Class notes

Macbeth Lecture Summaries

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Course
ENG110 (ENG110)

Institution
University Of Pretoria (UP)

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Uploaded on January 14, 2022
Number of pages 31
Written in 2021/2022
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ENGLISH 110
Macbeth

General
Motto
- Fair is foul and foul is fair

World
- Normally and decent is turned upside down
- Macbeth is going to be vehicle in showing this great man who does terrible things Tragedy
o Things could be the opposite of what is seems - a serious play
o Tragedy showing the
downfall of a
Tragedy main character
- Someone who we respect turning into a monster (protagonist)
- Greatness becoming terrifying generally due to
- Ideas come from their tragic flaw.
o Aristotle, The Poetics (4th C.BC): what he defined as tragedy
1. Reversal of fortune
2. The tragic future is superior
3. Has a flaw, making him a ‘mixture’ of weakness and strength – a two sided character (tragic hero)
4. His weakness leads to his downfall. Tragedy = self-destruction
5. The two-sided hero and plot of self-destruction provokes from audience a double reaction à pity
and terror (eleinon and phoberon) admiration and horror
- Triggered by a great man
- Mixture of good & bad
- Faults destroy him
o He is his own victim

Conflict
- Play is full of internal battle
-
Psychomachia
- A war in the mind
- Mental conflict
- Macbeth

Charles Holinshed
- Macbeth
o Mental instability
o Powerful conscience
o Haunted imagination
o Penetrating genius
o High spirits – energy/ drive
o Had a cruelty and severity that made him unacceptable in society
- Where Shakespeare got his idea for this play – we assume

1

,Marriage
- Lady Macbeth and Macbeth
o Change in relationship
§ Distance
§ Isolation
§ Role reversal
• She becomes weaker
• He becomes stronger
• His leadership
• Her passivity

Masculinity
- Issue
- Lady Macbeth’s manipulation

Consequences of the murder
Psychological
- Mental breakdown
- Insecurity
- Paranoia

Moral
- Loss of
o meaning
o Value
o Purpose

Emotional
- Brutalisation
o Banquo’s murder differs from the kings
§ No tension and conflict before murder
§ No hallucinations before and afterwards
§ Not much more affected by Banquo’s murder – deals with it very easily
- Ruthlessness

Social
- Isolation
- Exclusion

Political
- Tyranny
- Chaos

Spiritual
- Surprise
- Crime as committed – feels as if God has left him

Ecological
- Natural chaos
- At war with man

Theme
- Crime doesn’t pay
- Tragedy

2

,How does the play end?
- Act 1
o Exposition
- Act 2
o Rising action
- Act 3
o Climax
o Scene 4
- Act 4
o Healing and repairing scene
o Falling action
- Act 5
o Resolution
o Final lead up to the end
§ Tragedy
• Fearing and pitying
§ Make audience – sympathetic, horrified and impressed by Macbeth
o Malcom
§ “this dead butcher and fiend-like queen”
• Scene 9
• Is Macbeth all he is – a butcher?
o Do we agree that he is simply a butcher who we are disgusted by?
o Therefore no tragedy – has to be something else
• Is Lady Macbeth just a devil? – she cant be as the don’t have this type of breakdown
o
§
- Why 5 acts
o Convention – all Shakespeare’s plays have 5 acts
o Curious structure
o Features
§ Dead centre of the play
• Act 3
o Some kind of peak
• Act 1 and 2 leading up to it
• Act 4 and 5 leading away from it
o Tension is going to focus
o Starts descent at end of Act 3
§ Scene 4
• “How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding?”
§ Begins it early on
Act 1, scene 1
Wants the audience to be unsettled, disconcerted, disturbed (disturbance of expectation) and disappointment
- Does this by the witches’ language
- 4 stresses: old English language
If Duncan is killed
- why is Macbeth made king and not Malcolm or Donalbain?
o They run away in fear for their lives
Notice Macbeth and Banquo are listed together here
- They are close buddies until Duncan’s murder
o This is different than what happened in history

3

, A thane is a nobleman
- someone in charge of a small area but reports to the king
- Kind of like a duke or earl in England.
- Similar to all the mayors of the cities and towns reporting to a governor of a state
o who reports to the president
Why are witches in the play?
- Poetic license
o In order to have someone ‘put the idea’ of killing the king in Macbeth’s head.

“fair is foul”
- How it begins
o Shock tactic of the witches’ incarnation
o Unexpected, powerful, menacing aura
§ Heightened by their language
• Sinister
• Gross
• Obscene
• Deranged
o The image of “foolishness”
§ The experience of deep disturbance and trauma
- Prepares for the fundamental trauma at the centre of the play
o Macbeth’s self-destruction
- Tragedy is the drama of reversal
o Great man brought down
§ He allows the foul to take over
• This is the trauma
• The audience’s admiration and horror
o A mixture of fair and foul

Act 1, scene 2
First battle
Scotland vs. MacDonald
- Macbeth his group of Scottish rebels
- Banquo
- All soldiers from the King
- Duncan
- Scotland won
- Note how Macdonald was killed...

Second battle
Scotland vs. Norway
- Macbeth Norwegian soldiers with help of Scottish traitor (Thane Of Cawdor)
- Banquo
- All soldiers For King Duncan
- Scotland won
- Note how surprising this attack was

There is a civil war
The king has been threatened by a rebel army lead by Macdonald
Motif
- Bloody captain
- (Image) going to be expanded throughout play
King’s champion – Macbeth

4

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