Macbeth
Lecture Notes

Themes & topics
Click here for general background [pay special attention to the sections on witches]

historical background:
The Witch Hunts

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Henry Fuseli, The Three Witches (c. 1793)

Macbeth
1.1 ("An open place.")
question of location of scene: time + space
equivocation of language: thunder & rain, lost & won
"Fair is foul, and foul is fair"

1.2.1 ("What bloody man is that?")
definition of masculinity through violence

1.2.16-24 ("For brave Macbeth ...")
"... carved out his passage ... unseam'd him ..." -- metaphors

1.3.38-88 ("So foul and fair ...")
Macbeth echoes language of witches (see Study Question 1)
ambiguity of gender
question of "fantastical or [what] outwardly ye show"
= objective reality or subjective perception
= see dagger scene (2.1) & other uncanny events

1.3.127-142 ("Two truths ...")
equivocation
"prologues to swelling act" = dramatic metaphor of scripted future
ambivalence of "supernatural soliciting"
blend of external prophecy with internal wish / fear
Macbeth's inchoate awareness of unconscious "thought"
-- "single state" fractured
-- "function is smother'd in surmise" [What does this mean?]

1.3.154-156 ("Think upon what hath chanc'd...")
function of "the interim" = space between wish / thought & act
- Compare Hamlet
see "Stages of Desire" slide from MforM

John Singer Sargent, Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889)

1.5.38-55 ("The raven ...")
Who are the "spirits"?
Lady Macbeth "unsexed" = filled with gall & not "milk of humankindness"
-- rejection of female characteristics, emotional + physical
---- "access and passage ... visitings of Nature"
Click here for information on conventional status of wife.

1.7
"If it were done ...: if th' assassination ..."
-- unreferenced pronoun ("it")
-- issues of time & con/sequence
-- Shakespeare's effort to dramatize conflicted mind
"I have no spur ..."
-- "intent" / "ambition" as animal vehicle for ego ("I")
---- personal agency carried by powerful motive
"And falls on the other --"
-- entrance of Lady Macbeth
"Art thou afraid ..."
--- i.e., "Are you afraid to enact your desires?"
"I have given suck ...""
-- famous question of Lady Macbeth's child
-- What is her strategy here?
"If we should fail?" (How do you read -- or say -- this line?)

2.1.6-10 ("A heavy summons ...")
What are "the cursed thoughts"?
Why does Banquo ask for his sword back?

Henry Fuseli, Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1812)

2.1.31ff ("Go, bid thy mistress ...")
famous "dagger" soliloquy: Read it carefully.
problem of perception v. projection
external world mirrors internal
Macbeth's action (drawn dagger) imitates his vision ("air-drawn dagger"[3.4.61])
action becomes allegorized
Macbeth = agent of Witchcraft
sensible nature (see Birnham Wood)
Macbeth is called by ringing of bell (Lady Macbeth)
"I go, and it is done."
- absence of interim between motion & deed
Question of Macbeth's agency & intentionality:
- Does the dagger project his own desire ("ambition"), or does it lead him to his doom ("supernatural soliciting")?

2.3.110-111 ("Th' expedition ...")
version of absent interim / offered as defense

3.4.41ff ("The Ghost of Banquo ...")
question of staging scene: see Study Question 5

3.4.134-143 ("For mine own good ...")
flow of "blood" in play [check Concordance or MIT online]
"... head ... hand ... / ... acted ... scanned"
metaphor of actor + compulsion / absent interim
See 4.1.144-149

4.1.48-61 ("How now ...")
Macbeth united with witches
Macbeth as anti-natural force / unnatural agent of destruction

4.1.144-149 ("Time ...")
reversal of temporal sequence
"firstlings of my heart ... / ... firstlings of my hand ..."
- procreative metaphor of deed
- compulsive acting-out / no interim

4.3.50-139 ("It is myself ...")
Malcolm's self-characterization as fiendish villain: see Study Question 6
What are the function & effects of this scene?
4.3.125-126 ("I am yet / Unknown to woman.")
masculine hero-saviors must be uncontaminated by women
- Macduff "not of woman born"

4.3.200ff ("Keep it not from me ...")
news of Macduff's loss
issue of emotion (mourning) v. action (revenge)
"Dispute it like a man. ... feel it as a man."
re-combination of splits: act / feeling // male / female

5.1.17ff ("Enter Lady Macbeth ...")
sleepwalking scene
blend of memory + guilt / past + present
Doctor as early-modern professional (click here)
- between medieval blood-letting & modern psychiatry
- Lady Macbeth as early-modern enactment of OCD

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Study for the Death of Lady Macbeth (c. 1875)

5.3.22-28 ("I have liv'd long enough ...")
resumption of natural order: mortality, time
-- Birnham Wood = natural force against Macbeth

5.5.15-28 ("Wherefore was that cry?")
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy
- resumption of normal temporal (con)sequence
- depression verging on nihilism
- (meta)theatrical metaphors
See Study Question 10.

5.8.26-35 ("I will not yield ...")
Macbeth dies fighting
= final heroic gesture or desperate act of villainy?

5.9.9-20 ("But like a man he died....")
death of Siward's son
macho psychology of manliness-by-violence
limit to "sorrow"

5.9.30ff ("What's more to do ...")
final lines place action in carefully controlled frame of time & place
redeeming Macbeth's obsession with "doing"

 

Glossary Terms

compulsion

equivocation

interim

nihilism

witchcraft

 

Page last updated: October 26, 2005
Send comments to: Professor David Willbern