ABSTRACT
A Shakespeare play is a dramatic poem. It uses action, gesture, formal grouping and symbols, and it relies upon the general conventions governing Elizabethan plays. Schiicking has shown how large a part was played in the Elizabethan drama by "primitive technique", but the full force of the morality tradition remains to be investigated. A consideration of Shakespeare's use of language demands a consideration of the reading and listening habits of his audience. Macbeth is a statement not of a philosophy but of ordered emotion. All the same the interests aroused are heightened in the last act before they are finally "placed", and we are given a vantage point from which the whole course of the drama may be surveyed in retrospect. There is no formula that will describe this final effect. In Shakespeare criticism, Hazlitt says Lady Macbeth is a "great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate.
