Macbeth Group
Question:
jsbrin
Student
High School - 11th Grade
What are some poetic devices that Shakespeare uses to enhance the effect of the witches' chants in "Macbeth"? (Act 4 scene 1)
Answers:
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sullymonster Teacher
Community / Jr. CollegePosted by sullymonster on Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 12:54 PMShakespeare relies on alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, and repetition in this scene. Here is an explanation for each:
Alliteration - repetition of initial consonsonant sound. Alliteration is the verbal equivalent of a drum beat, adding to the sense of rhythm that may or may not already exist in a passage. Here is an example: "toil and trouble"; also "boil and bubble".
Rhyme - the use of rhyme creates a song-like effect to a piece of writing. This elevates the writing, making it some cases more romantic, in others more suspenseful. In this case, it is suspenseful, accentuating and connecting each line to the other and - again - acting like a drum beat in the scene. The rhyme scheme is aa/bb, meaning there are always two lines together that rhyme.
Rhythm - This is the versification of written language, so that the "beat" of the words is the same and repeats. In this case, the rhythm is in iambic pentameter, meaning that the beat is "duh duh DA". The beat builds the tension in the theme.
Repetition - Each of the listed techniques is a form of repetition. However, Shakespeare also repeats the chorus of "double double toil and trouble/fire burn and cauldron bubble". This enhances the idea of a "spell" and makes the scene more creepy.
Sources:
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cybil Teacher
High School - 12th GradePosted by cybil on Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 1:42 PMShakespeare's plays are typically written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). The witches, however, speak in a type of trochaic tetrameter and rhyming couplets. This meter begins with an accented syllable; tetrameter means there are four units of meter.
Here are some examples (accented syllables are capitalized):
THEN the CHARM is FIRM and GOOD
SCALE of DRAgon, TOOTH of WOLF
What's unusual about the witches' lines is that they are not perfect trochaic meter. Each line lacks an unaccented syllable because the verse ends on an accented syllable; rather than having eight syllables in a line, most verses have only seven.
The Elizabethan audiences would have been delighted to see the witches, which they very much believed really existed, and they would have quickly discerned the difference in the way the witches spoke. Their lines immediately set them apart from the other characters, both nobility and commoners.
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cp5467 Student
High School - 12th GradePosted by cp5467 on Tuesday April 29, 2008 at 4:50 AMJust so you know, many scholars believe that Shakespeare did not write this scene. It was a spin off and sometimes directly quoted lines from The Witch, a play by Thomas Middleton, written around the same time. The poetic devices are actually evidence that Shakespeare did not write this scene. Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter, as opposed to the trochaic pentameter used by the witches, although it is not perfect. This further provides evidence that Shakespeare did not write this scene, since Shakespeare never switched his styles of writing so dramatically nor so poorly. The quality of the writing is notably poorer, and I find it hard to believe that it was Shakespeare.