Time, suspense, and desire in Macbeth and Sir Patrick Spense

Plot is a manifestation of desire and intention. -Brooks, 1984

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the traditional ballad Sir Patrick Spence, two very different literary works in terms of format, story, and style, have common threads in their usage of story time to create suspense and narrative desire. Each piece provides the reader with am idea of what’s to come in the rest of the plot, but doesn’t give away enough to cause the reader’s curiosity to be fulfilled. By the middle of each text, we are given what seems to be the end, and yet some how we still want to read on to see for ourselves. The two texts rely on their seemingly immediate action and desire for hindsight to drive their stories forward.
Both texts place a huge emphasis on the present tense. Traditional ballads, by nature, push the language as much in to the present as possible, even if it is something that has already happened. For instance, in Sir Patrick Spence, the line to describe how the king wrote a let...