Antithesis in ‘Macbeth’

Summary

In the Introduction to the revised Arden edition of Macbeth (1951) Kenneth Muir notes as ‘one of the predominant characteristics of the general style of the play’ the fact that ‘it consists of multitudinous antitheses’. He connects ‘this trick of style with the “wrestling of destruction with creation” which Mr Wilson Knight has found in the play, and with the opposition he has pointed out between night and day, life and death, grace and evil’. Muir also refers to Mgr Kolbe, who sees the play as picturing ‘a special battle in a universal war’, the war between sin and grace, with a ‘two-fold contrast . . . —Darkness and Light, as a parable, Discord and Concord as a result’. What I wish to say in the present essay is related to the general conception of antithesis: and, more particularly, it is related to the themes identified and analysed by L. C. Knights in How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? (1933). Knights states that ‘Two main themes, which can only be separated for the purpose of analysis, are blended in the play—the themes of the reversal of values and of unnatural disorder. And closely related to each is a third theme, that of the deceitful appearance, and consequent doubt, uncertainty and confusion.’ Some of the passages to which I shall refer are discussed by Knights.