The entire play can be found at the following nodes:
I am reformatting it for E2 from http://tech-two.mit.edu/Shakespeare/Tragedy/macbeth/macbeth.html
Macbeth Dramatis Personae.
Act one
"What happened to your hands?" I asked.
"Dad hit me," she said plaintively. "Just kidding. It's fake blood. I was playing Lady Macbeth. Isn't that funny?"
Of course, she had had her Halloween party the day before, which I had conveniently missed, afraid as I am of hordes of screaming nine-year-olds. "Bah, what do you know about Lady Macbeth?" I asked her.
"Lady Macbeth was the wife of Macbeth in the play Macbeth. She convinced her husband to kill the king and his servants. And then she had a dream where she had blood all over her hands, which she couldn't wash off. And it's ironic, because now I have all this fake blood on my hands that I can't wash off."
Now this kid is NINE FREAKING YEARS OLD, and can make a complex literary allusion as well as accurate applied criticism. I think that means she's going to grow up more like me than like our other sister.
On the subject of "the curse" of Macbeth, the play's name is said to have been cursed by 17th Century Witches, who resented real spells appearing in the play's text. For example, in act 4, scene 1
"Round about the cauldron go; In the poisn'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venum sleeping got. Boil thou first i' the charmed pot"
This whole "curse" business just goes to show that in the theatre, as in the rest of life, bad things happen around superstitious people. You could say that I am very superstitious about superstitious people, as the catalogues of disaster they seem to command are quite extraordinary. If you meet one, I can recommend performing the cleansing ritual of spinning widdershins thrice, then applying your fist firmly to the offender's nose. Otherwise you might end up as just another statistic. On the other hand, I understand that encountering two such individuals is a good omen.
As to the play itself, I will only add that Akira Kurosawa directed a masterful Japanese adaptation, which goes by the name Throne of Blood in English.
In this scene, Macbeth seeks out the weird sisters, and seeks further advice from them. They show him three apparitions that relate to the future events of the play, leading to Macbeth's downfall. There is a fourth apparition, however, the sisters and Hecate call up after Macbeth demands to know what will come of Banquo's children. Out comes a line of eight kings and Banquo's ghost, as described with Macbeth's narration:
Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down! Thy crown does hair, Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. A third is like the former. Filthy hags! Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes! What, will the crack of doom? Another yet! A seventh! I'll see no more: And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass Which shows me many more; and some I see That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry: Horrible sight! Now, I see, 'tis true; For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me, And points at them for his.
Each of the eight kings in this line, are kin of Banquo, the leading king, James' father, being the youngest, most recent (to James) king. When he holds up the looking glass, James, being in the seat of honor at the premier (obviously - he's the king!), would see himself at the head of this line of kings that Macbeth himself was so impressed with (and afraid of). Macbeth says the glass shows him "many more," while James would've been the only king reflected in the glass; this line hints to James' lineage retaining the throne in the generations to come, a sentiment he was sure to have appreciated.
It is told that Shakespeare did receive the patronage of King James, and I have heard evidence (via the Holy Tabernacle Church), that Shakespeare was even one of the many interpreters of the King James Version of the Bible. I'll dig that evidence up, and submit it when it's found.
Maslow in Macbeth
According to George Meredith, "the true test of comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter." In other words, the best examples of comedy lead to laughter but also contribute to the meaning of the work and contain some degree of subtle commentary. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the porter scene following Duncan's heinous slaying evokes this brand of "thoughful laughter." Although the grotesque gatekeeper character immediately prompts comedy, it also hints at a deeper significance. This "thoughtful laughter" primarily provides comic relief, but it also contributes to the meaning of the work by serving as a metaphor for the gates of hell and as a transition from the murders to the continuation of the drama in a less supernatural setting.
Macbeth's porter scene functions above all as slapstick comic relief following the slaughter of King Duncan. The grotesque, troll-like gatekeeper dissipates the tension with his drunken banter, presenting a raucous parody of Macbeth's internal torment. For example, he paints a darkly comic caricature of the suspense that now pervades the Macbeth household by making light of the sudden knocking at the gates that so startled Lady Macbeth. Yet this also serves as a paradox - the parody also furthers the tension by prolonging the time between Duncan's murder and the continuation of the plot. This scene immediately prompts laughter with both the porter's light soliloquy and the heightening of the suspense.
However, the character's drunken stupor also gives rise to one of the second act's central metaphors - the house of Macbeth as the gates of hell. His speech refers to satanic images, and he views himself as Beelzebub's gatekeeper. In this act, Shakespeare sees Castle Macbeth as the central dominion of death and corruption, evidenced by the sadistic machinations of its Lady and the bloodthirsty acts of its Master. The porter scene emphasizes the fact that all who enter the castle and stand in the way of Macbeth's ambition might as well have entered Hell, as they will certainly find a fiery demise within. While this scene elicits laughter, it also contributes to Shakespeare's condemnation of Macbeth's escapades.
Macbeth's porter scene also furthers the drama's structure. The previous deeds in Act II have all transpired in a fantasy netherworld - these shocking murders could not have occurred with Shakespeare's normal tone. The porter scene, by evoking laughter, serves as a transition from the supernatural world of murder to the more mundane realm of political plotting. The Bard accomplishes this suddenly - the trollish porter's maniacal hilarity contrasts sharply with the portentous tone of the previous scene, thereby snapping the audience back into the real world. Thus, the scene provides a dramatic transition into normality.
Shakespeare's porter scene causes "thoughtful laughter" in Macbeth because of its immediate comic tone, yet it also illuminates one of the play's central metaphors and transforms the macabre aura into a more earthly one. This scene passes George Meredith's "true test of comedy" with its blend of slapstick and meaning. Macbeth receives both a break in the incessant suspense and an expansion of Shakespeare's dramatic modus operandi. Thus, the "thoughtful laughter" prompts both exaggerated comedy and a deeper understanding of the play's symbolism.
A significant reversal of natural events accompanying Macbeth's actions is the transformation of day into night. When Macbeth first plans to murder the rightful king Duncan, he wishes for the world to go dark. "The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires," (I, 1, 48-51). With no light, none will be able to witness his despicable deed. Such a total darkness that he wishes for is unnatural. It is a reversal from the brightness of the day that marks the beginning of Macbeth's fall from the place of a hero to the place of a villain.
Macbeth's internal realm, twisted and battered with strife, reflects the disorder of nature in accordance with his wish for darkness to conceal his deeds. As he is preparing to murder Duncan, strange visions occupy his thoughts. Reflectively, the world is darkened and plagued by the unnatural. Macbeth observes, "It is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hectate's offerings," (II, 1, 48-52). The darkness that covers half the world is a different sort from that of normal night. It is a fiendish darkness, devoid of goodness or peace. Such a setting perfectly correlates with the travesty Macbeth is about to enact.
When Macbeth commits his act of regicide, Lady Macbeth also observes a disruption in nature. While she is waiting pensively in the main hall, she worries about the success of her husband. At the moment that Macbeth murders Duncan, nature cries out through the birds. "Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it," (II, 2, 2-4). When Macbeth finally returns, he inquires about a noise. Though he is referring to the words of the guards in their sleep, Lady Macbeth is still worried about the ill omens she previously heard. "I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry," (II, 2, 14-15). As Lady Macbeth says herself, the owl disrupts the night with his harsh cry that bears ill fortune as Duncan is murdered.
The weather deeply reflects Macbeth's incredible transgression. When the lords come to see the king in the morning, they relate to Macbeth the strange occurrences of the night before:
The night has been unruly. Where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say, Lamentings heard I' th' air, strange screams of death, And prophesying with accents terrible Of dire combustion and confused events New hatched to th' woeful time: the obscure bird Clamored the livelong night. Some say, the earth Was feverous and did shake. (II, 3, 56-63)
Weather also emphasizes the other-worldliness of the weïrd sisters. Their prophecy of kingship drives Macbeth to attempt a seizure of the throne. They also goad him on when he is beginning to lose confidence in his position. Whenever these sisters make their appearance, the play makes a specific note that they should be accompanied by "thunder and lightning," (I, 1, 1). The weather effects of thunder and lightening symbolize their great power. The disturbance of calm also emphasizes the weïrd sisters' unnatural presence. The sisters provide a fitting summary of the events that accompany Macbeth's ascension to and eventual fall from the throne. Their words evoke the inner distortion and corruption of Macbeth which leads to the outer reversal of natural events, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair," (1, I, 10).
Normal human activities are twisted and disrupted by Macbeth's rise to power. The feast, which in normal circumstances is a time of celebration, reverses itself into a time of mourning. As Macbeth begins a feast with his lords, he comments on the congeniality of the situation: "Both sides are even: here I'll sit I' th' midst: Be large in mirth; anon we'll drink a measure the table round," (III, 4, 11-12). The pleasant atmosphere soon dissipates, however, when Macbeth reacts to the site of Banquo's ghost. His repeated outbursts are enough to bring the feast to a screeching halt, reversing the celebration into something undesirable. Terrified by Macbeth's raving, Lady Macbeth exclaims, "You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder," (III, 4, 109-110). The turnaround from a time of joy to a time of sorrow as a consequence of Macbeth's guilty conscience is startling.
The greatest reversal of the play and one of the greatest examples of the twists in natural events concerns the fortunes of Scotland. When the play begins, King Duncan has successfully warded off invaders from foreign lands, maintaining the peace and prosperity of Scotland. By the end of the play, it becomes clear that Scotland's fortunes have been thoroughly reversed by the malevolence of Macbeth. When Macduff and the exiled prince Malcom meet, Macduff says, "Each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face, that it resounds as if it felt with Scotland and yelled out like syllable of dolor," (IV, 3, 4-8). The whole of Scotland goes from a land blessed by a good king and victory in battle to a squalid, suffering hell.
Throughout the play, Shakespeare indicates the strangeness and horrible nature of Macbeth's actions through disruptions and reversals of events. The witches announce this pattern when they leave the stage in the first scene. The pattern continues to hold from the moment of Macbeth's contemplation of murdering King Duncan to the traitor's final downfall from the throne. All of the realms of nature from the smallest to the largest are reversed and disrupted. Everything is distorted as Macbeth twists reality to serve is over-reaching ambition. The immensity of Macbeth's crimes becomes readily apparent to the reader through these layers of distortion. To emphasize Macbeth's error in going against natural process, Shakespeare skillfully uses symbolic distortions, disruptions, and reversals of natural events.
Throughout the entirety of MacBeth, Shakespeare works in a cunning and subtle `bird theme'. Often birds are used to represent a sequence of events, or characters from the play; we meet this time and time again. I think that you'll see what I mean after reading the following points, on the more obvious examples in the play.
Act 4, Scene 2; almost this entire scene is taken up by Lady MacDuff and her son talking about, and comparing themselves to different types of birds. He, as a child calls himself a "thrush", this is an obvious reference to his size, as he is still small in stature, much like the thrush is in comparison with other birds. The thrush is a very quick bird, which matches the young MacDuff's quick wit. He says that he is like a Thrush in the way that he will "do with what he gets", his mother then warns him of all of the dangers a small bird must face to survive, appropriate as MacDuff had become MacBeth's enemy, and even as they spoke assassins were riding to kill them both.
Earlier in Act 2, Scene 4, some people are talking about all of the strange things that have been occurring in the world since MacBeth murdered the King. The Old Man says, "On Tuesday last, a falcon towering in her pride of place was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed". This is a reversal in nature, and in those times that is exactly what the murder of a king by anyone's hand but God's would have seemed like- a reversal in all things natural. Duncan (the former King of Scotland) is represented by the falcon, such a noble bird to be killed by a mere owl, the owl represents MacBeth, who was once a loyal and trust worthy servant to the King. This is the more obvious translation of this passage, however I have another theory as to what it may mean. The falcon, though a noble bird is surely out ranked by a few other birds? The falcon is referred to as "she", so I think that it might represent Lady MacBeth, with the mousing owl still as MacBeth himself. The owl's act of killing the falcon could represent Lady MacBeth's loss on power over MacBeth as he declines into madness.
All through the play birds are used, ravens, eagles, falcons, sparrows, owls, usually to represent a person, but sometimes for pure dramatic effect. For example Act 2, Scene 2 "an owl shrieks" in the middle of Lady MacBeth's speech. Birds are never put on the side of good or evil; they are merely neutral bystanders, much like the rest of nature. No living birds are mentioned when the three witches are on stage, the only reference to one is a part of their potion, a "howlet's wing" is used in the infamous "Hubble-Bubble" [potion.
William Shakespeare uses this `bird theme to good effect throughout the play, creating subtle comparisons with what is happening to the characters in the play to what is happening with birds in the wild.
Please note that anything in Italics is taken from Shakespeare's MacBeth, thank-you.
Double, Double: Paradox in Macbeth
By August 7, 1606, the day on which some historians claim Macbeth was first performed, William Shakespeare's two tetralogies of English history plays were by some estimates already seven years behind him. A new king had come from the north in 1603 to unify the crowns of England and Scotland, an accession that gave Shakespeare, then halfway through his career, a new patron and new politics to negotiate. A long-standing reading of Macbeth rests upon the foundation of its ultimate patronage and the scene of its first performance--for King James I himself and the visiting King Christian IV of Denmark. Many critics have long read the play as if not specifically commissioned by then certainly intended as a compliment to the King, and a complement to his political and spiritual tracts. Further analysis, however, reveals significant disruptions in what Alan Sinfield terms this "Jamesian Reading."
As with his other histories, Shakespeare took his characters and plot largely from contemporary chronicles, including Holinshed's. In it, we see the plot largely as we recognize it from the play, with some notable exceptions. The essential characters are there, including the witches (whose prophecies Shakespeare took almost verbatim), Macbeth, Duncan, Banquo, Fleance, and MacDuff. Holinshed puts Duncan down as overly kind and condemns Macbeth as overly cruel, and in a nod to Machiavellian politics suggests that "the mean vertue betwixt these two extremities" (207) might have made a very decent king.
Neither of their histories--Holinshed's nor Shakespeare's--is particularly accurate or all encompassing. King Duncan reigned from 1034-1040, Macbeth for another seventeen years after that. Duncan's reign was characterized by rebellion and warfare; Macbeth's was stable enough to allow him a trip to Rome. Duncan died not in his bed, but on the battlefield near Elgin, defending his crown from the combined forces of Macbeth and Thorfinn, the Jarl of Orkney, and it was Duncan's son Malcolm, as opposed to MacDuff, who ultimately killed Macbeth--possibly in single combat, and almost certainly miles away from Dunsinane. Importantly, however, Shakespeare does include in his version of events the military aid lent to Malcolm under the Earl of Northumberland. Such a selective portrayal of history, especially in the scenes dedicated to singing the praises of England's then King Edward I and the dramatic reduction of Macbeth's reign to an apparently brief temporal eruption in an otherwise stable successive line attest to James' influence over the play in favor of his own political agenda: emphasizing the "rightness" of Stuart rule and the ancient political and military union of England and Scotland, which he symbolically if not popularly embodied.
According to Alan Sinfield, "it is often assumed that Macbeth is engaged in the same project as King James...rendering persuasive the ideology of the Absolutist state" ("Macbeth: history, ideology and intellectuals," 66). This ideology is dependent on the legitimacy of a king, and the distinction between a right lawful king and a tyrant. James recorded his understanding of that distinction in his Basilicon Doron, published in 1599 as a handbook on effective leadership. It came with the following dedication: "To Henrie: my dearest sonne and natural successor." The concept of "natural" is crucial to Jacobean political ideology, intimately tied to the divine ordination of kings Jam
