Introductory Comments to Part Four of this Series
Please read below how I would handle
reading, explanation, and discussion of Part Four 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 II, Scene Three
[Court
of Macbeth’s castle.]
[Porter lets Macduff and Lennox into the
castle and leads them to Macbeth]
Lennox:
[To Macbeth] Good morrow, noble sir.
Macduff:
Is the king stirring, worthy thane?
Macbeth:
Not yet.
Macduff:
He did tell me to call timely on him:
I have almost slipped the hour.
Macbeth:
I’ll bring you to him. This is the door.
[Macduff enters Duncan’s chamber]
My Comment/Question >>>>>
37)
Thanes (remember: aristocrats,
nobles) Macduff and Lennox knock on Macbeth’s castle door and asks if the king
is up yet. Trying to be cool, Macbeth
simply says no, not yet. Macduff says
that, well, okay, Duncan had told him to come to the castle and to be on time. Macbeth leads Macduff to the room where the
king is staying.
Lennox:
The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down;
strange screams of death;
the obscure bird clamored the livelong
night.
Some say the earth was feverous and did
shake.
Macbeth:
‘Twas a rough night.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
38)
My son, Ryan Davison-Reed, and I have always thought that the line, “
’Twas a rough night,” is hilarious, a masterpiece of understatement given the
extraordinarily weird and disturbing happenings described by Lennox: chimneys blown down, shouts of people dying,
an owl screeching throughout the night, reports of an earthquake.
[Re-enter Macduff]
Macduff:
O horror, horror, horror! Tongue
nor heart
Cannot conceive nor name thee.
Macbeth & Lennox:
What’s the matter?
Macduff:
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole
thence
the life of the building!
Lennox:
Mean you his majesty?
Macduff:
Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
39)
Macduff returns aghast, reporting rather slowly and cryptically
(mysteriously, in coded language, not very directly) the news of Duncan’s
death. “Sacrilegious” means unholy,
against God). “Ope” is short for open. “Anointed” means selected by God. “Temple” is a house of worship, like a
church--- so that this whole
metaphorical reference is to the king as a “divine right monarch” now “broken
open,” offed, murdered.
[Exeunt Macbeth and Lennox]
[Enter Lady Macbeth]
Lady Macbeth:
What’s the business? Speak, speak!
Macduff:
Oh gentle lady,
‘Tis not for you to hear what I can speak;
The repetition, in a woman’s ear,
Would murder as it fell.
[Enter Banquo]
Macduff:
Oh, Banquo, Banquo,
Our royal master’s dead.
Lady Macbeth:
Woe, alas!
What, in our house?
Banquo:
Too cruel anywhere.
[Reenter Macbeth, with Lennox and
Ross;
enter Donalbain and Malcolm,
just a bit later, and behind them]
Donalbain:
What’s amiss?
Macbeth:
You are, and do not know’t.
The spring, the head, the fountain of your
blood
Is stopped;
the very source of it is stopped.
Macduff:
Your royal father’s murdered.
Malcolm:
O, by whom!
My Comment/Question >>>>>
40) Lady
Macbeth arrives, playing all innocent and asking, “What up?” Notice the irony and sexism in Macduff’s
reply that such news as he has to report is not fit for the weak sensibilities
of a woman, when it was Lady Macbeth who hatched the scheme that did Duncan in. The king’s sons Donalbain and Malcolm
(remember, he’s the heir apparent, the
prince in line to be king) arrive, with Donalbain asking what’s wrong with
everybody. Macbeth replies in flowery,
metaphorical language that “something’s wrong with you, if you only knew.” When Macduff reports more simply that the sons’
dad was knocked off, Malcolm asks who did it.
Lennox:
Those of his chamber, as it seemed had done’t.
Their hands and faces were all badged with
blood;
So were their daggers, which unwiped we
found
Upon their pillows.
Macbeth:
O, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them.
[All look at Macbeth in puzzled disbelief.]
Lady Macbeth:
Help me, hence, ho!
Macduff:
Look to the lady.
[Lady Macbeth is carried out.]
Banquo:
Let us meet, and question this most bloody
piece of work,
To know it further.
Macbeth:
Let’s briefly put on manly readiness,
And meet in the hall together.
[Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.]
Malcolm:
What will you do? Let’s not consort with them:
To show an unfelt sorrow is an office
Which the false man does easy. I’ll to England.
Donalbain:
To Ireland, I; our separated fortune
Shall keep us safer: where we are,
There’s daggers in men’s eyes.
[Malcolm and Donalbain bid each other
goodbye. Exeunt.]
My Comment/Question >>>>>
42) Seeming
to go for the conclusion planned by Lady Macbeth, Lennox reports that it seems
that the guards murdered the king. Lady
Macbeth, ever the actor, hits the floor after seeming to faint; Macduff tells some guys to carry her away and
they do. Banquo and Macbeth agree to
meet soon in a hallway to discuss what’s happened. Malcolm and Donalbain, meanwhile, smell a rat
and decide to get out while the getting is good, Malcolm to England, Donalbain
to Scotland, so as to make capture and murder of them both more difficult.
What is meant by the following lines? >>>>>
Let’s
not consort with them:
To
show an unfelt sorrow is an office
Which
the false man does easy ?
And how about >>>>>
“There’s daggers in men’s eyes” ?
From Macbeth,
Act III, Scene One
[Forres.
The palace.]
[Enter Macbeth]
Macbeth:
Our fears in Banquo stick deep.
They hail’d him father to a line of kings:
If’t be so, for Banquo’s issue have I filed
my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I
murdered.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
42) Macbeth
now begins to dig himself a deeper hole.
He says that since the witches predicted that Banquo’s sons would be
kings, he ultimately has done Duncan in for them. “Issue”
here means the children that parents have brought into the world. “Filed” means “defiled.” Macbeth has hired two henchmen to kill Banquo’ trhesse two soon enter the room.
Have you ever known anyone who schemed
against someone who was formerly a friend?
Anything as serious as this?
[Enter two Murderers.]
Well, then, have you considered of my
speeches?
Know that it was he who in the times past
which held you
So under fortune?
This I made good to you, and all things
else that might
To half a soul and to a notion crazed
Say, “Thus did Banquo?”
First Murderer:
You made it known to us.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
43) Macbeth
addresses the hired assassins, asking them if they have thought over what he
has told them--- that Banquo has in the
past schemed against them and has been the cause of many misfortunes in their
lives. The first hired assassin says, “Yup,
we have.”
Second Murderer:
I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incensed that I am reckless what
I do to spite the world.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
43) This
is one of my favorite lines in the play.
The second hired assassin says that he has been so knocked around by
life that he’d do anything to turn his life around, to get things for him in a
better place. “Liege” in this case means
one’s superior. “Vile” means nasty. “Buffets” means being tossed around, as if
helpless on stormy ocean waves. “Incensed”
means to get super salty, to be furious with the world. To “spite” means to get back at someone.
I’ve known lots of people who have felt in such
a position in life--- how about you?
First Murderer:
And I another,
So weary with disasters, tugg’d with
fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance,
To mend it, or be rid on’t.
My Comment/Question >>>>>
44)
Ths is another of my favorites. The first assassin says that, yeah, and he’s
another one whose life has been so full of pain that he, too, would do anything
to either make his life better or just end the whole thing.
Can you imagine anyone, or have you known
anyone, in such a state of depression or thoughts of doing something that would
put her or his life at risk?
Macbeth:
Both of you know that Banquo was your
enemy.
Both Murderers:
True, my lord.
Second Murderer:
We shall, my lord, perform what you command
us.
First Murderer:
We are resolved, my lord.
Macbeth:
I’ll call upon you straight. Abide within.
[Exeunt Murderers.]
[Macbeth alone, lines delivered to
audience)
Banquo, thou soul’s flight,
If it find heaven, must find it tonight.
[Exit.]
My Comment/Question >>>>>
45) Macbeth reminds the hired assassins of his
tale that Banquo is the cause of their troubles. They reply that they are set to do what Macbeth
has hired them to do. Macbeth says,
good, then go inside and wait for my signal.
Then Macbeth turns to the audience and delivers one of his soliloquies (lines
spoken alone, straight to the audience), saying that if Banquo needs to get
right with God, he better be quick, because at the end of this evening his soul
is going to be headed for heaven to make the case for admission, because he
gonna be dead.
What thoughts do you
have as we move to the climactic action (events that bring the play to a peak,
determining all that is to come) of Act III, during which Macbeth offs both
Duncan and Banquo and events start to move toward the tragic denouement (resolution
that brings the play to an end)?
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