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OVERVIEWS

Harry Levin (essay date 1982)

SOURCE: "Two Scenes from Macbeth" in Shakespeare's Craft: Eight Lectures, edited by Philip H. Highfíll, Jr., Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, pp. 48-68.

[In the following essay, Levin examines the thematic significance of the Porter's scene and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking episode. In the former, he discerns resonances of hell and damnation, as well as an iteration of the witches'equivocal oracles; the latter scene, he suggests, epitomizes the nightmarish quality of Macbeth and repeats in miniature the play's alternating arguments regarding free will and fate.]

Hamlet without the Prince would still be more of a spectacle than Macbeth without the Thane of Glamis. Though the latter is not introspective by nature, his soliloquizing is central to the play, as he considers intentions, casts suspicions, registers hallucinations, coerces his conscience,...

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1. Introduction
2. Overviews
3. Psychoanalytic Interpretations
4. Macbeth As Tragic Hero
5. Religious And Theological Issues
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright