Oct 7, 2008

Macbeth | Imagery

In this excerpt, Kenneth Muir analyzes various image patterns in Macbeth. The first pattern the critic examines is that of babies and breast-feeding. Another group of images focuses on sickness and medicine, all of which occur, significantly, in the last three acts of the play, after Macbeth has ascended the throne. Muir also observes a contrast between the powers of light and darkness in Macbeth.

The total meaning of [Macbeth] depends on a complex of interwoven patterns and the imagery must be considered in relation to character and structure.

One group of images to which Cleanth Brooks called attention [in his The Well-Wrought Urn] was that concerned with babes. It has been suggested by Muriel C. Bradbrook that Shakespeare may have noticed in the general description of the manners of Scotland included in Holinshed's Chronicles that every Scotswoman 'would take intolerable pains to bring up and nourish her own children [Shakespeare Survey 4 (1951)];...