Macbeth (Vol. 29) - Language And Symbolism
LANGUAGE AND SYMBOLISM
Kenneth Muir (essay date 1966)
SOURCE : "Image and Symbol in 'Macbeth'," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearian Study and Production, Vol. 19, 1966, pp. 45-54.
[In the following essay, Muir surveys the recurring images and symbols in Macbeth, focusing in particular on images of light and darkness, order and chaos.]
A good deal has been written about the imagery of Macbeth since Caroline Spurgeon showed [in Leading Motives in the Imagery of Shakespeare's Tragedies] that the iterative image was that of a man in ill-fitting garments. It has been pointed out, for example, that the image can be interpreted in more than one way and that we need not necessarily suppose that Shakespeare looked on his hero as a small man in garments too large for him: we may rather suppose that the point of the image is that the garments were stolen or that they symbolize the hypocrisy to which...
[The entire page is 26321 words long]
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