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Order and Chaos (Unnatural happenings (The unnatural happenings on the…
Order and Chaos
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Banquet scene
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At the beginning of the scene, Macbeth says: You know your own degrees, sit down referencing the fact that everyone had a set place at the table dependent on their status
By the end of the scene, due to the disruption that Macbeth has caused, Lady Macbeth says Stand not upon the order of your going / but go at once, referencing how normally those with the highest status would get up first
Lady Macbeth says: you have displac'd the mirth, broke the good meeting / with most admir'd disorder
Great Chain of Being
At the time of writing, in Elizabethan and Jacobean times, there was a strict order to society, known as the Great Chain of Being
It involved the idea that everyone had their own place, with the monarch at the top, and peasants and animals at the bottom, and that it was near impossible to move from your station
The breakdown of order in this play stems from the fact that Macbeth has disrupted the Great Chain of Being by murdering the monarch
Macbeth as King
The unnatural happenings increase after Macbeth is made king, because this is what has really disrupted things - the murderer of the king is now king
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Scotland is seen to be suffering with Macbeth as King - personified as an ill person: our suffering country
Sickness imagery
Scotland after Duncan's death is increasingly personified and referred to as a sick person, with Macbeth being the disease
It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash / is added to her wounds
If thou couldst, doctor, cast / the water of my land, find her disease / and purge it to a sound and pristine health
Individuals
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Lady Macbeth goes mad: Great perturbation of nature
Foul whisperings are abroad; unnatural deeds / do breed unnatural troubles
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Foreshadowed
One of the first lines of the play: Fair is foul and foul is fair foreshadows the disruption of order in the play; what would ordinarily be deemed fair is now foul