The Power Of Darkness In Shakespeare's Macbeth

Shakespeare, who playwrights greatly respect for his conventional technique of writing, writes Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles into a play. The acts of the play Macbeth display the historical facts that Holinshed’s Chronicles provide, but with Shakespeare’s additions of legends and dramatic imagery Macbeth is now a dynamic piece of work. In Macbeth Shakespeare uses imagery to reveal the true nature of the characters. An important imagery topic that Shakespeare constantly uses is darkness. He utilizes darkness as a symbol to represent the evil vices in the characters and the literal darkness at night. Each character in the play Macbeth shows darkness in a distinct way. The main character, Macbeth, greatly portrays the darkness Shakespeare

They introduce darkness in the play. The witches, who usually gather in a dark and secretive hideout, say spells and mix potions. The first witch chants, “Days and nights has thirty-one/Sweltered venom sleeping got” which is the first ingredient of the potion, a poisonous frog (4.1.7-8). After that, the third witch chants along with the next ingredient, “root of hemlock digged i ' th ' dark”which is an ingredient that is dug up from the ‘dark’. (4.1.25). After the witches adds the ingredients they chant the song “Black Spirits” together. At this time Macbeth enters and calls out, “how now, you secret, black, and midnight hags” (4.1.48). Macbeth calls the witches hags because they are black and evil. The witches even show Macbeth his future when they chant, “Show his eyes and grieve his heart./Come like shadows; so depart” (4.1.110-111). They describe the false image of Macbeth’s future as a shadow that is usually dark and

In Macbeth characters are in action, mostly at midnight. The three witches’ meetings, the murdering of King Duncan, the murdering of Banquo, and then the battle between Malcolm and Macbeth, which ends Macbeth’s life, all happens at midnight. In a conversation between the three witches the first witch says “Sleep shall neither night nor day” referring to Macbeth (1.3.19). She would do this by alluring Macbeth into murdering his guest King Duncan. Lady Macbeth says, “Come, thick night,/ And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,/ That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,/ Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark/ To cry “Hold, hold!” (1.5.50-54) on the night she plans to kill Duncan with Macbeth. She begs for a dark blanket of smoke to cover up heaven so it cannot see their darkness while they murder Duncan. Another example of darkness at night is when Macbeth says, “Fleance, his son, that keeps him company,/ Whose absence is no less material to me/ Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate/ Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart./ I’ll come to you anon” (3.1.140-144). Macbeth plans to murder a seconcond person and that is Banquo’s son Fleance. He plans to do it at the ‘dark hour’ which is at night again. Getting sleep at night is a great struggle for the characters who had doses of darkness. In the beginning Macbeth is