10/11/2014

Posted by Ethan |
OBJ: To explore Lady Macbeth's decline and death, To probe the language that shows Lady Macbeth's remorse in the sleepwalking scene.

"It would be a perfect example of poetic justice in the manner of talion if the childlessness of Macbeth and the barrenness of his Lady were the punishment of their crimes against the sanctity of generation – If Macbeth could not become a father because he had robbed children of their father and a father of his children, and if Lady Macbeth suffered the unsexing she had demanded of the spirits of murder: I believe Lady Macbeth's illness, the transformation of her callousness into penitence, could be explained directly as a reaction to her childlessness, by which she is convinced of her impotence against the decrees of nature, and at the same time reminded that it is through her own fault if her crime has been robbed of the better part of its fruits."

-TS Elliot

"The failure of nature in Lady Macbeth is marked by her fear of darkness; 'she has light by her continually.' And in the one phrase of fear that escapes her lips even in sleep, it is of the darkness of the place of torment that she speaks"

- Shakespearian Tragedy: AC Bradley

0 comments:

Post a Comment