CC - IV: Imagery in Macbeth

 

        Caroline spurgeon has aptly pointed out "the imagery in Macbeth is more varied and rich, more highly imaginative, more unapproachable by any other writer..... It is particularly so in the the continuous use made by the simplest, humblest, everyday thing, drawn from the daily life as a vehicle for sublime poetry". Such imagery is functional and brings out before the readers certain essential themes of the play. crucial ideas about Macbeth the man and the nature of his tragedy and builds up the atmosphere of the play. There are a great number of images in Macbeth which are interwoven with each other, recurring and repeating. There are at least four of the main ideas and many subsidiary ones.

          One is the picture of Macbeth himself presented in terms of cloths imagery. Few things have such a curiously humiliating and degrading effect as the spectacle of a notably small man enveloped in a coat far too big for him. Through such clothes imagery Shakespeare expresses the fact that the honours for which the murders were committed are, after all, of very little worth to him.

         The idea constantly recurs that Macbeth's new honors sit ill upon him, like a loose and badly fitting garment, belonging to someone else. Macbeth first expresses it- when Ros greets him as the Thane of Cowdor, Macbeth quickly replies:-

                 "The Thane of Cawdor lives: Why do you does me In borrowed robes"?

   And a few minutes later, Banquo while watching Macbeth rapt with the witches' prophecy, says :- 

                   " New honours come upon him,

                    Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould

                     but with the the aid of use".

         Further when Macbeth express his unwillingness to commit the murder of king Duncan, he tells his wife that one of the reasons is that:

                " I have bought

              Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

              Which would be worn now in their newest gloss....."

To which Lady Macbeth retorts contemptuously using the same garment metaphor:

                     " Was the hope drunk 

                  Wherein you dressed yourself?....."

After the murder of king Duncan, when Ros says  he is going to Scone for Macbeth's Coronation, Macduff uses the same imagery:

                                      " Well, may you see things well done there Adieu,

                                           Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!"

              The repeated images of ill-fitting clothes serve to suggest that Macbeth is but poor, vain, cruel, treacherous creature, snatching ruthlessly at power he is utterly unfitted to poses.

                    Then comes the image of light and darkness. Light is a sign of life and Duncan says that- "But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine on all deserves..."  

           In contrast, Macbeth prays:

                    " Stars, hide your fires:

                       Let not light see my black and deep desires."

   Lady Macbeth, too, invokes darkness:

                           " Come ,thick night,

                             And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell".

The light and darkness imagery naturally serves to illustrate the extent of Macbeth's transgression from the path of virtue to boundless evil.

Another cluster of images concerns the convulsions of nature. Images of an owl killing a falcon, horses eating each other, the earth being feverish abound in the play to suggest how Macbeth has " let the frame of things disjoint".

           The imagery of blood and animals which constantly recur in the play serves to build up an atmosphere of fear, horror, pain and bestiality associated with Macbeth's crime. The most terrible image of blood is Macbeth's description of himself wading in a pool of blood, while the most stirring is the image of his own blood-stained hands which will 'incarnadine' the green seas red. All these symbols in their complexity and variety create the sensation of pity, fear and horror which form the staple of the play.

      Next the cluster of imagery is that of sin and diseases. So Macbeth tells the doctor to 'purge' Scotland "to a sound and pristine health". Malcolm speaks of his country as weeping, bleeding and wounded, and urges Macduff to:

        " Let's make us medicines of our great revenge, 

            To cure this deadly grief".

                 It is worth noting that all Macbeth's images of sickness are remedial in character-balm for a sore, sleep after fever, physic for pain, a sweet oblivious antidote' - interfiling  to the reader his passionate and constant longing for well-being, rest and peace of mind.

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