The Imagery, Atmosphere and Irony in Macbeth
Macbeth impresses the audience/reader with an uncertain and unstable state. It is possible to describe the structure of the play as a series of situation exemplifying the conflict between Good and Evil, the story of the fall of a great man. It may even be described as a parable illustrating how man can be gulled by the forces of evil into accepting the appearance as the truth. But structures or themes abstracted from this play would not include the dominant impression left by the play. This impression is not simply the effect of its plot; the quality of the whole tragedy is conveyed by the poetry, which reinforces the situations and their representation on the stage. Poetry succeeds in producing the impression of an equivocal and ambiguous world, where what is seen appears to be different from what is. In fact, the riddling phrases in the very opening scene of the drama are capped with “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”, an image which indicates the moral topsy-turvy in the world of th