To What Extent Does Shakespeare Use Gothic Elements in Scenes One to Three to Influence His Audience?

Within Gothic Literature the theme of the grotesque and the supernatural remains at the forefront of the text and is ultimately surrounded with the concept of the sublime. Despite Shakespeare’s play being written before this genre was established, ‘Macbeth’ provides an example of a pre-gothic text that exhibits many gothic elements. The opening scenes certainly portray this through the typical gothic settings and the central idea of the supernatural and the horror it brings to the audience. Ultimately, Shakespeare uses gothic elements to dramatise and establish the extremes of his characters through their use of language, in order to shock his audience.

Within the opening three scenes, Shakespeare establishes a supernatural aura through the remote settings, this subsequently acts to establish the tone of the play to influence the audience’s perception of the characters depicted within these scenes. From the remote setting of ‘A desert place’ within the opening scene Shakespeare presents the isolation and uncivilised nature of the setting, aligning the play with the gothic genre and influencing the audience’s impression of the play due to the baron setting that ultimately has no social order. Immediately, Shakespeare establishes the gothic elements of the play in this scene as the stage directions ‘Thunder and Lightning’, Shakespeare depicts the supernatural element as the solemn, fearful weather acts as a prediction to the presence of the witches and ultimately the outcome of the play. Therefore, the ominous and gothic setting of the play is crucial to the terror and anxiety in which Shakespeare intends to evoke in the audience, in order to create a gothic tone as it acts as the entrance for the witches, establishing the preconceptions of Macbeth. This setting is further aligned with witches as they discuss when to meet, ‘In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’, through the pathetic fallacy Shakespeare confirms the audience’s interpretation that the witches are of a...