Banquo's Remorse In Macbeth

Macbeth shows almost no remorse after losing his wife and even says it was bound to happen anyways, because of the previous gory deaths in the play. Macbeth also makes a reference to seeing Banquo’s ghost, saying “I have supped full with horrors” (5.5.14), and converts the image of Banquo’s ghost into a real image of horror. Someone who has only watched Macbeth on a stage is not likely to understand that with this line, Macbeth is doing all of this realization in his head. When we see these scenes acted out we are more affected by his and Lady Macbeth’s actions – the violence and all of the murders Macbeth is responsible for throughout the play – than we are the impulses that drive them to become so murderous. Reading Macbeth allows us to …show more content…
Lamb writes “Can any mirth accompany a sense of their presence? We might as well laugh under a consciousness of the principle of Evil himself being truly and really present with us.” The witches do not appear threatening; they do not worry the viewer. They look like some regular old hags bothering our main character with sing-song riddles. We are not forced to focus on the importance of the witches’ prophecies in a live production, mainly because we are too busy watching them move around and carry on rather than reading their predictions and looking for them to come true in the rest of the text. To laugh at these three actresses is a mockery of Shakespeare’s writing, for he did not mean for these characters to represent comic relief in Macbeth. On the contrary, they are meant to show the reader that there are bigger aspects abound in the play that Macbeth cannot control. Wyrd, or fate, is one of …show more content…
While reading a play, the reader is not usually worried about what the king or queen is wearing, nor are they really that concerned with the color of the walls or the glimmer of the royal jewels. Sometimes, stage props and costumes can distract an audience and take away from what is important – the progression of the plot through the character’s dialogue. Lamb writes, “But in reading, what robe are we conscious of? Some dim images of royalty—a crown and sceptre—may float before our eyes, but who shall describe the fashion of it?” Who is to decide what Shakespeare’s characters would have worn back when they would have been alive? Lamb makes it clear in his essay that there is much associated with Shakepeare’s plays with which the talent of acting and stage production has absolutely no correlation. The ultimate complexity of the tragedies is what makes reading them so special and rewarding; the ability to understand them suggests an intimate kind of intelligence about the reader. In order to comprehend Shakepeare’s language, recognize important symbols and motifs, and unravel themes and plotlines, it is imperative for you to sit down, relax, and take the time to read the