Temptation Of Evil In Macbeth

The Temptation of Evil As is known to all, the three witches are the most wicked and dreadful characters in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. They play upon Macbeth, and manipulate his ambition of being the king. By their supernatural abilities, they cause Macbeth to kill many innocent lives and kill himself eventually. Through presenting the debut of the witches, portraying the physical appearance of the witches and describing the major scene of the witches, the play itself and 2010 Rupert Goold film adaptation convey the terror of witches and the temptation of evil by different elements.

In both versions, since the witches show up, the atmosphere has started to become eerie. In the drama, the witches firstly appear in a desert place with the

The play located this scene in a cavern where the witches are boiling “eye of newt”, “wool of bat” and many disgusting materials in a poisoned cauldron. (4.1) Beside, lots of ingredients come from living things; therefore, the witches are ruthless and slighting to life. When they are talking to Macbeth, they summon three apparitions to mislead Macbeth. At that point, this is not only the temptation of the withes, but also the temptation of the force of evil. By contrast, the adaptation does not have the apparitions; the setting is mortuary and they are tormenting even corpses, which is more inhuman than boiling nauseous stuff. What’s more, Goold added extremely bright light and exceedingly rapid sound of heartbeat. Consequently, it persuades the audience to believe that the witches are controlling and torturing Macbeth mentally. Obviously, in both versions, the witches successfully manipulate Macbeth.

To sum up, Shakespeare and Goold created slightly different withes in their Macbeth. However, both works exactly demonstrate the same ideas-the terror of witches and the temptation of evil by introducing witches’ debut, appearance and