Macbeth

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Macbeth

• By
• William Shakespeare
• AKA The Bard

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A tragedy...

• A tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity
  leading to the death of a man in high estate .
• A.C. BRADLEY
• tragedie, a solemne play, describing cruel
  murders and sorrowes
• CAWDREY, 'hard word list', 1604
• Tragedie. A play or Historie ending with great
  sorrow and bloodshed.
• BULLOKAR, earliest English dictionary, 1616.

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A tragedy...

• Tragédia, a tragedie or moornefull play being a
  loftie kinde of poetrie, and representing
  personages of great state and matter of much
  trouble, a great broile or stirre it beginneth
  prosperously and endeth vnfortunatelie or
  sometimes doubtfullie, and is contrarie to a
  comedie.
• FLORIO, English-Italian dictionary, 1598

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Tragedies ...

• Chart the downfall of a hero, whose own death
  leads to the downfall of others.
• Shakespeare's Tragedies
• Hopes fears.
• Suffering - inflicted borne
• Being human fallible, tempted, weak, honourable

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Structure of a tragedy

• There are four parts to the tragedy (a similar
  structure applies to comedy too)
• Part one - protasis, the setting up the
  situationPart two - epitasis, the complication
  of the actionPart three - catastasis, the main
  body of the actionPart four - catastrophe, the
  ending or unwinding
• Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC
• http//www.rsc.org.uk/macbeth/tragedy/definitions.
  html

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Inspiration 4 Macbeth

• Probably written around 1605 1606, published in
  1623.
• Shakespeares Macbeth presents theatregoers with
  an absorbing drama of kingship, tyranny,
  usurpation and regicide.
• Inspired by a true story!
• Chronicles of England, Ireland and Scotland by
  Raphael Holinshed published in 1587.
• Was Shakespeare sucking up to his King? It seems
  so...
• King James 1
• Had an ancestor named Banquo?
• Had an interest in witchcraft!

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Political context

• King James 1 of England - AKA Stuart James V1 of
  Scotland - was on the throne
• Great tension between Protestants Catholics
• King James 1 was keen to subdue any Catholic
  uprisings
• 5th November 1605 Gunpowder plot effort to
  blow up King James

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Theatre in Shakespeares Time

• Voicing opinions
• For the man in the street
• Language used was the usual language
• Contemporary relevant

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Great Chain of Being

• Very hierarchical King or Queen were divine
  rulers
• God was at the top was the supreme ruler.
• Everything animate inanimate had a place
• This hierarchy was considered permanent
• Concepts of heaven and hell were very real to
  people.
• The Devil could take on the form of a familiar
  a cat, a toad to work with witches
• Message stay in your place!

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The creepy world of Jacobean England

• King James Gods right hand man
• Witches bad, bad, bad.
• He passed a law banning the "use, practice, or
  exercise of any sort of witchcraft, sorcery,
  charm or enchantment".
• Witch craft trials - Nov 1590 May 1591 over
  100 put to death
• Monarch at risk from activities of witches

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The creepy world of Jacobean England

• Women 100s accused, tortured and killed
• It was believed witches could
• fly
• make people ill
• conjure visions
• make themselves invisible
• conjure storms
• cause shipwrecks
• cause crops to fail

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Macbeth

• In Macbeth - we have an eponymous hero a
  killing machine
• Guilty of the most heinous crime imaginable for
  its Jacobean audience regicide, or the murder
  of a king.
• Malcolm, who succeeds in murdering Macbeth,
  judges him a mere butcher.
• Macbeth shows us something of our own darker side
  and our own potential for evil.
• In love with his wife, a noble warrior, a brave
  solider, a loyal subject of his king.

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Why was it so terrifying?

• The murder of the King
• The murder of innocents children are murdered
• Macbeths visions imagination
• The Weird Sisters or the witches
• The reversal of the natural order - storms,
  earthquakes, rough seas, strong winds
• THE BLOOD!!!

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Themes

• Ambition
• Evil
• Appearance versus reality
• Violence and tyranny
• Guilt and conscience
• Man and masculinity
• Equivocation
• Order and disorder
• Loyalty and honour

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What can Shakespeare's tragedies teach us?

• Still relevant today
• Dramas and intrigue that still rule
• What motivates us
• Ambition versus the common good
• What makes a good leader
• The language!

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Language Literary Devices

• The creation of new words phrases
• Use of imagery in all its forms metaphor,
  simile and personification.
• Some examples mind diseased, full of
  scorpions or, when Macbeth sees himself wading
  through a river of blood after Macduff has turned
  against him (Act 3, Scene 4 lines 136 -8).
  Another example is when Lady Macbeth tells her
  husband to look like thinnocent flower/But be
  the serpent undert Act 1, Scene V, Lines 63
  64).
• Recurring images are
• darkness creating a sense of evil
• disease crazed minds, fog and filthy air of
  the witches
• clothes to give you an identity and conceal
  who you are
• nature a world turned upside down by unnatural
  acts, animals behaving in strange ways or sending
  ominous messages

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Language Literary Devices

• Piling up words in lists In thunder,
  lighting, or in rain or when Malcolm lists
  Macbeths vices bloody, luxurious,
  avaricious... (Act 4, Scene 3, lines 57 60)
• Anthithesis - opposition of ideas, words or
  phrases When the battles lost, and won or
  Fair is foul, and foul is fair

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Literary devices

• Soliloquies (or monologues)
• Verse (more or less poetry)
• Iambic pentameter 10 syllables with a stress
  on every second syllable.
• There are also rhyming couplets two
  consectuative rhyming lines in a verse.
• Prose regular speech

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Literary devices

• Foreshadowing
• Dramatic Irony
• Aside
• Motif