Macbeths Varying Atmosphere :: Macbeth essays

Macbeths Varying Atmosphere Concerning the atmosphere in William Shakespeares Macbeth, the reader might say that it is ever-changing and yet constant in many ways. Let us look at it in this essay. 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 equivocal nature of temptation, the commerce with phantoms consequent upon false choice, the resulting sense of unreality (nothing is, but what is not), which has yet such office staff to smother vital 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 larger 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 w e are elevated by those images of night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn serve 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 have given up that vantage-ground of abstraction 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 longing to stop it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing semblance of reality,give a pain and an uneasiness . . .. (134) D. F. Bratchell in Shakespearean Tragedy records Charles Lambs consideration of Macbeths atmosphere as essential to the purpose of the play For Lamb the essence of the tragedy in Macbeth lies in the poetically suggested atmosphere of horror and evil impulse, readily seized upon by the caprice 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 resource used to support the opposing atmospheres of purity and dusky magic Much of the approach and detail was carried over, particularly the clash between religious purity and black magic.