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Reality In Macbeth

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In the play Macbeth many characters pretend they are one way while actually being another. Their appearances do not match the reality of what they want and intend to do. The character plot and scheme in secret and devise secret plans to deal with their enemies. William Shakespeare uses the theme of appearance vs. reality to open our minds to realize things are not as they always seem. Everyone in the play wears a “mask” to hide who they really are. They display the face they believe they need to show to the world while secretly working toward their own aims. The characters in Macbeth, including the king, Lady Macbeth, the witches and others, manipulate each other in order to gain the power they desire. Ironically, it might be the witches who …show more content…

Lady Macbeth wants her husband to become the king and tells him he should murder King Duncan to take the throne for himself. When Duncan visits Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the two put up the appearance of being good and generous hosts and hide the reality of their evil intentions. Lady Macbeth tells her husband to “Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under't” (Act 1, scene 5). In other words, she is telling him to hide reality behind a fake appearance. She wants him to pretend to be a good host and a good subject to King Duncan until the moment he kills Duncan and frames his two chamberlains for the murder. The appearance of the two Macbeths is of loyal and good people who are welcoming someone into their home for a nice time, but the reality of the Macbeths is that they are scheming the entire time to murder their guest in order to make Macbeth the king. Macbeth even kills the chamberlains himself, again to put up an appearance. He wants it to seem like he was so outraged that they killed Duncan that he killed them in return when in reality it was Macbeth who killed all three people. After committing these crimes, Macbeth gets what he wants – to be king. However, he ignores reality to do these things. He has to ignore the reality of his own doubts as well as the reality of some supernatural portents, so even the murders are in some way an

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