Macbeth
Prompt #26 · Macbeth
Prompt Type: Theme + Device
Shakespeare structures Macbeth around a series of supernatural encounters—the witches, the dagger, Banquo's ghost, and the apparitions—that blur the line between reality and hallucination. Analyze how these elements develop the theme of ambition's power to distort perception and judgment. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.”
Act II, Scene 1
Argument
The rhetorical question and paradox ('I have thee not, and yet I see thee still') dramatize ambition's power to create sensory hallucinations that feel real yet remain intangible, blurring the boundary between external reality and internal desire through the device of paradox.
Quote 2
“This supernatural soliciting / Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill, / Why hath it given me earnest of success, / Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor: / If good, why do I yield to that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, / Against the use of nature?”
Act I, Scene 3
Argument
The antithesis ('Cannot be ill; cannot be good') and oxymoron ('horrid image...earnest of success') demonstrate how ambition paralyzes rational judgment, trapping Macbeth in contradictory interpretations of the supernatural that prevent clear moral reasoning.
Quote 3
“Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ th’ olden time, / Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal; / Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d / Too terrible for the ear: the time has been, / That, when the brains were out, the man would die, / And there an end; but now they rise again, / With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, / And push us from our stools.”
Act III, Scene 4
Argument
The ironic juxtaposition between past logic ('when the brains were out, the man would die') and present supernatural violation ('now they rise again') shows how ambition has so corrupted Macbeth's perception that natural laws themselves seem overturned, with irony emphasizing his complete loss of rational grounding.
Quote 4
“He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear / His hopes ’bove wisdom, grace, and fear. / And you all know, security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.”
Act III, Scene 5
Argument
The personification of 'security' as 'mortals' chiefest enemy' reveals how the supernatural deliberately exploits ambition's tendency to breed overconfidence, showing that the witches' prophecies function as devices that distort judgment by making Macbeth feel invulnerable when he is most vulnerable.
Quote 5
“And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d, / That palter with us in a double sense; / That keep the word of promise to our ear, / And break it to our hope!—”
Act V, Scene 8
Argument
The metaphor of 'juggling fiends' who 'palter with us in a double sense' exposes how supernatural encounters operate through deliberate ambiguity, demonstrating that ambition distorts perception by making Macbeth interpret equivocal prophecies as certainties, only recognizing their deceptive duality when it is too late.