Month: October 2016

Macbeth is a power hungry person .( That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,For in my way it lies) here he Macbeth talking “describing” how he wants to kill the king. But when he says “stars hide your fires let not light see my black and deep desires” he indicates the stars as referring  to God. “My black deep desires” means that he doesn’t want anyone to know what he is planning .(The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, which the eye fears, when it is done, to see) He is ashamed and can’t make himself belief what he will be doing.

Macbeths views are  that he is interested and wants to know more “would they had stayed”. Once he  learned that he is actually the Thane of Cawdor, his interest turns to  belief that this may well be true and that he will be king, this makes him  question whether he will have to think something involving “killing the king” to take the throne or as he became the thane of Cawdor maybe this is something that will just happen “if chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, without my stir”. Banquo has the view that this is not something that is important or that should be believed and it is not true what they are hearing, but rather it is the devil “witches”  seeking to influence them “the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, the betray us in deepest consequence”. 

With this phrase, Shakespeare makes a relation between the battle of Macdowald and King Duncan’s men, to a pair of struggling swimmers. What he is trying to do is to put the image of battle into the crowds mind. However he used the word ~cling~ to make the audience thing that the characters are miserable and desperate which has an irony to it because the two sides of  soldiers are battling against each other .