Download Contradiction and Contrast

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Mark Robinson
Ms. Stronach
English 3UI
June 1, 2012
Word Count: 1310
Contrast Through Imagery
The Shakespearean play, Macbeth, contains a great deal of contrast as it details
the fall of a courageous soldier from good to evil. In particular, Shakespeare contrasts evil
and good by using clothing imagery and darkness and light imagery to trace Macbeth’s
descent into tragedy.
Before major acts of evil in the play, especially the murders of Duncan and
Banquo, Macbeth and his wife foreshadow those events as they call on the night to cover
their deeds, although by the end of the play, the darkness can no longer hide the
Macbeths’ degradation. As early as Act 1, when King Duncan is visiting the Macbeths’
castle, Lady Macbeth calls, “Thick night, / and pall thee dunnest smoke of hell” to ask
darkness to cover the evil deed she is planning to execute that very night (Shakespeare
1.4.53). Similarly, Macbeth, as he entertains his thoughts of killing Duncan to fulfil the
witches’ third prophecy, says, “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and
deep desires” (1.4.57). Macbeth knows that the light or virtue of the day cannot know of
his evil desires. G. Wilson Knight, in his book, The Wheel of Fire, agrees that “darkness
permeates the play. The greater part of the action takes place in the murk of night” (145).
In addition, Shakespeare juxtaposes references to heaven and hell beside images of light
and darkness, highlighting this contrast between good and evil. In his soliloquy while
Duncan is feasting, as Macbeth tries to talk himself out of killing Duncan, he says:
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And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye. (1.7.21-24)
Here, Macbeth imagines that, should he actually kill Duncan, the angels in heaven, along with
personified pity, will spread the news across the night sky, and he shall be found out. Following
Duncan’s murder and Macbeth’s coronation, but before the murder of Banquo, Macbeth calls on
the “seeling Night” to come and destroy the “tender eye of pitiful day” to allow the evil to take
place (3.2.51). The darkness of Macbeth’s evil overcomes the day by this point. For much of
the play, only under the cover of darkness will Macbeth and his accomplices act, thus any
references to darkness acts as foreshadowing for evil deeds to come. Caroline Spurgeon, in
Shakespeare’s Imagery and What it Tell Us, agrees that the newly evil Macbeth needs this dark
cover of night because “the evil which is being done is so horrible that it would blast the sight to
look on it; so that darkness, or partial darkness is necessary to carry it out” (330). Because he
has established that light represents goodness and life while darkness represents evil and death,
the comment from Banquo, “there’s husbandry in heaven, / Their candles are all out” at the
beginning of Act 2, scene 2 foreshadows that the scene is “set for treachery and murder”
(Spurgeon 331). This darkness because of the lack of stars along with Macbeth’s unsettled
mood, prompting him to observe that Banquo’s sons are to be king, but not his own as he recalls
the prophecy that “thou [Banquo] shalt get kings, though thou be none” (Shakespeare 1.3.70).
This line leads the audience to understand Macbeth will take more action to relieve his fears and
thus foreshadows the coming murder of Banquo. By the end of the play, of course, darkness is
not enough to hide Macbeth’s evil, as all of the thanes and countrymen are aware of it, and at
that point the light and dark imagery fades and is replaced by the poison imagery. Until that
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point, however, Shakespeare uses darkness to hide the evil from the people of Scotland and also,
to some degree, from Macbeth himself.
The same is also true of the clothing imagery in the play. Shakespeare uses the imagery of
clothing to highlight the progressively more evil aspects of Macbeth, portraying him first as a
loyal thane, then as a vicious tyrant and finally as a lonely failure. When Macbeth first questions
his fellow noblemen about his new title of “Thane of Cawdor” in Act 1, scene 3, he is able to
emphasize his loyalty by asking why he is dressed in “borrow’d robes” (Shakespeare 114). By
comparing Macbeth’s new title with clothes that are not Macbeth’s, Shakespeare suggests that
Macbeth is satisfied with what he already has and is uncomfortable at the thought of something
more. However, after the announcement of his new title, when Macbeth seems preoccupied,
Banquo noticing his preoccupation, says that “new honours come upon him [Macbeth], / Like
our strange garments, cleave not to their mould, / But with the aid of use” (1.3.157-159). Here
Banquo, soon to be murdered by Macbeth, encourages the man to get used to his new power in
the same way that we wear new clothes until they feel right. Macbeth re-establishes this loyalty
in Act 1, Scene 7, as he is being pressured by his wife to kill Duncan, when he tells Lady
Macbeth, “I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people, / Which should be worn in
their newest gloss, /Not cast aside so soon (1.7.34-37). Later, after he has been crowned king
and is now planning the murder of Banquo and Fleance, however, Shakespeare uses the clothing
imagery to show Macbeth’s degradation into evil. Macbeth knows that they must “make [their]
faces vizards to [their] hearts, / Disguising what they are” (3.2.33-37). Macbeth compares his
face to the mark on the helmet that hides what is beneath, telling the audience that he
understands that he now needs to cover his face to cover his treasonous intentions. In Act 5,
after most of the nobles have abandoned Macbeth because of his tyrannous behaviour, Caithness
says that Macbeth “cannot buckle his distemper’d cause / Within the belt of rule” (5.2.17-18),
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indicating that Macbeth’s tyranny can not be justified as a normal part of ruling Scotland in the
same way that a bloated, diseased body could not fit under its own belt. Angus adds that
Macbeth should now “feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish
thief” (5.2.23-25). Shakespeare suggests here that, by this point, Macbeth’s nature is so
loathsome and small, that the true stature of a king is far too big a “robe” for him to ever live up
to. Spurgeon concurs that Macbeth is now an “imaginative picture of a small ignoble man
encumbered and degraded by garments unsuited to him” (326). As Gary Willis suggests in his
article, Macbeth, “The elaborate business with the armor, the circling of the language back to
images of clothing, the general importance of emblematic costume on Shakespeare's stage--and
especially of a king's emblematic dress--indicate that Macbeth's robing is important. We see him
go from soldier to courtier to king to conjurer and back to soldier” (para. 26). In the end of the
play, all his cover is stripped from him except his armour, as he has become merely a soldier
again, and shortly, a soldier stripped even of his head. With the clothing imagery, Shakespeare
first dresses up Macbeth, only to strip him down.
In the end, Macbeth is a desperate man whose foolish ambition lies exposed to the light
of day. Shakespeare uses these images of darkness and light and of clothing to dramatize the
drift of one man from loyalty to tyranny to loneliness and failure.
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Works Cited
Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire. 1949. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1965. Print.
Shakepeare, William. Macbeth. Ed Margaret Kortes. Toronto: Harcourt Canada Ltd., 1988. Print.
Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us. 1935. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990. Print.
Wills, Garry. “Macbeth.” Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995. 125-44. Literature Resource Centre. Web. 18 May 2011.