Nature And Unnatural In Macbeth
Nature and the Unnatural
In the middle ages, it was believed that the health of a country was directly related to the goodness and moral legitimacy of its king. If the King was good and just, then the nation would have good harvests and good weather. In Macbeth by Shakespeare, Macbeth disturbs this social order with the unnatural.
The natural and the unnatural occur in Shakespeare's Macbeth in different parts of the story and in different forms. Natural is what is good and the unnatural is what is bad, or evil. The play revolves around many events that are more unnatural than natural.
Here are some examples:
In Macbeth, the three witches show us what physical unnatural looks like.
BANQUO: ‘What are these, So withered and so wild in their
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The temptations that he now has (after he heard the prophecy of the three witches) are unusual and new to him. This is why he calls them, supernatural (this means ‘above the natural’, same as unnatural). This feeling is his body warning him against what his mind is thinking. Here shakespeare has drawn the attention to the comparison between the hart and the mind.
In macbeth they also go against nature and act unnatural. When Lady Macbeth has received the letter, she makes a plan to talk Macbeth into murdering king Duncan. She calls upon the evil spirits to prepare herself.
LADY MACBETH:’Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances, You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night.’ (act 1, scene 5, line 37-40)
"Compunctious visitings of nature" are the messages of our natural human conscience, these tell us that we should treat others with kindness and consideration. This is the nature part in our self, the mental nature. But Lady Macbeth goes against this, and tries to make Macbeth go against this to, so that he will act unnaturally. She does this to get what she want and to comfort her own wishes. When talking towards the evil spirits she seems confident that somewhere in nature there are demons with the power to make nature itself unnatural. And she needs their
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