Saturday, June 27, 2015

How do the last few lines of Act I, scene 7 echo the last words of Act I, scene 1 in Macbeth?

It is the idea of an inverted reality that encompasses the
theme of both the first and last scene of Act I.  The closing lines of the first scene
reflect the inversion of moral, political, and psychological reality that is seen
throughout the drama with the notion of "fair is foul, and foul is fair."  These lines
help to bring out that what is might not be what should be and what should be is not
what is. The closing lines of the last scene reflect this same inversion of
reality:



Away,
and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false
heart doth know.



The contrast
between "false face" is one such image of inversion in that the face conceals something
opposite underneath it.  At the same time, the "false heart" also brings to light that
there is an inversion within the soul of the individual. The notion of "mock the time"
and the element of the "show" brings even further credence to the inversion that is such
a part of the closing lines of the scene.  Given the fact that Macbeth is the one who
speaks the lines, there is a further inversion in that a good and honorable soldier has
succumbed to an entrance into the abyss of immorality.  In both sets of closing lines,
the first Act has shown itself to be one where moral justice and political order is
entering a realm of perversion and a domain where it will become twisted and mangled
from its original form.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...