How Does Shakespeare Explore Ideas in Macbeth?

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English – How does Shakespeare explore ideas in Macbeth? Macbeth is and will forever remain Shakespeare’s most famous and celebrated tragedy. The play is much deeper than just a tragedy however, with Shakespeare subtly exploring several ideas and themes. His work provides prime examples of many structural and language techniques, including imagery, contrast, dialogue and symbolism. There were numerous ideas explored in the play, including those of ambition and power & authority. The main idea explored in the play from the very beginning was ambition. All of Shakespeare’s plays seemed to involve this idea, and there were always characters that either had a lack of, or thriving ambition. As we discovered when the play developed, ambition can be both ‘foul and fair’. From the moment the witches planted the idea in Macbeth’s mind, there was nothing stopping him from becoming king. Macbeth was determined and ready to grab what he wanted, even if it was for the wrong reasons, and involving the most heinous of crimes. “If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir.” Shakespeare used two main writing techniques to depict ambition in this play; the structural feature of dialogue and the language feature of imagery. Since Macbeth was written as a play, what Shakespeare wrote was made up of only dialogue in script form as well as stage directions on the side. He did brilliantly in using the dialogue to portray what characters were feeling and thinking. Shakespeare also used dialogue allocated to other characters, such as Lady Macbeth, to portray Macbeth’s ambition further: “…It is too full o' the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it.” Lady Macbeth spoke these lines, talking about her husband, however she was another character who could not look
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