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

The Atmosphere of Macbeth is Not Wholly Bad Shakespeares Macbeth has a sinister spue over it for obvious reasons, but are there redeeming features which partially off portion the plurality of negative dimensions? D. F. Bratchell in Shakespearean Tragedy records Charles Lambs consideration of Macbeths melodic line 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 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 contend imagery used to support the opposing atmospheres of artlessness and black magic Much of the approach and detail was carried over, particularly the clash between religious purity and black magic. Purity was embodied by Duncan, precise infirm (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, 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 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 power to beleaguer 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 big 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 solemn 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 have given up that vantage-ground of precis 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 playacting be true and impressive as I have witnessed it in Mr.