Introductory Comments to Part Five of this Series
Please read below how I would handle
reading, explanation, and discussion of Part Five of this series on how to
teach Macbeth, as an example of how I
go about presenting Shakespeare to students.
I am using my compressed version of Macbeth.
Know that I read every word of the original play with my students and
then perform my compressed version at our annual banquet. I am using the latter version to demonstrate
some of the many explanations I give and questions that I ask when I present a
Shakespearean play to my students.
Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth
All original lines by William
Shakespeare
Compressed for Presentation at Spring 2019
New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet
by Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.
Director, New Salem Educational Initiative
From Macbeth,
Act III, Scene Four [Hall in the palace]
[A banquet prepared. Enter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox,
Lords, and Attendants.]
[First Murderer appears at the door. Macbeth sees him and moves toward the door,
anxious but
affecting a calm demeanor and trying to
attract as little notice as possible.]
Macbeth:
Is he dispatched?
First Murderer:
My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.
Macbeth:
Thou art the best of the cutthroats.
First Murderer:
Fleance is escaped.
Macbeth:
Then comes my fit again.
Get thee gone.
Tomorrow we’ll hear ourselves again.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
46)
Macbeth starts to unravel mentally as his schemes fall short of their
goals and take undesired directions.
Banquo’s son Fleance was with him as the murderers set upon them, so
that the first First Murderer has to tell Macbeth that while they got Banquo,
his son got away. Having first taken joy
at the news of Banquo’s assassination, Macbeth frets over the flight of
Fleance. He tells the murders to be gone
and wait for further word from him tomorrow.
Note the humor in the line, “Thou art the best of the cutthroats,” which
may be taken literally to mean one who cuts another’s throat, or in the common
reference to one who will turn on anyone to get what she or he wants.
Have you ever known a cutthroat in that
latter meaning, anyone who’ll do anything to anybody to get ahead or get what
she or he wants?
[Exit First Murderer]
[As Macbeth prepares to take his seat at
the banquet table,
the ghost of Banquo appears and sits in
Macbeth’s place ]
Macbeth:
Which of you have done this?
Lords:
What, my good lord?
Macbeth:
Thou canst not say I did it:
never shake your gory locks at me
Lady Macbeth:
Sit, worthy friends; my lord is often thus.
[Ghost vanishes. Macbeth relaxes a bit.]
Macbeth:
Come, love and health to all; then I’ll sit down.
[Reenter Ghost.]
Macbeth:
Avaunt, and quit my sight!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is
cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!
[Ghost vanishes.]
Macbeth:
Then I am a man again
Lady Macbeth:
You have displaced the mirth,
broke the meeting,
With most admired disorder.
Macbeth:
You make me strange
When now I think how you can behold such
sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine is blanched with fear.
Ross:
What sights, my lord?
Lady Macbeth:
I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse.
A kind good night to all
[Exeunt all but Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth.]
Macbeth:
I will tomorrow to the weird sisters.
More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
By the worst means, the worst.
I am in blood stepp’d in so far that,
should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Lady Macbeth:
You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
Macbeth:
We are but young in deed.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
47)
This scene is at once one of the most entertaining, comical, and yet
terrible of the play. Banquo’s ghost appears,
with his “gory locks” (spooky, bloody hair), his eyes having “no speculation” (no
apparent ability to see), and his bones seeming “marrowless” (missing the
biological matter that fills the skeletal bones of the body). “Avaunt” is an exclamation that is an appeal
to another person to quit doing what she or he is doing. To “quit my sight” means to “get out of my
sight.” The ghost of Banquo toys with Macbeth,
coming and going; when the ghost leaves
for a while, Macbeth tries to be cool;
but the moment the ghost returns, he gets shook again. Full of guilt, he tries to tell the ghost that others were responsible
for his murder, but the ghost knows who put the assassins up to his
murder. Eventually Macbeth’s behavior (no
one else can see the ghost), his “admired disorder” (quite remarkable loss of
cool) gets so out of hand that the dinner party has to break up. Lady Macbeth chides her husband and tells him
that he seriously needs the calming effect of quality sleep, but Macbeth says
that he is so far into terrible deeds now that there is no turning back; suggesting that even worse actions on his
part may be coming soon, he vows to go back to the witches to get some
clarifications and any further information he can.
Have you ever known anyone who
actually or metaphorically was
…..in
blood stepp’d in so far that,
should
I wade no more,
Returning
were as tedious as go o’er ?
Are you familiar with the saying, “Oh, what
a wicked web we weave, when first we venture to deceive” ? Any life lessons to be learned here?
[Exeunt all but Macbeth]
From Macbeth,
Act IV, Scene One
[A
cavern. In the middle, a boiling
cauldron.]
[Thunder.
Enter the three witches.]
First Witch:
Thrice the bridle cat hath mew’d.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
48) A
“cauldron” is a huge pot, typically filled with a boiling liquid. “Thrice the bridle cat hath mew’d” means “A cat
meowed two times.”
Second Witch:
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
49) Three
times and then once more, for four times, a hedgehog squeaked.
Third Witch:
Harpier cries ‘Tis time, ‘tis time.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
50) A
spooky messenger shouted that “the time has come.”
All:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
51) This
is a very famous refrain from the three witches, suggesting that they have
borne and are going to make big trouble, a vow that is accented by the burning
and bubbling liquid in the cauldron.
Macbeth:
How now, you secret, midnight hags?
I conjure you, by that which you profess,
answer me to what I ask you.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
52) Macbeth
demands that (conjures) the witches answer the questions that he has for them,
telling them to summon the prophetic power with which they uttered (professed)
predictions to him in the previous encounter on the heath. Note that they are now in a cavern.
First Witch:
Speak.
Second Witch:
Demand.
Third Witch:
We’ll answer.
First Witch:
Say, if thou’dst rather hear it from our
mouths,
Or from our masters.
Macbeth:
Call ‘em;
let me see ‘em.
All:
Come, high or low;
Thyself and office deftly show.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
53) The
witches say that they’ll oblige him and ask Macbeth if he wants to hear the
prophesies from their own mouths or from their superiors in the supernatural
world. Macbeth tells them to summon
their superiors, leading the witches to call out together for the spirits to
enter from above and below, showing themselves “deftly” (skillfully).
[Thunder.
First Apparition: an armed Head]
First Apparition:
Beware Macduff; beware the thane of Fife.
[Descends.]
My Comment/Question >>>>>
54) The first ghost appears, wearing a military
helmet and telling Macbeth that he should be careful around Macduff, who is the
thane of the territory know as Fife.
[Thunder.
Second Apparition: A Bloody Child]
Second Apparition:
Laugh to scorn the power of man,
For none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.
[Descends.]
Macbeth:
Then Macduff: What need I fear of thee?
But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
54) The second ghost appears as a bloody child and
conveys to Macbeth that his death will never come at the hands of anyone to
whom a woman has given birth. Macbeth seems
to take heart at this news, because as is the case for all human beings, Macduff
must surely have been given birth by a woman.
But Macbeth adds that, having been warned about Macduff, he’ll have him
killed just to be sure.
[Thunder.
Third Apparition: a Child
crowned, with a tree in his hand.]
Third Apparition:
Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.
[Descends.]
Macbeth:
That will never be:
Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
Unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements! Good!
[All] Witches:
My Comment/Question >>>>>
55) The third ghost appears with the news that no
one will ever defeat Macbeth until a forest by the name of Birnam Wood moves across
a hilly area known as Dunsinane, upon which Macbeth’s castle is located. Weighing the news that he has received, much
as in the scene with the ghost of Banquo, Macbeth swings between being fearful
and feeling encouraged; here, he says,
well, a forest certainly ain’t gonna take off walkin’, so I’m good.
Show his eyes and grieve his heart;
Come like shadows, so depart!
[A show of Eight Kings, the last with a
glass in his hand; Banquo’s Ghost following.]
Macbeth:
Thou art too like the spirit of
Banquo; down!
Thy crown does sear my eyeballs.
[Apparitions and witches vanish.]
Macbeth:
Where are they? Gone?
Let this pernicious hour stand accursed in
the calendar!
My Comment/Question >>>>>
56) The witches say to the apparitions rather
cryptically, okay, show yourselves to him one more time, unsettle his heart,
then be gone. The ghost-like presences
of eight kings line up before Macbeth, the last with a glass in his hand; the ghost of Banquo spookily follows. Macbeth is shook (“Thy crown doth sear my
eyeballs”), especially by the sight of Banquo’s ghost and tells the ghost to
get away (…..“down!”). The apparitions
and the witches vamoose. Macbeth in his
agonized astonishment says that this terrible (“pernicious”) day “will live in
infamy.” (In using that latter phrase, I typically have to explain the FDR
reference to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, of which students may know faintly
but have no familiarity with the famous Roosevelt declaration.
Oh, my goodness. The plot thickens. What’s gonna happen to Macduff and how? Will some creature not born of a woman do
Macbeth in? Will the forest move after
all? Does Macbeth have any reason to hope
for the best (for himself, but things seem to be getting worse for others in
Macbeth’s range of fire). We’re getting
close to the wrap-up >>>>> How do you think the play will end?
