In Macbeth, Macbeth himself is the center point of several strands of action that all converge on him but are in many ways separate from him. Shakespeare holds these strands in tension and moves the story along to its tragic conclusion by cutting back and forth between different plot points, almost as if he is a movie director. Only we as audience know everything: all the characters in the play have limited knowledge in one way or another. This makes dramatic irony, in which the audience knows what the characters don't, central to this drama.
One strand we as the audience see more fully than the other characters is the witches . Though peripheral to Macbeth's day-to-day life, they are central to stoking his ambitions to become king and later to leading him to his ruin. They also add greatly to the spooky atmospherics of the play, keeping...
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us as audience in touch with the supernatural forces that guide the two Macbeths down the wrong path. Nobody but we as audience see, for example, the other witches in conference withHecate, adding to the dramatic irony.
Lady Macbeth is another strand. She is often depicted in scenes that do not include Macbeth, including having received his letter and anticipating his moving forward on the plan to murder Duncan, waiting for him to return to from the murder, and much later, sleepwalking while trying to wash the blood/guilt off her hands. She intersects with Macbeth and is integral to the plot, but the separate scenes show her reacting to events in her own way.
Those who oppose Macbeth, such as Malcolm and Macduff, also have trajectories that both collide with and yet are independent of Macbeth himself. We also are allowed to see the world from their perspective.
The need to accommodate so many players in their own "spaces," so to speak, leads to the many short scenes that build dramatic tension in the play.
You are correct in your observation, and this is particularly true when we think about other Shakespeare plays, which actually only contain one extended scene in Act Five in which all of the resolution occurs. However, let us consider the impact of these short, choppy scenes on us as an audience. There is a real sense in which the number and the length of these scenes help increase tension as we quickly switch from one scene to another, eagerly awaiting to see what will happen to Macbeth and how the prophecies will be fulfilled. Also, it is important for the plot of the story to give us the perspectives of a number of different groups of people: Macbeth himself and his confidence, his Lords and soldiers who desert him, and then the forces of Malcolm who are attacking. It was necessary to do this through chopping and changing to different locations. The nine scenes then in the final act serve to create tension and also chart the feelings and actions of different groups as the inevitable end closes in upon Macbeth.