Concetti Chiave
- Macbeth's emotional numbness is highlighted by his indifference to his wife's death, indicating a loss of emotional capacity due to past horrors.
- Shakespeare uses the metaphor of "supping with horrors" to illustrate Macbeth's desensitization, emphasizing a purely physical experience of life.
- Life is depicted as fleeting and ephemeral through comparisons to a brief candle and a walking shadow, suggesting its transient and weak nature.
- The metaphor of a poor player on the stage conveys life's insignificance, likening it to a forgotten, mediocre actor once the performance ends.
- The "tale told by an idiot" reinforces life's meaningless nature, portraying it as chaotic and devoid of deeper purpose or divine dimension.
Macbeth's emotional numbness
In this passage Macbeth finds out that his wife has passed away but he's careless and doesn't seem to be concerned with that. He explains that he had had the capability of having emotions, but then he saw many horrors and nw he doesn't feel anything because he doesn't care about anything. If he had lives in a balanced way he would feel fear hearing noises and cries. He's touched by nothing and he's not proud of it, he's deprived of any feeling and emotion. To convey this message he uses the image of supping with horrors. Shakespeare chose to use this verb, also in the comparison of life to a huge meal, in order to give a physical sensorial perception of life, there is no further dimension, only the physical one.
Life's fleeting nature
In his monologue:
out out brief candle
life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more: it is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
The candle and the shadow are something ephemeral, not lasting, fleating and weak, just like life, another comparison is the poor player, that is to say a mediocre actor who plays upon the stage but when the play is finished, no one remembers him. The message conveyed is that life is meaningless and useless, we are just puppets and then we are forgotten, there is no divine, no further dimension. Moreover the last image, the one of the tale told by an idiot, clinches the fact that life is meaningless, indeed if the tale teller is an idiot, the tale will also be.
Domande da interrogazione
- How does Macbeth's emotional numbness manifest after learning about his wife's death?
- What is the significance of the "tale told by an idiot" in Macbeth's monologue?
Macbeth exhibits emotional numbness by showing indifference to his wife's death. He acknowledges that he once had the capacity for emotions but has become desensitized due to witnessing many horrors. He feels nothing and is not proud of this state, as he is deprived of any feeling or emotion.
The "tale told by an idiot" signifies the meaningless and chaotic nature of life. Macbeth implies that life is a story full of noise and emotion but ultimately lacks substance or purpose, reinforcing the theme of life's insignificance and futility.
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