is setting, and the witches setting is the heath when ever theres a storm around they " ll just appear or disappear making their presence even more spooky and eerie than it all ready is. I think that the storms and bad things tell us that were ever they go evil is right behind them. Shakespeare also makes the witches more alive by their language. He makes their speech very vivid, one scene that represents this is the one in which the three witches dance around the cauldron.
They describe the parts to their potion so vividly that you can almost see the things in your head. One other feature of the witches' language is rhyme. They always rhyme when they speak and talk with each other. I think Shakespeare is trying to put across when he does this that the witches are as one bound together by the evil spirits and the evil that lurks inside Macbeth.
It also has a hypnotic effect. Lady Macbeth is also a main evil in the play, even though she does not contribute to the supernatural effect as much as the witches she is the one that gives Macbeth that extra push which stimulates his ambition. After she finds out that Macbeth has been promoted and that he'd seen the three witches who had given him a prophecy saying that he would be king, she calls the evil spirits upon her, so that she can play on her husbands ambition, by saying "Come you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty: " After this she turns in to a wicked creature using any form of taunting and insults in trying to persuade her husband to do the deeds to get to the top, she questions his manliness and his love for her by saying things like "if you love me you would do this. " She also calls him a coward and has a go at him as he promised he would kill Duncan and then went back on his word by saying "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done this, " All these sly tactics are what made Macbeth turn and were one of the reasons why Macbeth did what he did. Macbeth's downfall starts with Lady Macbeth persuading her husband to kill the king, Duncan, while he sleeps. She plans the whole thing and tells him exactly how to do it without getting caught. From then on she turns wicked and cruel until she gets to the point where she turns mad with guilt and begins hallucinating and sleepwalking until she gets so bad that she takes her own life in order to stop her self having to carry her guilt.
Her language is typical to the period of time that the play is set in although she describes things very graphically and comes out with the most wicked things such as the time she describes pulling a baby from her breast and dashing its brains out. She has no certain speech pattern such as rhyme like the witches but her style of talking suits her part. One thing I've noticed about Lady Macbeth's setting is that never in the play does she venture outside. Shakespeare made a very clever choice in creating Lady Macbeth's character like it is because her patronizing attitude gives you another reason as to why Macbeth turned out as he did. I feel many men can relate to his situation, not that theirs wives are asking them to kill people, but that many men have patronizing wives how use the same tactics such as "you dont love me anymore, " and I feel that this is why he wrote like this because the male audience might have related to it.
Macbeth is not so much the main evil, he is more the magnet of it as his wife, who calls evil upon her, and the witches, who are evil incarnate, play on his ambition and weak resistance. When I read Macbeth the impression he gives to me was that he is one of those people who would do what people told him in order to keep peace and that he let certain of them walk all over him and I believe that he had severe personality disorder in the way that he couldnt stand up to his wife and just say no and turn away from evil, because from his character in the beginning he seems like a noble warrior who would fight to the death for king and country as he fights for his country against the Norwegians and he is the one that slays their king, but after having the conversation with his wife he seem to change and the more crimes he commits the more moody and volatile he becomes. The further he gets the more he feels he's indestructible as the witches prophesy that he could not be killed by a man born from a women. This attitude that he acquires is what leads to his death as he gets to big for his boots and certain people had had enough. Macbeth has no constant setting but every time he appears you feel the evil presence and that he has either just committed evil or is about to. He always makes the setting feel dark and cold and this is because he has an evil aura, it engulfs taking his whole body over.
One thing constant about Macbeth's language is that he is always dithering and worrying, he always speaks in opposites and often speaks to himself, one such occasion that shows this is act one scene seven in which contemplates on whether or not he should kill his king. He dithers, mumbling to himself "If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'there well, it were done quickly: if th' assassination" He goes on until his wife interrupts him. All in all I fell Shakespeare did well in making the plays supernatural effect.
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