Food and hunger are not commonly associated with the tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Only the banquet scene seems to emerge when we revisit the famous text as important and linked to food, and for a good reason: what place do food, the necessity and the unity of family and friends have in a story of nobles and deception but? as a symbol of wealth and a plot device? Food and hunger, when examined more closely, appear to play an important symbolic role within the work; not only do they embody the food-focused mentality of the masses in Shakespeare's time (a mentality aptly reflected in the play's characters) for making political commentary on the place of food and women at the center of all society, but they also embody each other's desires and ambitions personal data of the character; and expose, augment, and embody Macbeth's central concept: that ambition, unchecked, leads to the destruction of both oneself and the world around them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The lack of food that permeated the subconscious of the English in Shakespeare's time swirls in the recesses of the minds of Macbeth's characters, cementing both the presence and importance of food as a symbol of the play's overarching theme. In Shakespeare's time, food, its abundance and consumption, seemed to earn the English a reputation... Food, culinary skill and the virtue of hospitality were highly prized both at home and abroad. .. Although "what moved the masses most in the societies of five or three hundred years ago... was above all hunger, and the need to alleviate it through food...", Macbeth's nobles seem to be influenced by a similar fixation on the food What Shakespeare shows as Macbeth's first demonstration of power, for example, is not his coronation, but the banquet he holds afterwards, and Macbeth becomes visibly distrustful of Macduff not after missing the coronation but after. that Macduff "denies his person / to our great honor". Food therefore has a symbolic importance even for kings, for whom food is not lacking. famous or high-ranking: conspicuous food consumption was in fact proof of all these attributes". The feast was therefore the first material symbol of dominion: “the newly crowned Macbeth is anxious to consolidate his power… publicly visibly defining it to his courtiers in terms of a formal banquet.” This phenomenon is also emphasized in King James VI's handbook on kingship written for his son, the Basilikon Doron, where he says that, "as kings we often eat in public, it is proper and honorable for you to do so, as well as to avoid opinion that you do not like to persecute company, which is one of the signs of a tyrant.” In this sense, Macbeth symbolically expresses his first assertion of his ambition through a celebration centered on food; 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, underestimating his suitability to become king instead of affirming it Macbeth was first written and performed, food was given such importance partly because of contemporary views on hunger and famine: "the failure of four successive harvests from 1594 to 1597 was the cause of a dramatic increase in prices even by 16th century standards…”. This crisis provoked two "early European food riotsmodern... in London in 1595... the most serious social crises of Shakespeare's life.", and 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 lacks in 4.3, fail to mention gluttony: the subject is too sensitive or implicit for an individual 9: Justice, Truth, Temperance, Stability. , Goodness, Perseverance, Mercy, Meanness, Devotion, Patience, Courage, Fortitude. I don't like them... In fact, all seven deadly sins are mentioned here, except gluttony 10 - the sin must therefore have been consciously censored from this list , as the minds of the two are clearly filled with thoughts of food: Macduff observes that Malcolm cannot have within himself "the vulture to devour". and Malcolm describes the extent of his vice in terms of food: "my having more would be like a sauce / to make me hungrier...". This reference to food is common throughout the play: Duncan speaks to Banquo: "I began to plant you" and Banquo replies: "behold, if I grow / the harvest is yours." Macbeth observes, after Duncan's death, that his "wine of life is spilled"; and even in the famous soliloquy of the Lord of Cawdor, he describes himself as having "dined his fill of horrors." Apparently, then, a current sense of hunger and fear of famine infects the characters' minds to manifest in the language of their visions of power (as with Macbeth), ideals (as with Malcolm and Macduff), and life in general. Food also allows Macbeth to make a political statement regarding women and their position of influence regarding the preparation of meals and both literal and symbolic hunger. Food is first introduced to Macbeth in scene three of Act I, where the witches tell the following: First Witch: Where have you been, sister? Second witch: Kill the pigs. Third Witch: Sister, where are you? First Witch: A sailor's wife had some chestnuts in her lap, and she was munching, munching, munching: 'Give me,' said I: 'Aroynt three, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries. From a plot perspective, this conversation, which occurs before Macbeth and Banquo meet the sisters, indicates the witches' malevolence and capacity for disturbance. 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 "mounch'd, and mouthh'd, and mouthh'd" seem to imply that this sailor's wife is well-fed, the food she eats - chestnuts - they are the food of the poorest: in “the 16th century we discovered that 'an infinite number of peoples live on nothing other than this fruit', the chestnut”. Her behavior, plus the fact that she is a sailor's wife, makes her gluttony somewhat ironic: the witch perhaps "interprets the woman as fat only because she herself is even poorer and decidedly hungrier than the sailor's wife." . The fact that the witch simply wanted food from the glutton might even make her a tragic character in this situation, and the accusation that the beggar's sailor's wife is even a witch is just a coincidence. Indeed, as Diane Purkiss states: In shaping their witchcraft stories, the women focused on an encounter with the female suspects that involved an exchange, usually of food or food-related objects, or a failed exchange of food, or sometimes simply a discussion about food... Food is therefore a constant theme in witchcraft depositions. The witch's rejection by the sailor's wife, centered on accessto food, is the opposite of Macbeth's banquet in Act 1 Scene 7, held to welcome King Duncan to Inverness – a banquet celebrating the recent victory in the war spurred by the betrayal of the former Thane of Cawdor. While showing the effect of food on all social classes as shown in Macbeth, the banquet itself falls into a further parallel: during the “fantasies of plentiful devilish feasts” in “The Devil's Sabbath,” food is more central to events than to sex...". Celebratory banquets for the rich contrast banquets for the poor witches, but the same fixation on food remains. Further in this parallel is Lady Macbeth, the hostess of the nobles' banquet, yet the poisoner of the occasion with her influence on Macbeth's mind. Indeed, often, “when medieval men projected their hostility toward women into suspicion of what was happening in women's neighborhoods, they often spoke of women's control of food.” Indeed, Lady Macbeth takes advantage of this responsibility she has regarding food: she drugs Duncan's guards "with wine and wassail," twisting the hospitality task she has been assigned to suit her ambitions. The First Witch, the Sailor's Wife and Lady Macbeth all seem to regard and cling to food as an object of great importance - whether requesting it (food) from other farmers, gorging on meager scraps of it or using it to further their own ambitions - as it is a woman's main sphere of influence on the lives of men in Shakespeare's period. While women may be the providers and preparers of food and therefore the life-givers and nurturers of all society, they also, therefore, have immense power for evil in the world. The capacity for evil that people (particularly women) are capable of doing is in no way inhibited by the limits of their social influence; this restriction can even increase the magnitude of the act. Food is the method through which this concept is exemplified in Macbeth: the perceived "witch" of the sailor's wife over food-related matters, and Lady Macbeth's actual betrayal expressed through food. Macbeth's ambition is his fatal flaw that ultimately destroys him. However, he only manages to achieve crushing defeat thanks to his ambition due to the influence of both the witches and his wife, both of whom manipulate him through the use of food. “To ingest food is to make oneself vulnerable to its influence and to accidental or deliberate poisoning,” says Knowles 20, and while Macbeth may not physically ingest the witches' concoction or his wife's poison, he ingests their ideas, which are just as potent as poison. The apparitions that inform Macbeth of his fate and thus make him so arrogant that he believes himself invulnerable have been conjured by the witches' drink, and Lady Macbeth convinces the Lord of true manhood and piety by saying that she would rather "pluck out her own nipple." from his boneless gums / And split his brains…”. This perversion of maternal instinct transforms the nourishment of food into destruction, violence, and death that creep into Macbeth's mind, as do the sayings of the invited apparitions. Food also seems to symbolize Macbeth's personal aspirations – the aforementioned parallels between literal and symbolic hunger. . When the agitated Macbeth desires safety and protection when plagued by nightmares, he does so by eating his meals in peace, for example, and expresses his anguish when he has “dined sated with horrors.” Furthermore, "Images of food accompany nearly every expression of passion in this play: repeatedly and insistently, characters turn to images of food and eating to articulate their charged mental states,.