Abstract
In Act One, Scene Seven of Macbeth, the troubled hero finds himself checked and chastened by the imagined spectre of ‘pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast, or Heaven’s cherubim, horsed/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air’ (I.vii.21-24).1 The image draws on Baroque emblems of allegorical Pity as well as eschatological angels blowing the trumpets of doom. The metamorphic movement of the image across a range of theological references borne by a mix of media dramatises the roiling consciousness of Macbeth as he considers the action before him. The naked babe, as part of the force field of Macbeth’s ambition and anxiety, both cringes and admonishes, a cloudy curl in the speech’s restless movement towards action. Shakespeare’s play as a whole can be read as a phenomenological exploration of religion and cognition. Key terms relevant to Macbeth and developed in this Special Issue include...
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