Download Macbeth - Level 3

Macbeth
By William
Shakespeare
Shakespearean Tragedy
• Based on Aristotle’s Poetics
(Renaissance…rebirth…)
– Tragic Hero: noble stature and
greatness, embodies virtue; while
he is great, he is not perfect, he is
accessible, like us
– Downfall is partially his fault, not
by accident or fate alone
• Triggered by error in judgment
or a flaw
– Hamartia = Tragic Flaw
(ambition)
Hamartia: Ambition
• I, v, 14- 17: “Thou wouldst be
great;/Art not without ambition,
but without/The illness should
attend it.” Lady Macbeth
• I, vii, 25
- 28: “I have no spur/To
prick the sides of my intent, but
only/Vaulting ambition, which
o’erleaps itself/And falls on the
other.” Macbeth
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Historical Basis
• According to Holinshed’s
Chronicles of England,
Scotland and
Ireland…Macbeth was an
11th century king of
Scotland
• What does
Shakespeare gain by
making play compact?
– Killed the legitimate king,
Duncan, in 1040
– Ruled for 17 years
– Overthrown by Duncan’s
son Malcolm and Siward
– Action takes place
quickly
– Language itself is
compressed
– Shortest of his
tragedies
– Adds intensity
“Let every man be master of his time…” III, i, 41
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
• Macbeth was the last of the four great
tragedies
– Hamlet, Othello, King Lear…
– Included only in first folio
• Different from traditional tragedies
because of fascination with supernatural,
absence of extreme undeserved suffering
• Atmosphere created mostly by use of
motifs, imagery, metaphorical language
Imagery: broad term including all forms of poetic
language – metaphors, similes, symbols, passages of
heightened natural descriptions, through which a
writer expands and deepens the literary meaning
• Shakespeare’s mastery is in moving easily
from one image to the next, or deepening
one image by extension
– “Two truths are told/As happy prologues to the
swelling act/Of the imperial theme.”
I, 3, 127-129
• Motifs refer to clusters of images
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Imagery
• Shakespeare
continually creates
responses from any
sense: sight, hearing,
touch, smell & taste
• IV, i, 64- 67: “Pour in
sow’s blood, that hath
eaten/Her nine farrow,
grease that’s
sweaten/From the
murderer’s gibbet
throw into the flame.”
Motifs
• Clothes: not whether they are too large or too small for Macbeth,
simply that they are not his clothes
– I, iii, 106-107 “The Thane of Cawdor lives; why do you dress me/In borrowed
robes?”
– II, iv, 38 “Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!”
– V, ii, 15-16 “He cannot buckle his distempered cause/Within the belt of rule.”
– V, ii, 20 – 22 “…now does he feel his title/Hang loose about him, like a giant’s
robe/Upon a dwarfish thief.”
• Pathetic Fallacy: nature’s response to mankind’s actions…nature acting
with human force…disapproval with break in Chain of Being
• Nature and the Unnatural: nature can refer to human nature (play is
about Macbeth’s fall into unnaturalness…kills his king, friend, innocent
woman and her children…he is destroyed when nature itself becomes
unnatural – trees walk, killed by man not born of woman
Motifs
• Appearance v. reality: fair appearances hide foul
realities
• Blood: starts in second scene when news of Macbeth’s
valor is told by bloody man
• Hands: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are both transfixed
by their hands
• Light/Darkness: most of the play takes place in the dark,
they both ask darkness or night to cover their crimes
• Manhood: Shakespeare repeatedly questions what it is to
be a man
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Motifs
• Sleep: Duncan is murdered in his sleep, Macbeth
murders sleep, chestnuts, Lady Macbeth
• Babies and children: many references
• Birds: mostly omens (pathetic fallacy)
• Kingship: true king (healing…) v/ false king (tyranny…)
• Heaven/Hell: Inverness = Hell, Banquo references
Heaven
• Disease: Scotland, Lady Macbeth, king’s healing,
medicine
Shakespeare’s Structure
• Exposition: Hero becomes
engaged in crucial conflict
• Rising Action: Complications
arise, counterforces are set in
motion
• Crisis: Turning point
• Resolution: Counterforces play
out
• Catastrophe: Hero’s downfall
Iambic Pentameter
• 5 stressed beats per line, starting with an
unstressed syllable and alternating, puff
bang
– Blank verse if it is unrhymed
– Heroic couplets (to end scenes)
• “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor
player/That struts and frets his hour upon
the stage…”
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