restable.blogg.se - Supernatural element definition

They are charged with psychological as well as spiritual significance. Shakespeare’s ghosts have nothing crude or horrible in them. They serve to intensify or illuminate some human action and not to determine it”. “O my prophetic soul!” So also does the ghost of Caesar to Brutus. His immediate reaction to the revelations by the ghost is significant: The ghost only “gives a confirmation and a distinct form to an inward movement already present” in Hamlet’s mind. But Hamlet is not led to immediate action on the injunction of the ghost. The ghost in Hamlet is the popular revenge ghost of the revenge tragedy. In no sense can they be said to control human action or regulate man’s future.

However, they have also dramatic role to play. They are projections of the evil that is already in Macbeth. They are demoniac forces operating in the heart of Macbeth. They bring out the latent evil in Macbeth. The mysterious forces like the witches in Macbeth have no direct share in the action of the play: they at best influence the souls. Human action is the main focus of the plays. The introduction of the supernatural serves to intensify this sense of mystery and fatalism.īut Shakespeare keeps the function of the supernatural within the limits of dramatic truth and art. The philosophic Hamlet says to the skeptical Horatio : “There are more things in heaven and earth than your philosophy even dreams of.” Shakespeare’s tragic presentation of life is pervaded by a deep sense of mystery and awe. They heighten the spiritual significance of the tragedies. Thus the supernatural elements in these tragedies symbolize the dark forces which are at work in the plays. In Hamlet, the appearance of the ghost in mist and cold suggests the rottenness of the State of Denmark. The Macbeth world is a strange one where “good things of day begin to droop and drowse” and “nights! black agents to their preys do rouse.” Wilson Knight very aptly points out that throughout the tragedy runs the suggestion of “life threatening, ill-omened, hideous”. They introduce us to a world where values are reversed. They suggest the very spirit of the play. They are anomalies personified in their combination of grossness and sublimity. The witches in Macbeth represent forces of disorder, disintegration and conflict.

Supernatural Machinery in The Rape of the Lock.

This emphasizes the spiritual content of the play. The disorder in the state is reflected in the disorder in the universe. The murder of Cæsar is an ominous event for Rome and this is reflected in the unnatural behaviour of the natural objects and many supernatural manifestations. Unusual events in the human world have their repercussions on the world of Nature. Supernatural forces are introduced to reinforce the order-disorder symbolism in the tragedies. In Macbeth, Hamlet and Julius Cæsar ‘charnel-houses and graves send’ those that are buried, and the dead make their impact on the living. Apart from the ghosts, there are witches in Macbeth, omens and portents in Julius Cæsar. But Banquo‘s ghost in Macbeth and Cæsar’s ghost appearing before Brutus in Julius Cæsur are subjective it is the projection of their fevered and oppressed brains. The ghost in Hamlet is objective because it is seen by all and it sets the action of the play. The supernatural is either objective or subjective. In Macbeth and Hamlet there is a distinct element of the supernatural which lends a weird enchantment of atmosphere, a certain richness and fullness of content to the play.

But Shakespeare makes use of the supernatural in an artistic manner. Supernaturalism in the hands of some Elizabethan dramatists is crude and horrible as in the Revenge tragedies of Webster and Tourneur. As a matter of fact in Greek tragedies, belief in impersonal forces operating in human life reinforces the supernatural effect of the plays.Ī far more effective use of the supernatural is found in the romantic tragedies of the Elizabethan age in England.

The prophecies by the oracles and omens and portents give to the Greek tragedies a supernatural effect. The supernatural figures were made to appear on the stage to resolve the crisis at the end. The ancient Greek masters had admitted a large place to the deus ex machina in their tragic pattern of life. The supernatural plays an important role in the tragic world created by the great masters of tragedies.