Imagery
Macbeth
Fertility and Disease An Elizabethan audience would have thought of the monarchy system as part of the natural order. This idea is reflected in Macbeth where Duncan’s reign is associated with fertility and bounty. Because Macbeth isn’t the rightful heir to the throne, he is presented as a blight on Scotland, threatening the harmony of the natural order. From the beginning of the play, images of growth are bound up with ideas about power and the
social order. A connection is made between the idea of fertility and power when Banquo asks the witches to predict his future titles: ‘If you can look into the seeds of time, /And saywhich grainwill grow and which will not, / Speak then to me’ (Act 1, Sc 3). Duncan is associated with images of harvest and growth. This helps to portray him as a good king
and head of the natural social order. Duncan compares Macbeth to a plant that he will nurture and strengthen: ‘I have begun to plant thee, and will labour / To make thee full of growing’ (Act 1, Sc 4). The image communicates Duncan’s generosity and nourishing leadership. When Duncan compliments Banquo after the battle, Banquo continues the fertilitymetaphor: ‘There if I grow, / The harvest is your own.’ Shakespeare is keen to stress the mutually beneficial power structure of monarchy. Images of fertility and growth poetically underscore the harmony within Scotland under a goodly king. In contrast to this is the recurring imagery of sickness and
disease.Many of the characters associate Macbeth’s tyrannical reign with disease and infertility. When Ross cries out for his ‘poor country’, he laments that ‘goodmen’s lives / Expire before the flowers in their caps, /Dying or ere they sicken’ (Act 4, Sc 3). This idea is reflected when Caithness describes Macbeth’s rule as a ‘distempered cause’ (Act 5, Sc 2). Distemper was a disease of the abdomen that caused swelling. Caithness also depicts Macbeth as a diseased sore on the skin of Scotland and Malcolm’s army as
the cure: ‘Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal’ (Act 5, Sc 2). In Macbeth, the forces of good are presented as a cure for the nation’s ills through the image of Edward the
Confessor.King Edward is blessed with divine healing power; not only can he cure the sick but his forces will also bring health to Scotland. Macbeth himself sees Scotland as blighted by disease.He asks the doctor to diagnose the sickness
that plagues the country: ‘If thou couldst, doctor, cast / Thewater ofmy land, find her disease, /And purge it to a sound and pristine health’ (Act 5, Sc 3). His actions not only induce disease in Scotland but also in Lady Macbeth whose mental illness eventually leads to her suicide. The diseased nature of Scotland stems fromits tyrannical
king.Macbeth himself highlights his own
illness and compares himself to a withered leaf: ‘I am sick at heart… I have lived long enough: my way of life / Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf’ (Act 5, Sc 3). Scotland’s only cure is the coronation of the rightful king. This natural harmony can only occur
once Scotland is purged of Macbeth. As Lennox remarks, the battle against Macbeth will ‘dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds’ (Act 5, Sc 2). In the final moments of the play Malcolm describes himself in the same terms as ‘newly planted’. Now the natural order has returned, the characters of Macbeth feel that Scotland can grow once again.
Blood Macbeth is a most bloody play. Shakespeare’s bloody imagery, including the vision of blood- spattered characters, allows him to create an atmosphere of horror and violence. Blood also represents guiltwithin the
play.AsMacbeth draws to a close, the blood-drenched imagery expresses the idea of Scotland suffering under the oppression of Macbeth’s rule. The violence of the world of Macbeth is established with the appearance of the bleeding sergeant
(Act 1, Sc 2).We soon learn about Macbeth’s gruesome participation in the battle: how his sword ‘smoked with bloody execution’ as he ‘carved out his passage’ through enemy soldiers. When
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