Macbeth – Act Two, Scene Three

This scene takes place the morning after King Duncan’s death. It begins with some workers at the castle talking about their drunken night the night before. Later it became known to everyone that King Duncan had been murdered in his sleep. Earlier in the scene, Lennox described the natural occurrences that happened last night “The night has been unruly… Our chimneys were blown down… strange screams of death… the obscure bird clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth was feverous and did shake.”. In Elizabethan times it was believed that kings were chosen by God to rule their kingdoms, so for Christian people at the time it was not farfetched that god reacted to Duncan’s death by causing an earthquake and other natural events. This technique used in media is called pathetic fallacy and is used to accentuate emotion, a point in the plot or event.