This passage articulates the intention of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth in historical means as it serves as both a historical allusion and a royal pageant. Greenblatt illustrates that the grotesque bloodiness such as the Macbeth couple’s longing for “murderous ferocity” in the play is the manifestation of the public’s amusement by intensified punishment in seventeenth century London. By extending the scope of a spousal relationship into the fundamental human nature of relishing tyranny, Greenblatt successfully combines the seemingly abnormal human instinct implied by Elizabethan era with Shakespeare’s repeated motifs of absurd human nature. In addition to explaining the ubiquitous violence in scenes, Greenblatt also points out that Macbeth is
