The Atmosphere of Macbeth is Not Wholly Bad :: Macbeth essays

The air of Macbeth is Not Wholly Bad Shakespe bes Macbeth has a sinister cast over it for obvious reasons, but are there redeeming features which partially emergence the plurality of negative dimensions? D. F. Bratchell in Shakespearean Tragedy records Charles Lambs consideration of Macbeths atmospheric state as essential to the purpose of the snap For Lamb the essence of the cataclysm in Macbeth lies in the poeti prognosticatey suggested atmosphere of horror and evil impulse, promptly seized upon by the imagination of the perceptive reader, whereas stage representation concentrates the mind on the action. (133-34) Roger Warren comments in Shakespeare Survey 30 , regarding Trervor Nunns direction of Macbeth at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1974-75, on opposing imagery used to support the opposing atmospheres of faithfulness and black magic Much of the approach and detail was carried over, particularly the bump around between religious purity and black magic. Purity was embodie d by Duncan, very infirm (in 1974 he was blind), dressed in white and come with by church organ music, set against the black magic of the witches, who fifty-fifty chanted Double, double to the Dies Irae. (283) L.C. Knights in the essay Macbeth mentions equivocation, unreality and unnaturalness in the play - contributors to an atmosphere that may not be very realistic The obscure nature of temptation, the commerce with phantoms consequent upon false choice, the resulting sense of unreality ( energy is, but what is not), which has yet such power to smother merry function, the unnaturalness of evil (against the use of nature), and the relation between disintegration in the individual (my single state of man) and disorder in the large social organism - all these are major themes of the play which are mirrored in the speech under consideration. (94) Charles Lamb in On the Tragedies of Shakespeare comments on the atmosphere surrounding the play The state of sublime emotion into which we are elevated by those images of night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that shocking prelude with which he entertains the time till the bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan, - when we no longer read it in a book, when we hold up given up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses over seing, and come to reveal a man in his bodily shape before our eye actually preparing to commit a muder, if the acting be true and proud as I have witnessed it in Mr.