The appearance-reality dichotomy is at the heart of Shakespearean theatre, not just the tragedies, but the comedies too. In a tragedy like Macbeth, it is this dichotomy that builds up the tragic destiny of the protagonists. It also makes prominent the operative function of the tragic irony, especially that of words.
There is an appearance-reality conflict in the equivocation of the witches who say only to seduce and cheat.
Lady Macbeth's chastising of Macbeth is all about teaching him the art of this dichotomy, how to be an innocent flower apparently and be a serpent under it.
When Lady Macbeth is greeting Duncan at Inverness or when the porter in his drunkenness mistakes Macbeth's palace for hell, when Macbeth laments Duncan's death in a great rhetorical flourish or earlier still when Duncan talks about the impossibility of reading the mind's construction from the surface of the face regarding the Thane of Cowdor's betrayal and the ironic way it applies to Macbeth as well----all these are relevant instances.
No comments:
Post a Comment