Macbeth: ACT I :: essays research papers

These scenes establish the plays dramatic effronterythe witches awakening of Macbeths ambitionand present the main characters and their relationships. At the resembling time, the first three scenes establish a dark mode that permeates the finished play. The stage directions indicate that the play begins with a storm, and malignant supernatural forces right off appear in the form of the three witches. From there, the action quickly shifts to a battlefield that is dominated by a sense of the grisliness and cruelty of war. In his description of Macbeth and Banquos heroics, the captain dwells specifically on images of carnage he unseamed him from the nave to th chops, he says, describing Macbeths slaying of Macdonald (I.ii.22). The bloody murders that charter the play are foreshadowed by the bloody victory that the Scots set ahead over their enemies.Our initial impression of Macbeth, based on the captains report of his valor and prowess in battle, is immediately complicated by Ma cbeths obvious fixation upon the witches prophecy. Macbeth is a noble and courageous warrior except his reaction to the witches pronouncements emphasizes his great desire for power and prestige. Macbethimmediately realizes that the fulfillment of the prophecy may require conspiracy and murder on his part. He clearly allows himself to forecast taking such actions, although he is by no means adjudicate to do so. His reaction to the prophecy displays a fundamental confusion and inertia instead of resolving to act on the witches claims, or simply dismissing them, Macbeth dialog himself into a kind of thoughtful stupor as he tries to lap up out the situation for himself. In the following scene, chick Macbeth will step to the fore and drive the hesitant Macbeth to act she is the will propelling his achievements. Once Lady Macbeth hears of the witches prophecy, Duncans life is doomed.Macbeth contains some of Shakespeares most vivid feminine characters. Lady Macbeth and the three witches are extremely wicked, but they are also stronger and more imposing than the men around them. The sinister witches cast the mood for the entire play. Their rhyming incantations stand out eerily amid the blank poetize spoken by the other characters, and their grotesque figures of speech establish a lingering aura. Whenever they appear, the stage directions deliberately link them to unease and lurking chaos in the natural world by insisting on Thunder or Thunder and lightning.Shakespeare has the witches speak in language of contradiction.