Focus on this artwork and analyze the Interpretations.
Martin Butlin wrote that this colour print is one of the most inspired of all 'literal' illustrations of a text in the history of art. In fact, "pity and air", two words of the Shakespeare's verses, are also two motifs used by Blake in this picture: a female cherub leans down to snatch the baby from its mother. According to Blake biographer Alexander Gilchrist, the print "is on a tolerably large scale, a woman bending down to succour a man stretched out at length, as if given over to death."Pity is seen as in opposition to Blake's print The Night of Enitharmon's Joy (c. 1795) — which shows a Hecate surrounded by  fantastic creatures and macabre elements of a nightmare — because it provides a "possibility of salvation" in the fallen world through pity. Both prints refer to Macbeth. As Nicholas Rawlinson has noted, the play was undergoing a major revival in popularity at the time, being performed nine times in 1795.It is a personification of a Christian element that some critics argue was a negative virtue for Blake, since pity is associated with "the failure of inspiration and a further dividing" and also "linked by alliteration and capitalization". It is also a part of Blake's mythology, in which a sexually frustrated Tharmas becomes "a terror to all living things", although the emotion inherent in him is pity. Other Blake characters have this feeling, and his mythology is developed between the confrontation of a feminine "Pity" and a masculine fiery, as happens in the brutal suppression of desire in Urizen.Some critics see a connection between Pity and the "hypnotic and helpless state" of William Butler Yeats' The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).
personification Blake's mythology sexually frustrated salvation Alexander Gilchrist virtue Tharmas ink pity The Night of Enitharmon's Joy Martin Butlin Pity Enitharmon fantastic creatures Hecate history of art William Butler Yeats Shakespeare masculine The Wind Among the Reeds Christian motif feminine nightmare Urizen Macbeth