Atmospheres Unlimited in Macbeth :: Free Macbeth Essays

Atmospheres Unlimited in Macbeth      Ã‚  Ã‚   Shakespeare becomes a master of diverse atmospheres in his tragedy Macbeth. We shall examine closely the changing, more forcefully developing atmospheres here.    Blanche Coles states in Shakespeare's Four Giants that he agrees with G. B. Harrison, that this play contains one of the finest examples of atmosphere ever created in drama:    Macbeth is overwhelmed with the significance of his filthy deed. His wife is concerned only with the details of what must be done next - with facts. She has no imagination. The passage between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the murder is one of the finest examples of atmosphere ever created in drama."(62)    In Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Northrop Frye shows how the atmosphere is altered for the better at the end of the play:    This theme is at its clearest where we are most in sympathy with the nemesis. Thus at the end of Macbeth, after the proclamation "the time is free," and of promises to make reparations of Macbeth's tyranny "Which would be planted newly with the time," there will be a renewal not only of time but of the whole rhythm of nature symbolized by the word "measure," which includes both the music of the spheres and the dispensing of human justice [. . .]. (94-95)    D. F. Bratchell in Shakespearean Tragedy record's Charles Lamb's consideration of   Macbeth's 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 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 Nunn's direction of Macbeth at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1974-75, on opposing imagery used to support the opposing atmospheres of purity 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, very 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: