“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”, a phrase that is in the play Macbeth written my William
Shakespeare. This quote is an introduction to one of the important themes of this tragedy: how
the appearance of someone is not always the reality. Shakespeare uses various characters to
empazie this confuction between the real and sureal, the autehic and fake and the act and the
sincere.
- Sitatuation of witches given macbeth good looking (clear cut) propecies but are acutally
bad (paradoxes)
The theme of appearance versus reality is central to the Shakespearean play The Tragedy of
Macbeth. It is a play full of ambition, betrayal, madness, and the supernatural. Macbeth and
Lady Macbeth must hide their true thoughts in order to prevent others from knowing what they
have done while different characters comment on the difficulty of knowing what a person is truly
thinking. Indeed, Macbeth is full of the struggles of seeing what is real and what is not.
Throughout Macbeth, elements of the supernatural, hallucinations brought on by guilt-driven
madness, and statements by the differing characters depict the theme of appearance versus
reality.
Niccolo Machiavelli is famous for saying: “For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with
appearances, as though they were realities, and are more often influenced by the things that
’seem’ than by those that ‘are.’Appearance vs. reality in Shakespeare is a jaded theme...
