Essay: Explore Imagination: From Shakespeare to Macbeth to Now

This power of imagination outlines the individual manifestation-degree of the ability to develop views or perceptions that exceed memories and realistic ideas – for instance in dreams, visions or hallucinations (Fröhlich, p.151, Einbildungskraft).
In dreams or hallucinations, the imagination takes over the role of the senses. As for Macbeth, this becomes especially evident in the form of Banquo’s ghost (see Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4, ll.44-106), whom, out of all people present, only he can see since only his conscience is burdened with two murders at this point and, consequently, now projects these gruesome images before his eyes.
What follows now is a short philosophical-intellectual history outline of the conceptual history, whereby the main focus is directed at the Elizabethan era in England (1558-1603). In this time, a period within the Renaissance, imagination was generally perceived as rather negative, even dangerous – as a possible ‘enemy’ of reason – and possibly fatal. “The conception of imagination suggested by [various] passages in Shakespeare is but the expression in literature of a notion one finds everywhere in psychological treatises.” (Anderson, p.28, l.5-7). Therefore, imagination is “the Source of all our Evils, our Confusions and Disorders, our Passions and Troubles; […]“ (Charron, p.179, l.26-28). Herein the Elizabethan writers agree with Charron. But he even goes one step further in stating that the imagination is “a perfect Incendiary in the State, looks out all the Fools, and disaffected in the Soul, and blows them up into Sedition; raises the Mob, that is, the Passions, and sets all in an Uproar and Confusion. And all this by taking wrong Methods, going Headlong to work, and not submitting the Matter to the Understanding […].” (Charron, p.194, l.1-8).
Even though Sir Philip Sidney, one of the most important figures of English Renaissance literature, connected the negative aspect of imagination with both definitions and – in accordance with the predominant Elizabethan understanding – talks of sinful fantasy, Plato’s applied hierarchy of the terms1 prevailed in the 18th century.
Thus W. Duff refers to this imagination, which is uncontrolled and gives shine to the worthless, as “fancy”, while J. Beattie describes “fancy” as “trivial” and “imagination” as “solemn”. Other authors, in contrast, identify “fancy” as blurred, arbitrary and passive, while calling “imagination” clear, ordered and active (Ritter, p.217, Imagination).
Sir Francis Bacon, who, in his work The Division of Poesy, divides the human science into three sections that respectively relate to one feature of the human mind, assigns poetry to imagination. Nevertheless, unlike Sidney – to whose Defence of Poesy Bacon’s elaborations refer – he refuses to grant it a high rank. Under the influence of imagination, poetry produces unnatural combinations of memory contents, hence chimeras and phantoms, and, in order to conform to the human mind’s love for greatness, it falsifies the reports of history (Renner, p.107, The Division of Poesy). Similar to today’s understanding of the term, imagination is first referred to as the counter-pole to “raison” (reason) and “bon sens” (common sense) by René Descartes (see Ritter, p.219, Imagination).
According to Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, the earnings for the most detailed and profound analysis2 of imagination and its noematic correlate, the imaginary, belong to Jean-Paul Sartre. It is marked by the phenomenological duplication of intentional act and undogmatic awareness of oneself. In this duplication the “imaging consciousness” experiences itself as a creative spontaneity. The image is set as absent or inexistent, or rather as a nothingness. Though at the same time this signifies the nihilation (néantisation) of the world regarding the image. The imaginary is quite autonomous towards the world of sensual perceptions and its categories of time and space. Its setting is determined as an act of freedom, implemented by a certain way of being-in-the world, by a certain ‚situation‘ (Ritter, p.220, Imagination / see Sartre, p.185, l.27ff.).
If one now compares the views of two great epochs, the Renaissance and Romanticism, regarding imagination, it becomes clear that especially the Elizabethans perceived it, as already mentioned, negatively since, according to Elizabethan psychology, it was regarded as the enemy of reason and therefore simply had to be avoided due to possible fatal impacts on state and society which imagination necessarily entailed.
In contrast, the Romanticism’s perspective concerning imagination was quite positive since, as an absolute mental strength, it seemed virtually indispensable for the Romantic poets. Nevertheless there was agreement on the fact that imagination had a significant position among the abilities of the mind and spirit. This will be further discussed with the example of Macbeth.
Literary theory, which uses the terms ‘imagination’ and ‘fantasy’ almost synonymously, also distinguishes between passive, namely a comprehending (for instance with children and primitive people in the reception of literature), and active, or creative imagination as one of the poet’s ultimate requirements which is only regulated through reason, taste and display possibilities (see Wilpert, p.606, Phantasie).
In this context Shakespeare’s imagination has often been equated with his poetry and his capability of individual characterization. Nevertheless, this equation is not applicable to Macbeth’s imagination, since it is only his imagination that creates images, foreshadowings of future scenarios, visions and even hallucinations in his mind. It is a human’s highest and most dangerous mental power and constitutes a highest development of the self and inner world (see Lüthi (1971), p.146, l.28-31; p.155, l.24-25).
Macbeth can rightly even be understood as a tragedy of imagination since only on the basis of the witches’ prophecies and their arbitrary imaginative interpretation through Macbeth, the plot, and therefore his doom, runs its course. Though the play was often, and appositely, labelled as a tragedy of power, ambition or fear3, it primarily constitutes a drama of imagination since that is what stands in the center of the plot and without it there would be no, or at least an entirely different storyline coming about.