All this has one effect, to excite supernatural
alarm and, even more, a dread of the presence of evil not only in its
recognised seat but all through and around our mysterious nature.
Perhaps there is no other work equal to _Macbeth_ in the production of
this effect.[197]
It is enhanced--to take a last point--by the use of a literary
expedient. Not even in _Richard III._, which in this, as in other
respects, has resemblances to _Macbeth_, is there so much of Irony. I do
not refer to irony in the ordinary sense; to speeches, for example,
where the speaker is intentionally ironical, like that of Lennox in III.
vi. I refer to irony on the part of the author himself, to ironical
juxtapositions of persons and events, and especially to the 'Sophoclean
irony' by which a speaker is made to use words bearing to the audience,
in addition to his own meaning, a further and ominous sense, hidden from
himself and, usually, from the other persons on the stage. The very
first words uttered by Macbeth,
So foul and fair a day I have not seen,
are an example to which attention has often been drawn; for they startle
the reader by recalling the words of the Witches in the first scene,
Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
When Macbeth, emerging from his murderous reverie, turns to the nobles
saying, 'Let us toward the King,' his words are innocent, but to the
reader have a double meaning.
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