Theme Of Appearance And Reality In Macbeth

One way Shakespeare explores appearance and reality is through Macbeth's early thoughts with the witches prophecies. In an aside Macbeth says, “My thought, whose murder yet is fantastical” but then carries on to say to Banquo, “If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir.” This shows that though Macbeth is thinking about killing Duncan, it is not what he says to Banquo. The reality of his thoughts are very different to what he shows other people. In the first quote, the caesura breaks up the sentence giving it a jittery and excited feel. Whereas what he says to Banquo is calm and thought out. He knew what he was going to say. He also uses equivocation well here giving the audience and Banquo the effect that he is telling

Appear to be a harmless flower but really be the dark person under and kill Duncan by keeping his trust and trust of people around us. The uses of the imperative makes what she is saying more convincing to Macbeth and the reference to the ‘serpent’ is an allusion to the Bible story, Genesis, where the serpent represents evil that convinced Eve to eat the apple. Also here Lady Macbeth appears to be incharge of Macbeth and more masculine in nature also shown by the imperatives, but later on she cannot keep up this appearance and she starts to suffer and lose her appearance. This is shown in the quote, “Out damned spot! Out, I say! One, two”. In public she appears to be sane and in control of her life. But at night the reality of her mental state comes to light with sleep walking and talking. The exclamation marks show her despair and anger at her guilt of what she has done. The punctuation and caesuras create a jittery feel which creates a worried and unstable feeling and shows how much her mental state has deteriorated. The repetition of the word ‘out’ shows how much she wants to appear strong and stable again. All of this gives the audience a real sense of how she was stable but is now