A Lecture

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

- 1564-1616-Stratford-on-Avon, England- Queen Elizabeth I- Age of Exploration- English Renaissance of 1500-1650- Ideas that characterized this period that are important to this play are…[listen to lecture].

1. Blank Verse: Be aware of shifts in language like this. For example:

the witches speak in rhymed couplets of irregular iambic tetrameter;

the Porter (Act II, scene iii) speaks in prose;

Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene (Act V, scene i) is in prose.

2. Use of figurative language (especially SIMILE and METAPHOR).

For example, in Act I, scene ii, the bloody sergeant describes the battle against Macdonwald.

3. Motifs

There are three similes in this brief, 17-line passage:

• Macbeth and Banquo are not swimming. Neither is drowning. The sergeant is explaining that the two sides of the battle were both exhausted yet each impeding the other’s victory … as two spent swimmers.

• There’s also no whore on the battlefield. But fortune (the mythical figure, blindfolded and spinning her wheel) is smiling – like a woman who gets paid to convince men she loves them – on the rebel’s, Macdonwald’s, cause.

• This is a pretty clear one. Macbeth fights his way to Macdonwald like the special favorite or “pet” of valour (bravery, fortitude, etc.).

Notice the nature or quality of the simile/metaphor.

Consider the example below :“Here lay Duncan,/ His silver skin

laced with his golden blood;/ And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature/ For ruin's wasteful entrance” [Act II, Scene iii].

Likewise, notice who speaks the similes and metaphors …

1. Throughout the play Lady Macbeth uses very few similes, and these are comparatively straightforward:

“Your face … is as a book …” (I,v) “Look like the innocent flower/ But be the serpent

under’t.” (I,v) “The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures …” (II,ii)2. Macbeth, on the other hand, utters many, many more

similes and these are much more complex and “poetic”:

… his virtues/ Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued …/And pity, like a naked new-born babe,/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air,/ Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,/ That tears shall drown the wind. (I, vii)

Watch also for …PERSONIFICATION:• valour’s minion• pity, like a naked newborn babe• I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;• It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash• Is added to her wounds. (IV, iii)HYPERBOLE :• Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood• Clean from my hand? No, this hand will rather• The multitudinous seas incarnadine,• Making the green one red. (II,ii)• … all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten

this little hand (V,i)UNDERSTATEMENT:• This is a sorry sight. (II,ii).

3. MotifsNotice how Shakespeare repeats (or repeats

and develops) certain themes or phrases: Fair is foul, foul is fair; Cleaning Duncan’s blood from their hands; The witches’ abuse of words – ambiguities

and hidden meanings; Guilt, repression, and madness; Sleep and sleeplessness.

Insults AKA The John Green InterludeMore on insults

Dramatic Devices:-- Soliloquy-- Aside-- Foil-- Allusion-- The Supernatural-- Madness-- Tragic Hero-- Conflict (Internal)

Macbeth

versus Lady

Macbeth

-- Usage of the term “witch” vs. “Weird Sisters”.-- wyrd-- one who pretends or is supposed to foresee.-- Klotho and Lachesis [next slide].-- Aristotle [next slide]-- Creon vs. Oedipus-- Renaissance

The Goddesses of Destiny There is some confusion as to the heritage of

the Fates but there is no confusion as to their identities and their divine mission on the earth. Their names are: Klotho (Clotho), Lachesis and Atropos.

Klotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis determines the length of the thread and Atropos cuts the thread when the proper time has come for death.

Atropos is the smallest of the three but she is the eldest and superior to her sisters. Atropos is called “She who cannot be turned.”

The three sisters are commonly called the Fates but Fates and Destinies seem to be interchangeable with most translators.

A Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects [physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.]

Together with Plato and Plato’s teacher, Socrates, Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.

A cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century.

As a cultural movement, it encompassed a resurgence of learning based on classical sources and gradual but widespread educational reform.

Traditionally, this intellectual transformation has resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths [a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields] as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".

-- Holinshed’s Chronicles [next slides].-- Macbeth [King of Scots from 1040 – 1057]-- Duncan I, 1034-- Lady Macbeth, granddaughter of Kenneth IV-- Banquo and James I-- Dunsinane, Forres and Inverness [next slides].

Raphael Holinshed (1529–1580) was an English chronicler, whose work, commonly known as Holinshed's Chronicles, was one of the major sources used by Shakespeare for a number of his plays.

“The hat came as far as Calais, but the head was off before the hat was on.”—Holinshed on Bishop of Rochester John Fisher, executed on orders of King Henry VIII before he could receive his cardinal’s hat.

'I will not be afraid of death and bane till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane‘.Macbeth, Act V, Scene III

Historical References

Check out Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter. She aims to portray a historical Macbeth, but proposes that Macbeth and his rival and sometime ally Thorfinn of Orkney are one and the same (Thorfinn is his birth name and Macbeth is his baptismal name). --"A stunning revelation of the historical Macbeth, harsh and brutal and eloquent." --Washington Post Book World.