Macbeths Numerous Atmospheres :: Free Macbeth Essays

Macbeth's Numerous Atmospheres       The atmospheres in William Shakespeare's Macbeth are numerous, but begin as one surrealistic atmosphere initially with the witches' appearance at the outset. From there the atmosphere is incrementally added to regularly.    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 abstraction 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 acting be true and impressive as I have witnessed it in Mr. K's performance of that part, the painful anxiety about 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 [. . .]. (134)    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:    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