The Effect Of Thunder And Lightning In Macbeth

The opening scene in ‘Macbeth’ is greatly different to a majority of other Shakespeare plays, as the first scene begins with “thunder and lightning” (sd, 1.1), and only contains twelve lines. Before the Weird Sisters begin chanting, the thunder and lightning help the audience to identify that the characters they are about to see are not human or the usual characters they would be used to seeing in a Shakespeare play. It is most likely that the squib (a type of firework) was used to create the effect of lightning. “Like all gunpowder products, the squib combined foul-smelling ingredients-sulfurous brimstone, coal, and saltpeter-that reeked all the more when detonated.” During this time period, it was thought that sulphur was hellfire and had a connection to Satan, so before the Weird Sisters make their entrance, the audience would be smelling (what they probably thought was) the pits of hell, further identifying that who they are about to see are supernatural beings. The effect of thunder was most likely …show more content…
The ‘hurly-burly’ could be applied to the actual storm and could be referring to the ‘storm’ of war that will happen later on in the play, so the weather and reality are acting in the same way. The thunder and lightning could be seen as a warning that war will happen in the near future and that battle is inevitable from the very beginning of the