“The Strength of The(Ir) Illusion” (Macbeth 3.5.27): Transmission of Magic and the Ambiguity of Magical Spaces in Macbeth and The Tempest

Abstract

“The strength of the(ir) illusion” (Macbeth 3.5.27): Transmission of Magic and the Ambiguity of Magical Spaces in Macbeth and The Tempest. Starting from Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen’s 2016 taxonomy of space in Shakespearean drama, our paper focuses on setting and social/ gendered space. What we aim to discuss is how two of Shakespeare’s plays involving magic—namely Macbeth and The Tempest—associate various settings with witchcraft and magic, while also constructing space simultaneously as magical and political, a topophrenic “thirdspace” (cf. Tally, 2019; Soja, 1996), where disorder rules and where power relations in general, and gender relations in particular, are negotiated between ordinary characters and magic-wielding ones (the witches and Hecate vs. Prospero and Ariel, as well as Sycorax). The paper also discusses what “rough” magic is in these plays (a term used in The Tempest, first addressed critically by Robert Egan, 1972), roughness being, on the one hand, a reference to the impurity of the art employed, and, on the other, a nod to the transgression(s) implied by magic practices. Keywords: gender, performance, magic, thirdspace, transgression, transmission