macbeth

Question 1

macbeth character presentation act 1

Answer 1

-when macbeth is introduced, it’s through reports to the king of macbeth’s success in battle
-he is described as a savage warrior
-his efforts on the battlefield saved the day
-duncan is overwhelmed by the positive reports and decides to reward macbeth with a new title, thane of cawdor

-macbeth is almost immediately faced with the witches, who foretell of great things to come for Macbeth (than of cawdor -> king)
-macbeth feels temptation to accept the prophecies
-as the witches vanish, macbeth recovers his composure
-a messenger from the king arrives and delivers to Macbeth his new title, thane of Cawdor - immediately fulfilling one of the witches’ prophecies
-now, macbeth considers what fate seems to have in store for him
-he decides that the witches have told him the truth, and that he will be king
however, he also decides to let fate take its own course rather than take advantage of the knowledge he has gained
-while we see macbeth being tempted, we also see him overcome that temptation

-upon arrival back at his castle, macbeth is greeted by his wife, lady macbeth
-lady macbeth manipulates her husband, at first trying loving persuasion; when that fails, she then turns to personal attacks on his manhood & then belittles him as being a coward and child, lacking the ability to do what needs to be done to achieve the promise of becoming king
-under this attack, we see macbeth crumble
-he reveals that he is malleable when it comes to what she desires
-even to the point of murdering his beloved king for sake of pleasing his wife and regaining peace under his roof

Question 2

‘like valour’s minion, carved out his passage… unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops’ [A1S2]

Answer 2

simile: ‘like valour’s minion’
↳ he is favoured by valour (minion comes from the middle french word ‘mignon’ meaning favourite)
↳ he is completely fearless in battle

personification: ‘like valour’s minion’
↳ elevates macbeth to almost heroism as he is personally selected by valour
↳ makes it seem as though valour

semantic field of butchery/skilled trade: ‘carved’, ‘unseamed’, ‘smoked’
↳ macbeth’s violence and cruelty is controlled, he is skilled and a great fighter
↳ butchery requires great skill but the killing comes easy to macbeth, showing his proficiency (hints to how he doesn’t respect human life)
↳ carving of sculptures also needs skill, but also control & experience, showing how macbeth is methodical and calculated with his killing, he’s a careful, intricate master in battle and has unparalleled skill, this is slightly off-putting but at this point of the play, okay as he is good

verb: ‘unseamed’
↳ dehumanises macdonwald by comparing human life to a piece of clothing
↳ foreshadows macbeth’s nonchalance towards destroying life
↳ gruesome imagery
↳ foreshadows macbeths own death as his head was put on a stick
↳ to do this macbeth would’ve had to been close to macdonwald
↳ seams rip easily, emphasise macbeth’s power

Question 3

‘disdaining fortune with his brandished steel’ [A1S2]

Answer 3

‘steel’
↳ symbolises how impenetrable he is in battle
↳ characterises his tenacity in battle but also foreshadows his resistance and arrogance to forgo violence

‘disdaining fortune’
↳ disdain refuse to do something from feelings of pride or superiority
↳ foreshadows demise (cyclical)

‘brandished’
↳ shows signs of sadism

Question 4

‘stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires’ [A1S4]

Answer 4

stars
↳ links to nobility & heavenliness as duncan said
↳ represents his false appearance

biblical reference: ‘stars’
↳ source of light, stars are seen as guidance to salvation and hope (star of bethlehem), if the stars were allowed to shine, they would reveal macbeth’s true desires

personification:
↳ wants the stars to hide his dark truth

fire:
↳ connotates to his passion for evil

light
↳ sees into desires, scrutinises human actions
↳ in light, darkness cannot flourish

adjective: ‘black’
↳ death, evil
↳ macbeth wants remain in the dark where he can freely commit evil

adjective: ‘deep’
↳ beyond the surface, hidden
↳ intense
↳ difficult to understand

(establishes lights vs dark theme)

Question 5

what does the fact that macbeth ’thought good’ before sending lady macbeth the letter say about him? [A1S4]

Answer 5

-he is cunning, he knows he is too empathetic to execute the plan himself and needs lady macbeth’s help
-he obviously anticipated her reaction and therefore manipulated himself

Question 6

why does macbeth write his letter in prose?

Answer 6

he wants to emphasise the macbeth’s low status and influence lady macbeth into creating a plan to advance their status up to what the witches have promised

Question 7

‘I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other’ [A1S7]

Answer 7

(macbeth is aware of his hamartia)

complex metaphor:
↳ compares equitation to ambition
↳ just like a horse/horse rider, he may overestimate his proficiency and
fail
↳ horses jump over obstacles, macbeth’s ambition will propel him to clear the obstacle of duncan
↳ ambition is something of a problem – it may help the rider clear an obstacle, but it may also make the rider go down
↳ macbeth can’t finish his thought, so the image which hangs in the air is of ambition, either rising or falling or both
↳ macbeth recognises the motivation given to him by his ambition to be king, the worry of falling still gives him doubts

‘spur’
↳ on boots/incentive
↳ macbeth is aware that he has no true reason to kill duncan & understands that this is wrong, yet is more concerned about if his plan will succeed rather then being right or wrong

personification: ‘vaulting ambition’
↳ his ambition is high achieving, but is his hamartia

o’erleaps
↳ foreshadows how macbeths plan will fail, he isn’t as conniving or strong as he thinks and therefore his plan doesn’t work

Question 8

macbeth’s characterisation in act 2

Question 9

‘a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat oppressed-brain?’ [A2S1]

Answer 9

metaphor: ‘a dagger of the mind’
↳ a metaphor says that something is something else, this shows how macbeth believes that this is a real dagger at first, he is completely deranged and doesn’t know right from wrong

commas:
↳ break up the text and imitate macbeth’s speech, show how macbeth is completely in disbelief and pauses constantly to comprehend what is happening

‘false creation’
↳ the fact that macbeth knows that he is hallucinating is strange
↳ people with hallucinations often don’t know that they are seeing things; the fact that macbeth does highlights the idea that Macbeth both sane and insane at the same time (internal conflict)

metaphor: ‘heat-oppressed brain’
↳ heat relates to how macbeth’s sword ‘smoked’ in A1S2, macbeth has bloodlust and is sadistic
↳ oppressed comes from latin oppressus (to squeeze, suffocate) this shows how macbeth’s brain is completely overwhelmed by the thought of murder, this is odd as macbeth seems to be more fascinated with killing than becoming king and gaining power

question mark:
↳ macbeth isn’t sure if anything he sees is real

Question 10

‘thy very stones prate of my whereabouts’ [A2S1]

Answer 10

personification: ‘stones prate’
↳ macbeth is extremely paranoid & insane, this drives his violence, he believes that an inanimate object will give away his murder

Question 11

‘macbeth does murder sleep, innocent sleep’ [A2S2]

Answer 11

metaphor:
↳ foreshadows macbeths constant cycle of murder as he even murders an inanimate object, which is impossible to do

sleep
↳ motif for innocence
↳ macbeth can’t sleep, he’s extremely evil
↳ repeated to show how macbeth desires sleep

Question 12

‘will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? no… making the green one red’ [A2S2]

Answer 12

hyperbole: ‘great neptune’s oceans’
↳ macbeth is so overtaken by evil that the lengths he has to go to get rid of his guilt are extensive, even multitudinous amounts of water cannot clear his guilt
(blood is a motif for guilt)
↳ macbeth’s evil is so extreme that he will pollute great oceans rather than being cleansed by them

reference to roman god: ‘neptune’
↳ god of waters and seas
↳ his statues are usually in fountains, referring to cleansing
↳ the reference to neptune, who is a roman god shows how macbeths actions have gone against God’s will, God now rejects macbeth for being a sinner and disrupting the divine right of kings
↳ could also show that macbeth is no longer afraid of God’s judgement/ he no longer believes in God’s omnipotence as he goes to a roman God for help

juxtaposition: ‘green’ and ‘red’
↳ green has connotations of nature and peace while red has connotations of danger and aggression, so macbeth shows how his aggression and evil is too strong and will overcome all things opposition
↳ macbeths murder of duncan has caused the inversion of nature, nature not only means the physical world collectively, but features and qualities of something, this means that all things are corrupted

Question 13

‘his silver skin laced with his golden blood; and his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature’ [A2S3]

Question 14

macbeth’s characterisation in act 3

Question 15

‘full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife’ [A3S2]

Answer 15

metaphor: ‘full of scorpions…my mind’
↳ scorpions poison everything they come into contact with, reminds the audience about the contaminating effects of the witches
↳ scorpions are malign creatures that are associated with poison, the fact that macbeth thinks that they are in his mind means that he is in mental anguish constantly
↳ toxic effects of the witches’ intervention in his life

‘dear wife’:
↳ creates a connection between macbeth and lady macbeth, foreshadows their doomed fate, as their actions have aligned with the witches’ moral degradation and brought ruin to scotland

Question 16

‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er’ [A3S4]

Answer 16

(metaphor)

motif: blood
↳ guilt

‘stepp’d’ -> can be translated as stepped or steeped in modern english
(steeped - soak | stepped - action)
↳ while steeped would imply that it is macbeth’s fate, stepped would imply that macbeth’s evil is his own will

verb: ‘wade’
↳ in A2S2, the blood from macbeth’s hands is said to make “the green one red”, now he is wading in the blood water; reversing what is said before (shows comfort with murder)
↳ macbeth acknowledges how much effort he had put in to get to this halfway point, therefore turning back is a waste of time &

Question 17

‘I have almost forgotten the taste of fears’ [A5S5]

Answer 17

metaphor: ‘taste of fears’
↳ macbeth has done such vile acts & can’t be scared anymore, he is still brave, even at the end, this is the warrior inside of him, the one we saw at the start of the play
↳ alternatively, you could say that his belief in his “invincibility” gives him too much ignorance which blinds him to other possibilities of the witches’ prophecy, his blind arrogance and stupidity (hubris) leads to his downfall
↳ perhaps macbeth is so devoid of emotions now that he feels empty and that his life is futile, he wishes to regain his emotions and therefore die (supported by life is but a…)

Question 18

‘she should have died hereafter’ [A5S5] ‘throw physic to the dogs’

Answer 18

-show the attitude of equality between them
-macbeth’s feelings for Lady Macbeth are actually shown as very strong, as he sees her as his ‘partner’
-shown by his anger at the doctor’s inability to treat Lady Macbeth, and his insistance that he should ‘throw physic to the dogs’ if he cannot fix her, and therefore demonstrating his own desperation to keep her by his side
-makes the expression ‘she should have died hereafter’ seem much more tender, because whilst he see his own life as ‘signifying nothing’, he hoped that she could’ve lived on longer and fulfil the ‘greatness’ he saw in her from the beginning of the play
-this belief was uncommon in a marriage in jacobean times

-the off stage death is presented partly to explain what can happen when women are denied any equality or power in a patriarchal society
-lady m’s marginalisation is what lead to her desire to become queen

Question 19

‘out, out, brief candle! life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts…upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ [A5S5]

Answer 19

imperative verb: ‘out, out, brief candle’
↳ brief candle symbolises life itself, macbeth thinks about the meaning of living, he thinks that life is short and has no real meaning (emphasises how his search for an easy life as king meant nothing in the end)
↳ mirrors lady macbeth’s earlier speech and reinforces a connection between them

metaphor: ‘walking shadow’
↳ shadows aren’t palpable, shows how life is fleeting & at the end of your life, all your endeavours mean nothing

‘a tale told by an idiot’
↳ fate is inevitable

Question 20

‘stake’ [A5S7]

Answer 20

-stake has connotations of a witch and emphasises macbeths sheer evil and satanic nature
-punishment and activity of witches, this would’ve completely disgusted jacobean viewers

Question 21

‘but, bear-like, I must fight the course’ [A5S7]

Answer 21

plosives: ‘but bear-like’
↳ macbeth is eternally violent, plosives emphasise his strength in combat

zoomorphism: ‘bear-like’
↳ wild animalistic attributes, macbeth is so devoid of any human characteristics that he is now closer to an animal than a human

verb: ‘fight’
↳ emphasises his violence right to the end

Question 22

macbeth in act 4

Question 23

macbeth in act 5

Question 24

‘if it were done when ‘it’s done, then ‘twere done quickly’ [A1S7]

Answer 24

biblical allusion: ‘quickly’
↳ relates to when judas betrayed jesus and jesus said ‘that thou doest, do quickly’
↳ by drawing a parallel between judas and macbeth, we see how macbeth is traitorous, and the worst of villains
↳ this is all how macbeth views himself