Military Prowess Considered Worthy –
Good cause
‘Brave Macbeth…unseamed him from the
knave to the chops.’
‘We’ll die with harness on our back’ –
Charismatic
‘Be this the whetstone of your sword: let
grief
Convert to anger.’ Malcolm convinces
Macduff to join him in an uprising.
(Enter Macduff with Macbeth’s head)
Savage Violence considered taboo
’your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter’d’ Killing of innocents:
Macduff’s wife and children
‘Finger of birth strangled babe’ Witches
ingredients suggest infanticide
‘With twenty trenched gashes on his
head.’ Banquo savagely murdered
‘It is a knell that summons thee to heaven
or to hell.’ Act of regicide. Ultimate sin.
(They fight. Young Siward is slain) Death
of a child love on stage.
‘His tale is of a hero whose
brandished steel smoked with
bloody execution.’ Bradley
Violence in
‘Macbeth’
Emotional Violence – Transgressive and
Taboo
‘plucked my nippled from his boneless gums
and dashed the brains out.’
‘Unsex me here.’ – Lady Macbeth as the
fourth witch – de-gendering. Missing babe
motif.
‘I have no spur to prick the side of my
intent, only vaulting ambition.’ Macbeth
cannot submit to his conscience.
Disruption of the Natural Order –
Inversion of Great Chain of Being.
Divine Omnipotent Commentary.
Animals as conduits (indicate
malice) Inversion of nature’s
hierarchy ‘Duncan’s horses…
turned wild, broke their stalls…
made war with mankind.’
‘Tis said they ate each other.’
Grotesque exaggeration of
inversion.
‘Heavens are troubled with man’s act.’
Ross – suggesting God is aggrieved at
breaking the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ and
natural lineage
‘The darkness does the face of
earth entomb when living light
should kiss it.’ – Ross- Forever
Night. Personification of earth and
light – connote peace, life or God