Internal conflict is a psychological struggle in the mind of a literary character who has been influenced by external forces and ambitions. Macbeth, written in 1606, one of Shakespeare's many tragedies, and The Poison Tree, written in 1793 by William Blake, are two different stories from two different literary presentations. However, both of these stories share the theme of internal conflict and guilt that is explored equally throughout the texts. These two texts will be compared and contrasted by describing the context, conventions and linguistic features that were used to bring their textual productions to life. Shakespeare uses his five-act structure and the conventions of a dramatic text to depict the tragedy of the play in the contextual period. While Blake uses symbolism and literary devices to give meaning to his poem A Poison Tree. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay William Blake, born in 1757 in London, had a passion for creating poems and presenting them artistically. He published his first illustrated set of poems in 1789 entitled Songs of Innocence, followed by a second illustrated set of poems Songs of Experience in 1793 from which The Poison Tree was derived. When creating the texts, Blake focused on understanding and writing about the hidden emotions of humans that tap into the two states of the human soul. On the other hand, William Shakespeare was born in 1564, approximately 400 years before William Blake lived during the time when King James VI ruled England. Shakespeare's play Macbeth was written as a text to express gratitude to the recently crowned King James VI. However, Macbeth can also be seen as a warning in response to the Gunpowder Plot, a failed assassination of King James VI. While Blake's body of poems could have been a response to the French Republic's declaration of war on England. It may also have vaguely influenced William Blake to publish A Poison Tree to depict France's ultimate doom by metaphorically portraying the country as the enemy in the poem. Both texts share similar structural conventions, in which Macbeth and A Poison Tree follow the journey. /events that lead to the ultimate development of the protagonist into an antagonist. However, the difference between the two texts lies in the presence of external pressures that influence the protagonist. Shakespeare's tragedy deals with the ambitious Macbeth who seeks to become king of Scotland by betraying King Duncan. He does this by giving in to external pressures which caused internal conflict, leading to his ultimate demise. In A Poison Tree, the narrator was not subject to any external factors but only to internal emotions that allowed him to consume his enemy with hatred. The phrase “My anger grew” shows the internal conflict of the narrator to settle the differences between this enemy. To support this, the narrator “watered him with fears, Night and morning with tears: and sunny him with smiles.” There is no evidence in the poem to suggest that there were any outside pressures that caused the narrator to kill his enemy. In Macbeth however, many characters and symbols pressured Macbeth to kill King Duncan, which drove the plot of the story. One of them was Lady Macbeth, who embodied the desire to kill the king. Due to her role as a woman, she was not suspected of murdering the king, as women would have been considered weak in Shakespeare's time. Both Blake and Shakespeare use the