Supernatrual Flashcards
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The supernatural appears as a central theme, this is because Shakespeare uses the theme to warn the audience to not trust the supernatural, revealing how it can corrupt our minds and lead to our downfall. The witches are used as supernatural agents of chaos, because they speak in half’s truths to deliberately mislead Macbeth into his ambitions. The supernatural is presented as disrupting natural order.
Witches - ‘fair is foul, foul is fair’ ‘Hail… King’’
‘Wicked this way comes’ ‘Juggling fiends’
They are the core supernatural characters in the play and they are presented as devilish, they go against the natural order and influence Macbeth to commit regicide going against god, sending Scotland into chaos. They do this by equivocating and speaking in half rhymes / truths, while they never lie to Macbeth they they mislead him to believe he is invincible, but he realises at the end that they had tricked him. This illustrates King James’ own fears of the supernatural and witches at the time, he wrote his own book called ‘Deamonologie’, which told the Jacobean public that witches were agents of chaos.
Hallucinations and wicked thoughts appear in all the characters that listen to the supernatural (the witches) - ‘is this a dagger’ ‘gory locks’ ‘out, out, damned spot’
The supernatural spark wicked thoughts and actions which create guilt and remorse, for example before and after Lady Macbeth and Macbeths committing of regicide, they ultimately experience supernatural hallucinations which reflect their mental state, presenting their guilt. These hallucinations are a big trigger for Macbeths harmattan, leading him to feel guilty. These quotes show the theme of guilt, the supernatural visions symbolise the guilt that the characters feel throughout the play
The supernatural trigger ambition - ‘vaulting ambition’ /‘scorch’d the snake’ /‘unsex me’ /‘out, … brief candle’
The supernatural triggers ambition in Macbeth, this is clear when he considers killing Duncan after hearing the witches prophecies, but once he committed the sin of regicide he starts on a murderous rampage, they have killed the king but now he must eliminate all threat to him now. Equally, the supernatural implement ambition into Lady Macbeth, she calls on them to ‘unsex’ her and get rid of her femininity in order to obtain power. At the end Macbeth realises that his downfall is coming as he uses the metaphor ‘brief candle’ to talk of his own short life and learns that his trust in the supernatural is false, it has deceived him.
