AN APPRECIATION AND ANALYSIS

WHO WAS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?

The historical Shakespeare was not

formally well-educated so some say it was

Francis Bacon

Christopher Marlowe

Who cares?

UNDERSTANDING THE BACKGROUND

Shakespeare himself might be quite unimportant to our understanding of the play

but his times are not.

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS

Elizabeth’s troubled reign

The Gunpowder plot

THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

The central concept of

the chain of being is that

everything imaginable fits

into it somewhere, giving

order and meaning to the

universe.

Shakespeare’s animal

imagery is to be read in

this light

ELIZABETHAN THEATRE & THE GLOBE

ELIZABETHAN THEATRE & THE GLOBE

The queen loved plays

The stage was a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience

Only males took part in plays, female characters were played by men dressed up

as women

Writers had no ownership of the plays they wrote

WHEN WAS MACBETH WRITTEN?

Between 1603 and 1606

After James I came to the throne

Hence the praising of ‘Banquo’s issue’

Act III, Scene v, and part of Act IV, Scene I –revised by Middleton

THE HISTORICAL MACBETH

Source: Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Shakespeare

blackens Macbeth’s character

Clears Banquo of guilt

makes Macbeth’s crime as horrible as possible

Makes it difficult for Macbeth to win the audience’s sympathy and yet succeeds in doing so by making us appreciate the intensity of his temptation as well as to share his terrors.

WHY DID SHAKESPEARE ALTER

HISTORY?

Dramatic purpose: producing a more exciting story than is found in the sources

thematic purpose: creating a more complex characterization of Macbeth

political purpose: catering to the beliefs of the reigning monarch, King James the First.

Chain of being: that there is a divine right of kings, and that to usurp the throne is a nefarious crime against all of humanity.

THE PLOT

ACT 1THE WITCHES PLANT THE SEED OF AMBITION IN MACBETH

AND TOGETHER WITH HIS WIFE HE RESOLVES TO MURDER

Act 1, Scene 1

The witches plan their meeting with Macbeth.

Act 1, Scene 2

A sergeant tells of Macbeth’s heroic deeds. King Duncan announces that Macbeth will be given the title of Thane of Cawdor.

Act 1, Scene 3

The witches prophesy that Macbeth shall be king and Banquo father of kings. Ross and Angus tell Macbeth he is now Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth muses on killing Duncan in order to be king.

Act 1, Scene 4

Duncan is told of the execution of the rebel Cawdor. Duncan thanks Macbeth for his heroic service, then announces Malcolm heir to the throne.

Act 1, Scene 5

Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth's letter about the prophecies, and works herself up to work him up to murder. When Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth tells him to look innocent and follow her lead.

Act 1, Scene 6

Duncan arrives at Macbeth's castle and is greeted by Lady Macbeth.

Act 1, Scene 7

Macbeth almost talks himself out of killing the King. Lady Macbeth gives her husband a tongue-lashing that makes him again commit to murdering the King.

ACT 2THE MURDER OF DUNCAN AND THE IMMEDIATE

REACTION TO IT.

Act 2, Scene 1

Past midnight, Macbeth tells Banquo that they'll speak of the witches another time, and bids him goodnight. Macbeth sees a ghost dagger, hears his wife's bell, and goes to kill Duncan.

Act 2, Scene 2

Macbeth is so shaken by the murder that he brings the bloody daggers with him to where his wife is waiting. She takes them and places them with the sleeping grooms. Knocking at the castle gate frightens Macbeth, and his wife leads him away, so they can wash the blood from their hands.

Act 2, Scene 3

The Porter pretends to be hell's gatekeeper, then lets in Macduff and Lennox. Macduff discovers Duncan's body. Macbeth, in pretended fury, kills the King's grooms. Malcolm and Donalbain, fearing that they will be murdered next, flee.

Act 2, Scene 4

Ross and an Old Man discuss what an unnatural night it has been. Ross and Macduff doubtfully discuss the news that Malcolm and Donalbain are responsible for their father's murder. Ross heads for Scone, to see Macbeth crowned King of Scotland, but Macduff is going to stay home.

ACT 3THE CROWNING OF MACBETH AND THE MURDER OF BANQUO.

BANQUO’S GHOST APPEARS AT THE BANQUET. THE LAST SCENE

SHOWS THE GROWING UNREST IN SCOTLAND.

Act 3, Scene 1

Banquo suspects Macbeth, and wonders if the prophecies for him will also come true. Macbeth questions Banquo about his ride and insists he return in time for that night’s banquet. Macbeth persuades 2 murderers Banquo is their enemy, then sends them to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance.

Act 3, Scene 2

Lady Macbeth and Macbeth envy the dead, who sleep in peace, while they live in fear. Macbeth reassures his wife that their problems will be solved by a terrible deed to be done in the night.

Act 3, Scene 3

A third Murderer joins the first two. Banquo is killed, but Fleance escapes.

Act 3, Scene 4

During the banquet Macbeth learns that Banquo is dead, but Fleance escaped. Banquo’s ghost appears to Macbeth and he is shaken. Later, Macbeth says he's going to inquire why Macduff didn't attend the banquet. He hints at more bloodshed, and decides to consult the witches again.

Act 3, Scene 5

The Witches appear with Hecate, who scolds them for having dealings with Macbeth without including her. Hecate tells them that Macbeth is coming to see them the next morning, and then they will show him magic that will mislead him to his own destruction.

Act 3, Scene 6

Lennox and another Lord show they have seen through Macbeth's lies and know he is responsible for the murders of Banquo and Duncan. They wish Macduff, who has gone to England for help in freeing Scotland from Macbeth, well.

ACT 4THE FORCES OF GOOD GATHER IN ENGLAND AS MACBETH RECEIVES EQUIVOCAL

ASSURANCES FROM THE WITCHES AND HAS MACDUFF’S FAMILY MURDERED.

Act 4, Scene 1

The Witches stir the cauldron and call up apparitions which give Macbeth warnings, promises, and prophecies: beware Macduff, fear "none of woman born," fear nothing until Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, Banquo's children shall be kings. The Witches vanish and Macbeth calls Lennox, who tells him that Macduff has fled to England. Macbeth orders the murder of Macduff's family.

Act 4, Scene 2:

Ross tells Lady Macduff that her husband has fled Scotland. Lady Macduff and her son joke about Macduff being a traitor. A messenger rushes in to tell Lady Macduff to run for her life, but right after him come the murderers who kill the boy and his mother.

Act 4, Scene 3:

Macduff seeks Malcolm's support. Malcolm tests Macduff's intentions. A doctor describes the English King's miraculous ability to heal. Ross tells Malcolm and Macduff of Scotland's suffering and of the slaughter of Macduff's wife and children. Everyone is ready for war against Macbeth. that makes him again commit to murdering the King.

ACT 5LADY MACBETH IS SEEN SLEEPWALKING AND LATER SUICIDES, BIRNAM WOOD MOVES

TOWARDS DUNSINANE AND MACBETH IS SLAIN BY ONE NOT ‘OF WOMAN BORN’.

MALCOLM IS CROWNED KING.

Act 5, Scene 1:

Lady Macbeth's maid tells a doctor of the Lady's sleep-walking. Lady Macbeth walks and talks in her sleep, revealing guilty secrets.

Act 5, Scene 2:

The Scottish forces against Macbeth are on the march. The Scottish leaders comment on Macbeth's desperate rage.

Act 5, Scene 3:

Macbeth hears that his thanes are abandoning him, that the English army is approaching, and that his wife is soul-sick, but he tries to convince himself he has nothing to fear, and prepares to fight.

Act 5, Scene 4:

The forces opposed to Macbeth enter Birnam Wood, and Malcolm gives the order for every soldier to cut a tree branch and hold it before him.

Act 5, Scene 5:

Macbeth is defiant of the forces marching against him. Then receives the news of his wife's death. A messenger says Birnam Wood is coming to Dunsinane; Macbeth goes to meet his fate.

Act 5, Scene 6:

The English and Scottish forces, led by Malcolm, begin their attack upon Dunsinane.

Act 5, Scene 7:

Macbeth kills Young Siward. Macduff seeks Macbeth.Malcolm & Siward take control of Dunsinane.

Act 5, Scene 8:

Macduff and Macbeth do battle. Macbeth boasts he cannot be harmed by "one of woman born," but Macduff replies that he was a Caesarean birth They fight on and Macduff kills Macbeth. Malcolm, Siward and the rest enter. Siward receives the news of his son's heroic death. Macduff enters with the head of Macbeth. Malcolm is hailed king of Scotland, rewards his followers and invites all to see him crowned.

IMAGERY

IMAGERY vivid images are interwoven

with each other to build

atmosphere

They enhance the emotions

of pity, fear and horror we

feel in response to the play

…they therefore are central

to our understanding of and

reaction to the play

‘A GIANT’S ROBE UPON A DWARFISH

THIEF’

Show Macbeth as a poor, vain, cruel, treacherous creature snatching ruthlessly at power he is unfit to possess.

Particularly, images related to clothing help visualise him at key points in the drama as a small man wearing clothes too big for him.

‘A GIANT’S ROBE UPON A DWARFISH

THIEF’

‘now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.’ (Act V, Sc ii)

A UNIVERSAL, ECHOING CRY OF

ANGUISH

sound echoing

over vast regions,

emphasising the

effects of

Macbeth’s evil.

A UNIVERSAL, ECHOING CRY OF

ANGUISH

‘And pity, like a naked, new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind,’ (Act1, Sc vii)

‘ each new morn

New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows

Strike heaven in the face, that it resounds

As if it felt with Scotland and yell’d out

Like syllable of dolour;’ (Act iv, Sc iii)

‘ I have words

That would be howl’d out in the desert air,

Where hearing should not latch them.’ (Act IV, Sc iii)

‘GOOD THINGS OF DAY BEGIN TO

DROOP AND DROWSE’: LIGHT AND

DARKNESS

light stands for life and goodness; and

darkness for evil and death.

‘GOOD THINGS OF DAY BEGIN TO

DROOP AND DROWSE’: LIGHT AND

DARKNESS

‘she has light by her continually’ (Act V, Sc i).

‘darkness does the face of earth entomb,

When living light should kiss it.’ (Act 2, Sc iv)

‘Angels are bright’ ‘secret, black and midnight hags’.

DEEDS TOO HORRIBLE TO BEHOLD

Running image of deeds too horrible for the human eye to behold

Images of the quenching of light and reverberating sound are echoed towards the end of the play, in Macbeth’s reflections about his life: dominated by images of quenching of light (‘out, out brief

candle)

and the empty reverberation of sound (‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ (Act V, Sc v)).

Macbeth’s crimes led to kingship but this position means nothing if it is not accompanied with the grace that goes with such a position.

DEEDS TOO HORRIBLE TO BEHOLD

‘ tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil’ (Act II, Sc ii)

‘Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight

With a new Gorgon.’ (Act II, Sciii)

SIN AND DISEASE

Macbeth’s sin makes Scotland sick.

In murdering the sleeping Duncan

Macbeth also murders the heeler, sleep

SIN AND DISEASE

‘ - the innocent sleep;

Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast; -‘ (Act II, sc ii)

In Act V Macbeth asks the doctor to purge his country

‘to a sound and pristine health’.

‘ make us medicine of our great revenge

To cure this deadly grief.’ (Act IV, Sc iii)

‘it cannot be called our mother, but our grave;’ (Act IV, Sc iii).

‘And sundry blessings hand about his throne

That speak him full of grace.’

‘A GREAT PERTURBATION IN NATURE’

Pervading the play is the idea of the unnaturalness of Macbeth’s crime causing a convulsion in nature.

Macbeth’s body is itself convulsed and often turns on itself.

‘Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep,” (Act II, Sc ii)

Macbeth describes

Duncan’s wounds as ‘a

breach in nature’

‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious murder hat broke ope

The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence

The life o’the building!’ (Act III, Sc iii)

‘If charnel-houses and our graves must send

Those that we bury back, our monuments

Shall be the maws of kites.’ (Act III, Sc iv)

A GREAT PERTURBATION IN NATURE

A GREAT PERTURBATION IN NATURE’

‘However you come to know it: answer me:

Though you untie the winds, and let them fight

Against the churces though the yesty waves

Confound and swallow navigation up;

Though baded corn be lodged, and trees blown down;

Though castles topple on their warders’ heads;

Though palaces and pyramids do slope

Their heads to their foundations;

Though the treasure of nature’s germen tumble all together,

Even till destruction sicken, answer me

To what I ask you.’ (Act IV, Sc i)

HORROR: BLOOD AND GORE

Graphic images of blood and suffering help build the feeling of fear and horror.

Not all bloodshed is condemning.

The same feeling of fear and horror is contributed to by images of animals, mostly predatory, unpleasant or fierce.

HORROR: BLOOD AND GORE

‘unseamed him from the nave to the chaps’.

Macbeth and Banquo are depicted ‘bathing in reeking wounds’ (Act I, Sc ii).

‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.’ (Act II, Sc ii)

‘ I am in blood

Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er’ (Act III, Sc v)

full of scorpions is my mind’

‘The have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,

But, bear-like, I must fight the course.’ (Act V, Sc vi)

IMAGES OF THE FUTURE

The play’s imagery

depicts the future

as the child of the

present in life-giving

images of seeds and

babies.

IMAGES OF THE FUTURE

Though the treasure of nature’s germen tumble all together,

Even till destruction sicken, answer me

To what I ask you.’

‘And that which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but in their stead,

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not;

(Act V, Sc iii)

‘ What’s more to do,

Which would be planted newly with the time, -

As calling home our exiled friends abroad,’ (Act V, Sc ix)

RIDING IMAGES

Duncan refers to Macbeth’s love for him as ‘sharp as his spur’ (Act I, sc vi).

The babe Macbeth imagines spreading the news of Duncan’s death in a quasi-apocalyptic scene is seen ‘striding the blast’ (Act I, Sc vii).

Macbeth describes his own ambition in riding terms: using a ‘spur’ to prick the sides of his intention (rather than a horse) and describing his ambition as a rider who leaps on his horse with too much energy and so ‘overleaps’ and falls on the other side.

THEMES

SEEMING VS BEING

The fiend, which lies like truth:

False prophecies

None of woman born can harm Macbeth

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill

shall come against him

Fortune and rebels

As whence the sun ‘gins his reflection,

Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break,

So from the spring,w hence comfort seemed to come,

Discomfort swells.’ (aCt 1, Sc ii)

The Macbeths: The strain of deceit

These terrible dreams which shake us nightly

Full of scorpions is my mind

‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’: throughout Scotland

Banquo’s ‘royalty of nature’ becomes a threat

Malcolm lies to thrice test Macduff

TRAGEDY: FATE VS CHARACTER

Aristotle saw a tragic hero as a man of high standing who opposes a conflicting

internal or external force.

The tragic hero has a tragic flaw, Macbeth’s may be his ambition.

It is this tragic flaw that leads to his downfall and, because of his status the

downfall of others.

TRAGEDY: FATE VS CHARACTER

The witches don’t really control the action

Did the murder of Duncan start the mechanisms of fate that would henceforth inevitably, given Macbeth’s character lead to tragedy?

I believe so.

THE ORDER OF THINGS AND THE

MONSTROUS

under Duncan things are as they should be

Note images of banqueting

It is thus not surprising that the Lord in Act II Sc vi prays that

‘we may again

Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights,

Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives.’

Macbeth’s inability to sleep, lacking ‘the season of all nature’

The unnaturalness in nature and the animal world following the murder of Duncan and under Macbeth’s rule

The English king’s ability to heal in contrast to Scotland’s disease under Macbeth.

PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION

Rosse, the traitor?

‘He has no children’ (Act IV, Sc iii)

‘We fail’ (Act 1, Sc vii)

Was Duncan a good king?

Is Lady Macbeth a monster?

‘She should have died hereafter’ (Act V Sc v)

Why does Banquo not speak of his doubts of Macbeth?

Are the Witches and ghosts figments of Macbeth’s imagination?

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace

Till the last syllable of recorded time

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death

Out, out brief candle: life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that

struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

CHARACTERS

MACBETH

Macbeth the soldier

Macbeth the husband

Macbeth the man who goes against nature

because of his ambition?

because he was taunted by his wife?

Because fate so decided?

Macbeth the tragic hero: not simply an embodiment of evil

Macbeth the man who can feel torment and self doubt

LADY MACBETH

Lady Macbeth: the loving wife

Lady Macbeth: the woman who monstrously and willfully goes against her own nature

Lady Macbeth: the woman who breaks down in the effort to deny her own nature?

THE WITCHES

Are they real or figments of Macbeth’s

imagination?

What is the extent of their power?

THE WITCHES

Who were The Witches to the Elizabethans?

Prophecies & Apparitions

Equivocation

Seeming Vs Being

Impact on Macbeth

Strong because they appealed to his ambition, which was his tragic flaw

Their power had its limitation

‘though his bark cannot be tossed’

So they tempted Macbeth but they did not control him

IS MACBETH TO BE CONSIDERED A TRAGEDY?

Aristotlean Tragedy: a man of influential position who has a tragic flaw and is led to his downfall by his tragic flaw, bringing also tragic consequences on his society.

The tragic hero faces internal and external conflict

Macbeth’s ambition as his tragic flaw

Some people might say it was a question of fate

But in my opinion...the witches could have tempted but not forced Macbeth into action...so it was due to his tragic flaw

Tragic consequences for himself and his society

The downfall of Macbeth (his suffering, his relationship with his wife, his eventual defeat and death)

Consequnces for Scotland

Perturbation in nature: animal images, and events

Scotland as a sick country

Macbeth’s internal and external conflict

When planning the murder we see his horrified reaction to the idea

Horror afterwards: pluck out mine eyes, full of scorpopns is my mind

External conflict: wading through blood, buckle his distempered cause

ON ASIDES/EXTRACTS

Where it appears in the play

It’s meaning

The imagery/theme in the extract and how it ties up with the rest of the play

How the extract relates to the particular character development

THE END