Blood Imagry in Macbeth
Uploaded by sas108 on Sep 10, 2006
Macbeth Imagery: Blood
In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, there are numerous references to blood, in fact the word blood appears forty-two times throughout the entire transcript. The allusion to blood is used to indicate a variety of things, but often it is used to identify pain or death.
One of the first references to blood appears in Act I scene one, when a Sergeant is talking to Duncan about battle going on. The Sergeant makes a remark about Macbeth: “Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valour's minion carved out his passage”. By this he meant, how great of a swordsman Macbeth was by being brave and courageous. That in the middle of the battlefield Macbeth manages to carve his way to the traitor so fast that it blood was boiling off his blade due to his speed, which is a hyperbole.
The next mention of blood is right before Macbeth comes home to his wife, in
Act I scene five. Lady Macbeth is asking the devil to empower her so that she could kill Duncan. During her plea she states “And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse,” . Lady Macbeth knows that she and her husband are about to commit a great sin, for this she needs to feel no remorse or painful sensations because then she will not be able to live with herself. She wants to be filled head to toe with cruelty to be immune to the suffering that this might cause her, so she would have a clean conscience.
Another important reference to blood in Macbeth is in Act II scene two, right after King Duncan is murdered by Macbeth. He referred to his hands as “hangman’s hands” because he had acted as an executioner and the blood on his hands is stain on his soul that he believes will never be removed. The savagery of the act of regicide frightens Macbeth causing him to panic, his wife try to calm him down. Near the end of this scene Macbeth says “ Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood from my hands?”, because Macbeth thinks that the embedded blood stain is so deep that nothing can wash it away, since a sin cannot be undone. The allusion to Neptune, the god of...