How Shakespeare Presents Violence In Macbeth Essay

Submitted By AnishJ01
Words: 408
Pages: 2

How Shakespeare presents violence in Macbeth
The witches play a big part in the presenting of violence as right at the beginning of the book, the setting of the scene includes thunder and lightning. Then the first line of the play the first witch says: ‘When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lighting, or rain’ the asyndetic list the most violent forms of weather can be. And the pathetic fallacy in the weather suggests what the play will continue to be like as it is only the beginning it can be used to set the rest of the play and this suggests that there will be an excessive amount of violence throughout the play. Also the immediate use of witches straight away, being at the time it was written, witchcraft was considered an act of high treason and is very punishable at the time suggests that there will be a lot of violence and evil as Shakespeare had to write them as ‘villains’ as effectively they do not become violent themselves but they use their various ‘powers’ of witchcraft to get into Macbeth and can be argued Lady Macbeth too by manipulating them to commit very heinous crimes throughout the play.
In the few scenes we see Macbeth being hailed as ‘Noble Macbeth’ and this shows that even the people who are labelled noble can do very dark and violent things. Also to the point of how Macbeth is praised for the killings of all of the Vikings and for killing them he has a good conscience and is hailed for it, but for the killing of the king is regarded a tragedy which