The first parallels are with Tarquin the Proud, the tyrannical final king of Rome. Indeed, multiple parallels can be drawn with the history of the Tarquins, a classical history Shakespeare wrote about in the 1594 poem, The Rape of Lucrece. Macbeth calls on a literary tradition of violence and greed, perhaps distancing his responsibility by suggesting he is playing a part which has been played many times before. He moves from the witches to a personified version of "wither'd murder" who is called into action by the howls of the watching wolves. Similarly, “halfworld” may be a transgression between worlds, from the seemingly dying world of “nature” (which goes against him, threatening to “prate” of his unnatural deeds), to an underworld or an afterlife, from where Macbeth’s otherworldly visions both assure and haunt him.
#WHO HAS NIGHTMARES ABOUT THE WITCHES IN MACBETH FREE#
Hecate, although not an Olympian god, was given power by Zeus, one of those being free passage into the underworld. Macbeth’s mention of her name could be seen as a prayer for her blessing. She was known for actively guiding mankind through darkness and forked paths. One notable aspect of the goddess "Hecate" was that, above all else, she was the goddess of crossroads and choice. Coupled with the mention of “Pale Hecate”, the three-headed deity oft associated with witchcraft, we see that this is where he first places his certainty, deciding his own actions in accordance to the supernatural and establishing the mindless and misplaced faith in prophecy and vision that defines Macbeth’s later character. It creates a liminal space, where it is neither wholly one thing or the other, a space of unsettling ambiguity. The "halfworld" can refer both to the time of day that Macbeth uses as a cover for his crimes and the moral boundaries that are being crossed. Macbeth's soliloquy draws out from its focus on the dagger to the broader night time, creating a nightmarish atmosphere of evil within which "wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep", a metaphor which contrasts the domestic sanctity of "curtain'd sleep" with the evil of our deepest fears.
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