Macbeth and Othello Essay -- Shakespeare macbeth Othello Essays

Macbeth and OthelloUpon my head they placd a fruitless big topAnd put a barren sceptre in my gripe,Thence to be wrenchd with an unlineal hand,No password of mine succeeding (Macbeth, III.i.62)reform I could non like the moon (Timon of Athens, IV.iii.68) What distinguishes Macbeth and Othello from other tragedies is the fact that their protagonists ar neither fathers nor sons, mothers nor daughters. We know nothing of Macbeth or Othellos parents, and neither of them has children. gentle womanhood Macbeth makes a passing reference to having once given suck and to how huffy tis to love the babe that milks her but never returns to the subject, and in any case, what the Great Compromiser impressed in ones memory is the line that follows I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluckd my boob from his boneless gums and dashd the brains out, had I so sworn (I.vii.54). Clearly, she is not the maternal type. This is reiterated a few scenes later, with her invocation of th e spirits to unsex me here(predicate) and fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty make thick my blood, cylinder block up th coming and passage to remorse Come to my womans breasts And take my milk for gall (I.v.40-47). The notion of cruelty forming inner(a) 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. There is a decided sense of this in the phrase stopping up th access 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 brave out fruit to or cultivate cruelty rather than a son or daughterone has the distinct impression of a utilise womb and... ...o all the human sons do hateFrom forth thy deep bosom, poor root. Teem with new monsters Dry up thy marrows (IV.iii..178-192). For this passage encapsulates everything I have discussed so far the notion of giving birth to monsters and heinous deeds instead of children, the idea of obstructing the possibility of a satisfying death and denying that of continuation (Dry up thy marrows distinctly recalls stopping up th access and passage), of engendering death and wiping out everything but a pass(a) present. There is the same bitter after-taste as in the other plays, as if we had partaken of the roots Timon is forced to live on, and that same exhaustion that comes from ranting and track and coming 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.