Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Act 4 Scene 1
Poetry in Macbeth helps express and highlight the ideas and images and that Shakespeare wants to portray, and wanted the audience to hear or think. Sound devices such as rhyme and alliteration help to create effects on the reader. Imagery helps to create a visual image in our head, such techniques include using metaphors and personification.
All the rhyming couplets are highlighted in a different colour.
This passage of the play has mainly rhyming couplets. Rhyming couplets are two successive lines that rhyme with each other such as 'go' and 'throw' (lines 4 and 5). Rhyme is incorporated into poetry for many reasons and is a common sound device in poetry. Shakespeare has used rhyme in this passage to emphasize the 'weird' personality of the witches and help to show that they are doing a spell. The rhyming helps to show they are blabbering on, almost as if they are talking nonsense.
Internal rhyme is when there are two or more words in a line that rhyme with each other. Shakespeare uses internal rhyme as another way of displaying the witches personality, it shows they are rambling on and talking nonsense. Internal rhyme is shown in lines 10,20 and 36 with the line 'double, double, toil and trouble'.
First Witch- Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Second Witch- Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Third Witch -Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.
First Witch -Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
ALL- Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch- Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL- Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Third Witch- Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL- Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch- Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Repetition is when a word or a phrase is repeated more than once. The line 'tis time, tis time' (line three) uses repetition to emphasis the word time. But also repetition is used in the scene to display the 'weird sisters' are doing some sort of spell, because spells are normally repetitive. In the line 'double, double, toil and trouble' the word double is repeated within the line. The whole phrase 'double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and culdrons bubble' is repeated three times throught this extract of the scene (lines 10-11, 20-21 and 36-37), this is to emphasis what is being said. Words are slanted when repetition is present.
In this extract imagery is used to make the audience visualize 'supernatural' and 'weird' things that help represent the witches evil personality. Such as the line 'make the gruel thick and slab' (line32), meaning make this potion thick and gluey. The word 'gruel', meaning potion, helps to paint the image of something unnatural, which has been symbolized throughout the play following Duncan's murder. References to various animals are used throughout the passage, such as 'toe of frog' (line 14) and 'tongue of dog' (line 15), these references to animals symbolise the natural world, highlighting how parts of the natural world that are being used in an unnatural way, play a part in this 'potion'. References to animals and the natural world are shown earlier in the play, such as in Act 2 Scene 4, where Ross and the Old man discuss how the natural world has become chaotic following Duncans murder. Just as this reference to the animals being treated in an unnatural way (being cut apart) follows the murder of Banquo (Act 3, Scene 3). Shakespeare evidently makes references to unnatural happenings to mirror when Macbeth commits unnatural crimes.
Alliteration is a repetition of constant sounds normally at the beggining of words, that are close to each other, such as 'salt-sea shark', (line 24). Shakespeare has used alliteration to emphasis specific words, in this passage he has focused on the words that have meaning to do with evil or weird happenings. Such as the word 'shark' normally is represented as bad or evil.
Symbolism is a form of imagery, where an object or person is used to represent something else. Shakespeare uses symbolism to help the audience visualize what is happening or being said with a more depth understanding. In this passage, symbolism is used to represent an evil happening, the animals: 'dragon' (line 22), 'wolf' (line 22) and 'shark' (line 24) all are animals that normally are used to represent bad or evil things. Shakespeare has done this to represent the witches as 'evil' but also to make references to the 'evil' acts Macbeth has committed, such as killing Duncan and Banquo.