Masterful Management of the Atmosphere in Macbeth :: Free Macbeth Essays

Masterful Management of the Atmosphere in Macbeth Shakespeargon in his tragedy Macbeth shows himself to be a playwright who can manipulate the halo at every turn in the road. The atmosphere of this play is a choreographic work of art which is synchronized with the action of the play. Blanche Coles states in Shakespeares cardinal Giants that he agrees with G. B. Harrison, that this play contains one of the finest examples of atmosphere ever created in gambol Macbeth is overwhelmed with the significance of his filthy deed. His wife is concerned only with the details of what essential be done next - with facts. She has no imagination. The passage between Macbeth and gentlewoman Macbeth after the slaying is one of the finest examples of atmosphere ever created in drama.(62) Lily B. Campbell in her volume of criticism, Shakespeares Tragic Heroes Slaves of Passion, explains how the atmosphere of dismay and fear is built up Macbeth is, however, not only a field of operations o f fear it is a study in fear. The sounds and images in the play combine to give the atmosphere of terror and fear. The incantation of the witches, the bell that tolls while Duncan dies, the cries of Duncan, the cries of the women as Lady Macbeth dies, the owl, the knocking at the gate, the wild horses that ate each other, the story, the quaking of the earth - all of these are the normal accompaniments of the willfully fearful in literature. (238-39) 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 function 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 up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses over seing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before our eyes in reality preparing to commit a muder, if the acting be true and impressive as I have witnessed it in Mr. Ks performance of that part, the painful anxiety sozzled to the act, the natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing semblance of reality,give a pain and an uneasiness .