Macbeth and Othello Essay -- Shakespeare macbeth Othello Essays

Macbeth and OthelloUpon my head they placd a harvest-timeless crownAnd found a barren sceptre in my gripe,Thence to be sophisticated with an unlineal hand,No son of mine succeeding (Macbeth, III.i.62)Renew I could not like the moon (Timon of Athens, IV.iii.68) What distinguishes Macbeth and Othello from other tragedies is the fact that their protagonists atomic number 18 incomplete fathers nor sons, mothers nor daughters. We know nothing of Macbeth or Othellos parents, and neither of them has children. Lady Macbeth makes a passing reference to having once given suck and to how tender tis to know the babe that milks her just now never returns to the subject, and in any case, what remains move in ones memory is the line that follows I would, art object it was smiling in my face, cod pluckd my nipple from his boneless gums and dashd the brains out, had I so sworn (I.vii.54). Clearly, she is not the agnatic type. This is reiterated a few scenes later, with her invocation of the spirits to unsex me here and stuff me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst harshness make thick my blood, Stop up th addition and flight to remorse Come to my womans breasts And take my milk for gall (I.v.40-47). The notion of cruelty forming inside her cannot but be likened to that of the baby that would grow there if she were not unsexed, as if cruelty were somehow taking the place of the foetus. at that place is a definite intellect of this in the phrase stopping up th admission price and passage, as if what is being insisted upon were the prevention of either sex/conception (access) or childbirth (passage). It is as if she will bear fruit to or cultivate cruelty rather than a son or daughterone has the distinct impression of a misused womb and... ...o all the human sons do hateFrom forth thy plenteous bosom, abject root. Teem with new monsters Dry up thy marrows (IV.iii..178-192). For this passage encapsulates everything I have discussed so far the notio n of giving birth to monsters and monstrous kit and boodle instead of children, the idea of obstructing the possibility of a satisfying ending and denying that of prolongation (Dry up thy marrows distinctly recalls stopping up th access and passage), of engendering death and wiping out everything but a transient present. There is the same bitter after-taste as in the other plays, as if we had partaken of the grow Timon is forced to live on, and that same exhaustion that comes from ranting and railing and overture to no satisfying conclusion. The bed is unmade, the sheets are tangled and dirty, our voices are hoarse, and we are none the better for it.