Food and hunger are not usually associated with William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth. Only the scene of the banquet seems to emerge when we take a look at the text famous as having importance and being linked to food, and for good reason: what place does food have, a necessity and unifier of family and friends? friends, is she in a story of nobility and deception but as a symbol of wealth and a tool of intrigue? Food and hunger, examined more closely, seem to play major symbolic roles in the play; not only do they embody the diet-centric mindset of the masses in Shakespeare's time (a mindset aptly reflected in the work's characters) to make political commentary on the square of food and women at the heart of society as a whole, but they also each embody the character's personal desires and ambitions; and expose, augment and embody the central concept of Macbeth: that ambition, unchecked, leads to the destruction of oneself and the world around one. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'? Get an original essay The lack of nourishment that permeated the subconscious of the English in Shakespeare's time swirls in the depths of the minds of the characters in Macbeth, cementing both the presence and importance of food as a symbol of the play's dominant theme. In Shakespeare's time, food, its abundance and consumption seemed to have earned the English a reputation... Eating, the skill of cooking and the virtue of hospitality were highly valued both at home and abroad... Even if "what most moved the masses in the societies of five or three hundred years ago... was above all hunger and the need to relieve it with food...", the nobles of Macbeth seem be influenced by a similar fixation with food. What Shakespeare shows as the first demonstration of Macbeth's power, for example, is not his coronation but the banquet he hosts afterwards, and Macbeth visibly distrusts Macduff not after he misses the coronation but after Macduff "denies his person / at our great bid". Food therefore took on symbolic importance even for kings, for whom food was not a need. After all, "eating well was more important than being rich, famous or enjoying high status – conspicuous food consumption was in fact evidence of all these attributes” The feast was therefore the first material symbol of domination: “Macbeth, newly crowned, is keen to consolidate his power… publicly by visibly defining it. to his courtiers in the form of a formal banquet". This phenomenon is also highlighted in King James VI's manual on kingship written for his son, the Basilikon Doron, where he says that, "as kings often do habit of eating in public, it is proper and honorable that you should do so also, as well as to avoid the opinion that you do not like to haunt company, which is one of the marks of a tyrant.” In this sense, Macbeth symbolically expresses his first affirmation of his ambition through a celebration centered on food; but he selfishly and paranoidly demands that all his new lords be present. His excessive ambition for control, however, results in destruction: all the lords are therefore present to see his episode with the ghost of Banquo, ignoring his ability to be king instead of affirming it. In the early 1600s, when Macbeth was first written and performed, food was given such prominence in part because of contemporary views of hunger andof famine: “the failure of four successive harvests from 1594 to 1597 was the cause of a dramatic rise in prices even by 16th century standards…”. This crisis gave rise to two "food riots in early modern Europe...in London in 1595...the most serious social crises of Shakespeare's life." ” and most certainly gave a lasting connotation to the power of hunger, not only in the mind. of the bard, but of the English people, whatever their class. Perhaps this is why Macduff and Malcolm, when listing what the latter is missing in version 4.3, fail to mention gluttony - the subject is too sensitive or implicit for an individual 9: Justice Truth, Temp 'rance, Stability, Kindness, Perseverance, Mercy, Baseness, Devotion, Patience, Courage, Strength. I have no taste for it... In fact, all of the Seven Deadly Sins are mentioned here, with the exception of Gluttony 10 - so the sin must have been consciously censored from this list, as the minds of both are clearly filled of thoughts of food: Macduff remarks that Malcolm cannot have "the vulture in him to devour." so many women / who want to devote themselves to greatness,” provoking a perverse image of food; and Malcolm describes the extent of his vice in terms of price: “my most possessions would be like a sauce / to make me even hungrier…”. Such a reference to food is common throughout the play: Duncan speaks to Banquo: "I began to plant you" and Banquo responds: "there, if I grow / the harvest is yours." Macbeth notices, after Duncan's death, that his "wine of life is drawn"; and even in the famous soliloquy of the Thane of Cawdor, he describes himself as having "supped full of horrors." It therefore seems that a current feeling of hunger and fear of famine infects the character's mind to manifest itself in the language of his visions of power (as in Macbeth), ideals (as in Malcolm and Macduff) and in life in general. allows Macbeth to make a political statement regarding women and their position of influence around meal preparation and hunger both literal and symbolic. Food is first introduced to Macbeth in Act I, scene three, where the witches narrate the following: First Witch: Where have you been sister? Second witch: Killing pigs. Third Witch: Sister, where are you? First witch: A sailor's wife had chestnuts on her knees, and she grunts, and grunts, and grunts: "Give me," I said: "Aroynt three, witch!" cries the rump-fed ronyon. Plot-wise, this conversation, which took place before Macbeth and Banquo's meeting with the sisters, indicates the witches' malevolence and capacity for disruption. Food, however, enters the picture in the form of the witch's first meeting with the sailor's wife. While descriptors such as "rump-fed" and "ronyon" and the repetition of "stuffed, stubbed, and stubbed" seem to imply that this sailor's wife is well-fed, the food she eats - chestnuts - are the food of the poorest: “in the 16th century, we discovered that “an infinite number of people live only on this fruit”, the chestnut”. Her price, as well as the fact that she is a sailor's wife, makes her gluttony somewhat ironic: the witch "perhaps interprets the woman as fat because she herself is even poorer and hungrier than the sailor's wife. The fact that the witch simply wanted food from the glutton may even make her a tragic character in this situation, and the accusation that the beggar's sailor's wife is even just a witch is just a coincidence. Because, as Diane Purkiss states: By shaping their stories of witchcraft, womenare focused on an encounter with the suspected women involving either an exchange, usually of food or food-related items, or a failed exchange of food, or sometimes simply a discussion about food… Food is therefore a constant theme in witchcraft testimony. The sailor's wife's refusal to accept the witch, centered on access to food, is in contrast to Macbeth's banquet in Act 1, Scene 7, held to welcome King Duncan to Inverness - a banquet which celebrates the recent victory in the war brought about by the betrayal of the former Thane of Cawdor. While showing the effect of food on social classes as shown in Macbeth, the banquet itself draws on another parallel: during the "fantasies of abundant diabolical feasts" during the "devil's sabbath, the food is more central in events as sex…”. Banquets of celebration for the rich contrast banquets of rejoicing for the poor witches, but the same fixation on food remains. Further in this parallel is Lady Macbeth, the hostess of the nobles' banquet, and yet the poisoner of the occasion with her influence on Macbeth's mind. In fact, often, "when medieval men projected their hostility toward women in the form of suspicions about what was happening in women's quarters, they frequently spoke of women's control over food." In fact, Lady Macbeth takes advantage of this responsibility she has for food: she drugs Duncan's guards "with wine and wassail", thus distorting the hospitality task assigned to her to suit her needs. ambitions. The First Witch, the Sailor's Wife and Lady Macbeth all seem to hold and cling to food as an object of great importance - whether demanding it (food) from the other peasants, force-feeding pitiful scraps of food or using it to further her ambitions - for this is a woman's primary sphere of influence over the lives of men in Shakespeare's time. Although women may be the keepers and preparers of food and therefore the givers of life and nourishment of society as a whole, they also have immense power to do evil in the world. The capacity for evil that people (women in particular) are capable of carrying out is in no way inhibited by the limits of their social influence – this restriction may even increase the scale of the act. Food is the method by which this concept is illustrated in Macbeth: the "witch" perceived by the sailor's wife in matters related to food, and Lady Macbeth's true betrayal expressed through food. Macbeth's ambition is his fatal flaw that ultimately destroys him. However, he is only able to achieve this crushing defeat through his ambition, due to the influence of the witches and his wife, both of whom manipulate him using food. “To ingest food is to make oneself vulnerable to its influence and to accidental or deliberate poisoning,” says Knowles, 20 and although Macbeth does not physically ingest the witches' brew or his wife's poison, he does ingest their ideas, which are just as powerful. like a poison. The apparitions which inform Macbeth of his fate and therefore make him so arrogant that he believes himself invulnerable have been conjured from the witches' brew, and Lady Macbeth convinces the Lord of true manhood and devotion by saying that she would have preferred “rip off your nipple”. of his boneless gums / And broke his brains...". This perversion of maternal instinct transforms feeding into destruction, violence, and death that creep into Macbeth's mind, just like the words of the lured apparitions. There -.