Tag: Macbeth

Macbeth by act 5…

There is no doubt that Macbeth is numbed by his many ‘bloody’ experiences. Famously, his response to the news of his ‘dearest’ wife’s death is that she ‘should have died hereafter’. Although such a response is ambiguous, I think it captures the undeniable reality that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are now living in two separate worlds:

Macbeth’s is a hellish present, eternal day, where he must see through his fall from grace, despite knowing that it is ultimately futile.

Lady Macbeth (before her suicide), is trapped in an eternal night, haunted by the past.

Macbeth’s haunting, rhythmic line: ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’, with its polysyndeton, illustrates how weighed down he is by the burden of regicide. He sees only meaningless succession in the days that might follow, each one stretching into eternity, never punctuated by happiness. The futility of exitance replaces his former excitement for the future.

Time is slow as treacle too, with Macbeth wishing the ‘candle’ of life to be ‘out’. In many senses this is Macbeth’s final ‘proper’ speech – a culmination of his thoughts before his inevitable death (the flawed tragic hero must fall).

A critic, David Garrick, said in 1744 that his death is not nearly as dramatic or as elegant as it should be for a tragic hero. But what is your reaction to his death?

Personally, I see it as tragic but inevitable. In subverting the Great Chain of Being and thus God/nature he MUST go punished (James I would not have allowed otherwise!). Macbeth too allowed space for female power – something Shakespeare’s audience deeply feared. In subverting gender norms and sometimes being feminised, he has gone accept society’s expectations. Aligned with the witches, he must be ‘trialed’ and ‘executed’.

There isn’t much cheer therefore at his death – we have followed him throughout after all.

‘Macbeth’ Grade 9 Example Response

Grade 9 – full mark – ‘Macbeth’ response

Starting with this extract (from act 1 scene 7), how does Shakespeare present the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?

In Shakespeare’s eponymous tragedy ‘Macbeth’, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship is a complex portrait of love, illustrating layers of utter devotion alongside overwhelming resentment. Though the couple begins the play unnaturally strong within their marriage, this seems to act as an early warning of their imminent and inevitable fall from grace, ending the play in an almost entirely different relationship than the one they began the play with.

In the exposition of the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth initially appear immensely strong within their marriage, with Macbeth describing his wife as ‘my dearest partner of greatness’ in act 1 scene 5. The emotive superlative adjective ‘dearest’ is a term of endearment, and acts as a clear depiction of how valued Lady Macbeth is by her husband. Secondly, the noun ‘partner’ creates a sense of sincere equality which, as equality within marriage would have been unusual in the Jacobean era, illustrates to a contemporary audience the positive aspects of their relationship. Furthermore the lexical choice ‘greatness’ may connote ambition, and as they are ‘partner(s)’, Shakespeare suggests that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are equal in their desire for power and control, further confirming their compatibility but potentially hinting that said compatibility will serve as the couple’s hamartia.

However, the strength of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship falls into a rapid downward spiral in the subsequent scenes, as a struggle for power within the marriage ensues. This is evidenced when Macbeth, in act 1 scene 7, uses the declarative statement ‘we will proceed no further in this business’. Here, Macbeth seems to exude masculinity, embracing his gender role and dictating both his and his wife’s decisions. The negation ‘no’ clearly indicates his alleged definitive attitude. However, Lady Macbeth refuses to accept her husband’s rule, stating ‘when you durst do it, then you were a man’. She attempts to emasculate him to see their plan through. The verb ‘durst’ illustrates the risk taking behaviour that Lady Macbeth is encouraging; implying an element of toxicity within their relationship, and her harsh speech makes the cracks in their relationship further visible to the audience. It is also probable that a contemporary audience would be made severely uncomfortable in the presence of Lady Macbeth’s unapologetic display of power, and it is possible that Shakespeare attempts to paint Lady Macbeth as the villain of the play, playing upon the audience’s pre-determined fears of feminine power. Though Lady Macbeth appears to be acting entirely out of self-interest, another reader may argue that she influences her husband so heavily to commit the heinous act of regicide, as she believes that he crown may as a substitute for the child or children that Shakespeare suggests she and Macbeth have lost previously, and in turn better Macbeth’s life and bring him to the same happiness that came with the child, except in another form.

As the play progresses, Shakespeare creates more and more distance between the characters, portraying the breakdown of their relationship as gradual within the play but rapid in the overall sense of time on stage. For example, Lady Macbeth requests a servant ‘say to the king’ Lady Macbeth ‘would attend his leisure/ for a few words’. Here she is reduced to the status of someone far lesser than the king, having to request to speak to her own husband. It could be interpreted that, now as king, Macbeth holds himself above all else, even his wife, perhaps due to the belief of the divine right of kings. The use of the title rather than his name plainly indicated the lack of closeness Lady Macbeth now feels with Macbeth and intensely emotionally separates them. This same idea is referenced as Shakespeare develops the characters to almost juxtapose each other in their experiences after the murder of Duncan. For example, Macbeth seems to be trapped in a permanent day, after ‘Macbeth does murder sleep’ and his guilt and paranoia render him unable to rest. In contrast, Lady Macbeth takes on an oppositional path, suffering sleepwalking and unable to wake from her nightmare; repeating the phrase ‘to bed. To bed’ as if trapped in a never-ending night. This illustrates to the audience the extreme transformation Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship undergoes, and how differently they end up experiencing the aftermath of regicide.

In conclusion, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth begin the play almost too comfortable within their marriage, which seems to invite the presence of chaos and tragedy into their relationship. Their moral compositions are opposing one another, which leads to the distancing and total breakdown of their once successful marriage and thus serves as a warning to the audience about the effects of murder, and what the deadly sin of greed can do to a person and a marriage.

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Ambition: a corrupting influence in ‘Macbeth’

Whilst it is certainly true that “without ambition one starts nothing… the prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson), the Macbeths certainly start something, a terrible feat of violence they cannot draw to a close. In Macbeth’s own deeply unsettling words:

‘things bad begun, make strong themselves by ill’.

In other words, when one malevolent act is set in motion others are bound to follow. One cannot commit regicide and expect subsequently to live holily. Duncan’s murder is but, to use a time honored cliched, the tip of the ice-burg. Violence inevitably follows violence and thus to retain his kingship Macbeth is forced to utilize violence directly and indirectly. His butcher-like qualities readily escalate as the action of the play heightens. 

But back to ambition – an integral theme that examiners are especially fond of- it spurs our protagonists on from the very opening of the play in act 1. When exploring this theme ask yourself why ambition becomes the Macbeth’s hamartia. After all, having some semblance of ambition is neither immoral nor troublesome. The true trouble occurs when ‘vaulting ambition’ is given full sway, is nurtured at the expense of morality.

The witches are certainly catalysts for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s unchecked ambition. When they grant partial access into the ‘seeds of time’ (Banquo 1:3), Macbeth is catapulted into fancies he has probably never truly entertained, to be ‘king hereafter’. Perceptive audience members may well acknowledge Macbeth’s emerging ambition when he employs the imperative ‘stay you imperfect speakers’. He is undoubtedly intrigued and somewhat intoxicated by the prophecy, wishing to hear the elaborate and fine details of his supposed ascension. Furthermore, the fact that he utilities an aside in disclosing his ‘black and deep desires’, underscores his early contemplation of regicide. His ambition accelerates at such a pace that audiences are left contemplating his soul’s imminent corruption.

In the rising action of the play within the 1st of Macbeth’s sprawling soliloquies, he demonstrates palpable fears, doubts and conflicting emotions. Macbeth attempts to suppress his ambition, or at least avoid the malevolent thoughts it has recently awoken within him. Despite momentarily wrestling with his ambition and winning, Lady Macbeth is instrumental in granting his ambition full sway (‘when you durst do it, then you were a man’).

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (Illustrations to Shakespeare)

When Lady Macbeth hears of her partner’s recent interaction with the weird sisters, she acknowledges that he is ‘not without ambition’ yet to her dismay, ‘without the illness’ required to usurp Duncan from his throne. As an 11th century woman, in a society dominated by the violence of hyper-masculinity, she knows better than anyone that to attain power one must transcend societal expectation. When Lady Macbeth calls to the spirits to ‘unsex her’ she desires a divorcing from all cultural limitations, as a woman repressed within the domestic sphere with no dealings in the political andocentric world of men. It is likely Lady Macbeth’s ambition is a mirror image of Macbeth’s. After all, all she does it for him, her life is lived through him.  

So for now, in the early moments of the play, ambition is already instrumental in guiding our protagonists, in encouraging them to ‘o’erleap’ their positions in the hierarchy and to subvert the natural order. 

Keep a close eye on this theme and its dire consequences on morality, relationships and nature.

Like and comments if you found this helpful or have any questions! – Miss Huttlestone

Duncan’s kingship example paragraph

Throughout the entirety of Act I, Duncan is on the throne and he is consistently represented as a virtuous ruler, cherished by his subjects. First of all, he is generously full of praise for other characters, ironically calling Lady Macbeth ‘honour’d hostess’ immediately after she has rather dishonourably plotted to murder him. Even when Macbeth is likewise preoccupied with the murder plot in Act 1 Scene 7, he acknowledges that Duncan has been ‘So clear in his great office’, suggesting his authority has widely been respected as strong and just. This is further exaggerated when he imagines that, due to Duncan’s imminent death, ‘tears shall drown the wind’, hyperbolically predicting that the collective mourning of his subjects will be even more noisy than stormy weather. James I was believed to be in the first audience in 1606, so Shakespeare may have expected the public to link the strengths of Duncan to him and thus understand that it is a mistake to in any way question the the authority of a so-called divinely appointed monarch let alone usurp one.

The Supernatural and its influence in ‘Macbeth’

I mentioned before that I have a feeling regarding the witches/ the supernatural for the summer exam.

With this inclination in mind, here’s a fabulous podcast that explores the supernatural’s influence throughout the play:

http://sccenglish.podbean.com/e/macbeth-revision-v-the-witches-and-the-supernatural/

It covers the witches but also the relationship between the supernatural and the human world e.g. the influence it wields over Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and those it doesn’t entirely (Banquo).

 

Links to two amazingly insightful podcasts from the actors themselves on ‘Macbeth’

Morning year 11,

I have just spent my morning listening to the two podcasts (contained in the videos at the top of each page linked below). These come highly recommended from me as actors openly discuss their views on the play and the characters they portray.

I especially love the ways in which they frankly explore their perceptions of the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Including their relationship with time and how it ultimately segregates them by the end of the play (Macbeth is stuck in the hellish, permanent day, whilst Lady Macbeth is confined to the hellscape of permanent night time in her sleepwalking and death).

Listen to the first episode here:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/much-ado-shakespeare-part-1-macbeth-christopher-eccleston/amp/

The second instalment explores Lady Macbeth in more detail and the context of gender (so important!): 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/much-ado-shakespeare-part-2-unsex-women-macbeth/amp/

Enjoy!