Nothing is quite as it seems

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• Nothing is quite as it seems
• When darkness falls upon thy dreams
• Fair is foul, and foul is fair
• When evil looms within the air
• As dark hearts, produce dark thoughts
• While those do, not as they ought
• Sins of our fathers and mothers abound
• As evil sits beneath the crown
• -Wilson

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MACBETH

• By William Shakespeare
• First written between 1611-12
• First performed in 1623.

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Plotline

• The play Macbeth tells of a man who is deceived
  by himself and his wife.
• Basically, there are three witches who predict
  Macbeth's future it then plays on his mind when
  the first prediction comes true--he becomes Thane
  of Cawdor. From there he would go on to be king.
  He writes and tells his wife and they were both
  really excited. When Macbeth gets back to his
  castle, he and his wife decide that the only way
  he can become king is if they kill King Duncan.
  With power gone to his head, Macbeth slowly
  starts to 'lose the plot', as does Lady Macbeth.
• Macbeth captures the timeless nature of the human
  experience....There is greed for power, murderous
  evil scheming, and the nobility of the fight for
  good and evil. The tortuous guilty
  self-flagellation that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
  succumb to is such a base human emotion. Without
  realizing it they are both lost in the depth of
  the abyss they willingly stepped into. Those are
  elements of "a classic" and of course no one
  questions that Shakespeare's Macbeth, written in
  1606, still plays well today.

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Foreshadowed

• The play opens with thunder and lightning and
  the appearance of three witches(supernatural
  beings). This foreshadows the central theme of
  the playEVIL!

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MACBETHCHARACTERS
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DUNCAN, King of Scotland

• He is king at the beginning of the play.
• Duncan is a good king who his people like. By no
  fault of his own he is unable to discern those
  who threaten his reign.

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MACBETH

• Becomes King after killing King Duncan
• Macbeth is a Scottish general and the thane of
  Glamis who is led to wicked thoughts by the
  prophecies of the three witches, especially after
  their prophecy that he will be made thane of
  Cawdor comes true. Macbeth is a brave soldier and
  a powerful man, but he is not a virtuous one. He
  is easily tempted into murder to fulfill his
  ambitions to the throne, and once he commits his
  first crime and is crowned king of Scotland, he
  embarks on further atrocities with increasing
  ease. Ultimately, Macbeth proves himself better
  suited to the battlefield than to political
  intrigue, because he lacks the skills necessary
  to rule without being a tyrant. His response to
  every problem is violence and murder. Unlike
  Shakespeares great villains, such as Iago in
  Othello and Richard III in Richard III, Macbeth
  is never comfortable in his role as a criminal.
  He is unable to bear the psychological
  consequences of his atrocities.

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LADY MACBETH Just plain evil!

• Lady Macbeth is a good wife who loves her
  husband. She is also ambitious but lacks the
  morals of her husband. To achieve her ambition,
  she rids herself of any kindness that might stand
  in the way. However, she runs out of energy to
  suppress her conscience which leads to her
  demise.

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BANQUO

• BANQUO, Thane of Lochaber, a general in the
  King's army
• Banquo serves as a foil to Macbeth, showing an
  alternate react to prophecy. Banquo retains his
  morals and allegiances, but ends up dying. He is
  brave and ambitious, but this is tempered by
  intelligence.

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MACDUFF

• MACDUFF, Thane of Fife, a nobleman of Scotland
• Macduff shows early on a distrust of Macbeth. He
  also represents fate as when knocking on the
  door. He thinks he can avoid having his family
  looking guilty and getting killed by fleeing, but
  he underestimates Macbeth. Macduff then plays the
  avenger.

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MALCOLM

• King after Macbeth
• MALCOLM, elder son of Duncan
• Malcolm, as a good king, is everything that
  Macbeth is not. He uses deception only to insure
  his personal safety.

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DONALBAIN

• DONALBAIN, younger son of Duncan
• Donalbain is Duncan's youngest son and flees to
  Ireland when his father is murdered.

LENNOX
LENNOX, nobleman of Scotland Lennox is one of
Duncan's nobles and he is largely an observer in
the play. He grows suspicious of what he sees in
Macbeth, and grows increasingly sarcastic and is
fearful for the fate of Scotland. Lennox plays
both sides, and probably others do as well.
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ROSS

• ROSS, nobleman of Scotland
• Ross is Macduff's cousin. He acts as a messenger
  in the play, bringing good news of Macbeth's
  military victory and bad news about Macduff's
  family.
• Ross may have left Macduff's castle to "maintain
  plausible deniability" just before the arrival of
  assassins, who he may have brought.

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SIWARD

• SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, general of the
  English forces
• Old Siward is the Earl of Northumberland and an
  ally of Malcolm and Macduff.

YOUNG SIWARD
Young Siward is Siward's son. He is slain by
Macbeth in hand-to-hand combat.
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SEYTON

• SEYTON, attendant to Macbeth
• Seyton is Macbeth's lieutenant.

HECATE
Hecate is sometimes referred to as the queen of
the witches. It is she who directs supernatural
happenings and appearances of the mystical
apparitions.
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THE THREE WITCHES

• The three witches add an element of supernatural
  and prophecy to the play. They each have a
  familiar, such as Graymalkin and Paddock, and are
  commanded by Hecate, a Greek goddess of the moon
  and later witchcraft. The witches are based on a
  variety of ideas about witches at the time. They
  can use sieves as boats, and they can assume the
  shape of an animal, but with a defect, as with
  the tailless rat. The witches were also thought
  to be able to control the winds. They are
  described as having beards but looking human.

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THE PORTER

• The Porter is the keeper of Macbeth's castle who
  imagines that he is the keeper of Hell's Gate.

FLEANCE
Banquo's son Fleance plays no large role, and
the only question is how his line ends up
becoming king after Malcolm.
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LADY MACDUFF

• Lady Macduff represents all the good people
  slaughtered by Macbeth. She loves her family, and
  is distressed at her husband's departure. She
  doesn't really believe her husband is a traitor
  and is concerned only that he is safe when the
  murderers arrive.

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MENTHEITH,ANGUSCAITHNESS

• Noblemen of Scotland

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LESSER CHARACTERS

• An English Doctor,
• A Scottish Doctor,
• A Sergeant, An Old Man,
• The Ghost of Banquo
• Other Apparitions,
• Lords,
• Gentlemen,
• Officers,
• Soldiers,
• Murderers,
• Attendants,
• Messengers

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THEME

• The theme of the play, according to G.R. Elliot
  is that a "wicked intention must in the end
  produce wicked action unless it is not merely
  revoked by the protagonist's better feelings, but
  entirely eradicated by his inmost will, aided by
  Divine grace." This is seen most clearly in Act
  V, Scene 1, where the Doctor says, "More needs
  she the divine than the physician." It also seen
  throughout the play in Macbeth's murderous plots.
  
• Also rampant through the play is the idea of
  "Fair is foul, foul is fair." Basically, this
  means that appearances can be deceiving. What
  appears to be good can be bad, and this is seen
  in such things as the deceptive facade of Lady
  Macbeth and in the predictions of the witches.
• The play Has a variety of underlying motifs,
  such as the supernatural, the temptation of evil.

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WARNING!!

• Macbeth is supposed to upset people. It shows
  life at its most brutal and cynical, in order to
  ask life's toughest question.
• This Is NOT "Family Entertainment."
• When we first hear of Macbeth, he has just cut an
  enemy open ("unseamed") from belly button
  ("nave") to throat ("chops").
• At their party, a witch shows her friends the
  chopped-off thumb of a ship's pilot wrecked on
  his way home.
• A witch who's angry with a lady plans to get back
  at her by causing a nine-day storm to make her
  sailor husband miserable. If the ship hadn't been
  under divine protection, she'd kill everybody on
  board.
• Another witch offers to help with a bit of
  magical wind. The angry witch appreciates this
  and says, "You're such a nice person."
• Lady Macbeth, soliloquizing, prays to devils to
  possess her mind, turn the milk in her breasts
  into bile, and give her a man's ability to do
  evil!

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WARNING!!

• Lady Macbeth gripes at her husband and ridicules
  his masculinity in order to make him commit
  murder.
• She talks about a smiling baby she once nursed
  and what it would have been like to smash its
  brains out -- she would prefer this to having a
  husband who is unwilling to kill in cold blood.
• Lady Macbeth keeps a strong sedative in the
  house. She doesn't mention this to her husband
  even when they are planning a murder. She just
  uses it. Attentive readers will suspect she has
  had to use on Macbeth in the past.
• The Macbeths murder a sleeping man, their
  benefactor and guest, in cold blood, then
  launders their bloody clothes. They smear blood
  on the drugged guards, then slaughter them to
  complete the frame-up
• .
• Horses go insane and devour each others' meat
  while they are still alive.
• Everybody knows Macbeth murdered Duncan, but they
  make him king anyway.

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WARNING!!

• Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost with twenty skull
  injuries, any one of which could be fatal. He
  goes psychiatric and screams "You can't prove I
  did it." He goes on about how he used to think
  that once somebody's brains were out, he'd stay
  dead. But now he'll need to keep people unburied
  until the crows eat the corpse like roadkill,
  etc.,
• Witches deliver incantations ("Double, double,
  toil and trouble... bubble etc.") that can stand
  alongside any meaningless-inferential heavy-metal
  rock lyrics.
• Among the ingredients of a witches' brew are
  cut-off human lips and a baby's finger. It's not
  just any baby -- it was a child delivered by a
  prostitute in a ditch, and that she strangled
  right afterwards. (This kind of thing happens in
  our era, too. No one knows how often.)

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THE GROSS STUFF

• For my final in Shakespearian Theory in college
  I talked to an autopsy pathologist. He was very
  familiar with how human bodies decompose. To show
  Macbeth his future, the witches add to the brew
  "grease that's sweated from the murderer's
  gibbet." Would you like to know what that means?
  The bodies of executed murderers were left
  hanging on the gallows / gibbet, often caged so
  their friends couldn't take them away, until they
  were skeletonized, a process that takes weeks. At
  about ten days in suitable weather, there are
  enough weak points in the skin that the body fat,
  which has liquefied, can start dripping through.
  There will be a puddle of oil underneath the
  body. This is for real!
• Macduff's precocious little son jokes with his
  mother about how there are more bad than good
  people in the world, and adds some wisecracks at
  the expense of her own possible morals. Moments
  later, the bad guys break in and stab him to
  death.

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THE GROSS STUFF

• "Who would have thought the old man would have
  so much blood in him?" Lady Macbeth goes
  psychiatric (definitely) and commits suicide
  (maybe). Hearing of this, Macbeth just says "She
  should have died hereafter", meaning "She should
  have picked a different time to die." He then
  launches into English literature's most famous
  statement of the meaninglessness of life. He
  considers suicide, which the Romans considered
  the dignified thing to do under such
  circumstances. But he decides it would be more
  satisfying to take as many people as possible
  with him. For the word "juggling", see I Henry VI
  5.iv.
• Macduff recounts how he was cut out of his
  mother's uterus at the moment of her death.
• Macbeth's head ends up on a stick. All teens
  know that severed heads were probably the first
  soccer balls. If you are directing the play, this
  is a nice touch.

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Story Details

• Lady Macbeth's lie 'What, in our house?' would
  have given the game away to even the stupidest
  detective, but somehow no-one picks up on it.
• If you're here, you already know the plot of
  Macbeth, or can find it. Here are some things to
  notice
• The three witches remind English teachers of the
  three Fates of Greek mythology and the three
  Norns of Norse mythology.
• "Weird" (as in "weird sisters") used to mean
  "destiny" or "fate". Perhaps in an older version
  they were.
• At the beginning, Duncan I is not leading his
  army. This is a good way for a king to get
  himself replaced quickly.

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Story Details

• Nothing is what it seems.
• Notice that on the morning of the day Banquo
  gets murdered, Macbeth asks him three times where
  he is going and whether his son will be with him.
  Banquo should have been more suspicious.
• Most (all?) of the actual murders occur
  off-stage, since without any between-act
  curtains, the story had to be written so that
  somebody would remove a dead body from the stage.
  

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ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH?

• As you go through the play, look for the
  repeated theme of "What is a real man?" Like
  nowadays, there is no consensus.
• Siward's son becomes a man in his father's eyes
  the day he falls in battle
• Malcolm tells Macduff to bear his sorrow like a
  man. Macduff replies he must also feel it like a
  man.
• Macbeth, having second thoughts, tells his wife
  that it's unmanly to murder your benefactor while
  he is asleep. Lady Macbeth gets abusive and tells
  him this will make him more of a man.
• Lady Macbeth wants to lose her femininity so she
  can be cold-blooded and commit murder like a man
  does.
• Macbeth flatters his wife, saying she has such
  "undaunted mettle" that she shouldnt have any
  baby girls, only baby boys.
• Macbeth, perhaps having learned from his wife,
  gets two men to commit his murder by insulting
  their masculinity.

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Q with no A

• Fair is foul and foul is fair. In Macbeth,
  things are seldom what they seem, and we often
  don't know what's really happening. The play is
  full of ambiguity and double meanings, starting
  with the prophecies of the witches.
• The day is extremely foul (weather) and extremely
  fair (MacDonald has been disemboweled).
• Banquo is not so happy, yet much happier.
• Is the dagger a hallucination, or a supernatural
  phantom?
• Ask the same question about Banquo's ghost.
• Does the bell summon Duncan "to heaven or to
  hell"? One of Duncan's son's called out "Murder!"
  in his sleep, but the other one laughed,
  mysteriously pleased at his father's death. Which
  was which?
• Does Macbeth say "Had I but died an hour...."
  because he is really sorry (i.e., sad about his
  moral deterioration and/or realizing he's getting
  himself into trouble), or just overacting?
• Does Lady Macbeth really faint? ("Perhaps she is
  actually a person of more sensitive feelings than
  she lets on.") Or does she simply pretend to
  faint to divert attention from her husband's
  overacting?
• Who's the third murderer? - Is Ross playing both
  sides?
• Does Lady Macbeth commit suicide or die of
  cardiac complications?

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Down to the point-

• THE KEY QUESTION - Is human society fundamentally
  amoral, dog-eat-dog? If so, then Macbeth is
  right, and human life itself is meaningless and
  tiresome.
• Or do the hints of a better life such as King
  Edward's ministry, Malcolm's clean living, the
  dignified death of the contrite traitor, and the
  doctor's prescription for pastoral care, display
  Shakespeare's Christianity and/or humanism?
• It's a dark play. The light of goodness seems
  still fairly dim. But evil always appeals more to
  the imagination, while in real life, good is much
  more genuine.
• Is the message of Macbeth one of despair, or of
  hope?