ddition to using the image of blood to give his theme, William Shakespeare uses images of nature to pass his theme. At the first banquet scene Lady Macbeth warns Macbeth to “To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye. Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t.” By using images of flowers and serpents Shakespeare allows readers to visualize and compare the soft trusting flower to the sly, dangerous snake. Again, repeating the theme of “Things Are Not Always What They Seem” by having Macbeth be the snake but seeming like a flower to King Duncan. A deeper, unnoticeable reference to imagery of nature in Macbeth is the use of air as a symbol to the witches. When one thinks of air, one thinks of a necessity that basically makes existence possible. Shakespeare turns this primary use for air into something it doesn’t seem. In Act 1, Scene 1, Line 12 the three witches say in unison that “Foul is fair and foul in fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.” Immediately, the theme opens the play when the witches state that “fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Air seems clean, clear and pleasant but when seen as parallel to the witches air seems dirty and filthy. The largest and most influential image of the theme in Macbeth is Act 4, Scene 1 in its entirety. In this scene Macbeth meets the witches for the final time and three apparitions give him his final prophesies. When Macbeth speaks to the apparitions, specifically numbers two and three, they tell him “Be bloody, bold and resolute. Laugh to scorn the power of man. Nobody born or woman shall be harm Macbeth,” and “Be brave as a lion, and take no heed of those vex or worry, or of where the plotter are. Macbeth shall never be vanquished till Great Brinam Wood advances against him to the high hill at Dunstinane,” they use their power of fo...
