MACBETH - SHAKESPEARE - PLAY - QUESTIONS

Macbeth: Questions to Consider

Act I

Scene i

1.     Why do you think Shakespeare begins this play with the witches?

2.         What does this scene tell you about the play that is to follow? What sort of play are you expecting? 

Scene ii:

1.     We have not seen Macbeth yet, but what impression do you have of him so far?

Scene iii:

1.      What in this scene could you describe as "foul"?

Macbeth’s thought on murdering kind Duncan to get his throne.

2.      What in this scene could you describe as "fair"?

3.      How do you think Macbeth feels at the end of this  scene?

4.                   And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths.

Banquo says this after the witches have been proved right- what advice do you think he is ?

Scene iv:

1.     Most of the speeches in this scene are very formal, but Macbeth's speech at the end is very different. Can you explain the difference in style?

Scene v:

1.      Lady Macbeth immediately calls for help from evil spirits. Why does she need their help?

2.   How much do you find out about the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in this scene?

Scene vi:

l. How does what you know about Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's plans affect the way you read this scene?

Scene vii:

1.     What is troubling Macbeth's conscience at this stage?

2.      How does Lady Macbeth put the pressure on? What do you think  is the argument which finally convinces Macbeth?\

Act 2:

Scene i:

1.      Banquo cannot sleep. Can you explain why he is so uneasy?

2.      After you have heard Macbeth's soliloquy, do you think  that Macbeth  will find it easy to murder Duncan?

Scene ii:

1.     Macbeth is a famous warrior and is used to killing people in battle. Why is he so frightened and distracted now?

2.      Are there any small signs that Lady Macbeth, although appearing so calm and in control, is troubled too?

3.   We do not see the murder. Would it have been more horrifying if we could see the murder on stage?  Would we have lost any of the horror that is in the scene as it is?

Scene iii:

1.   Why do you think Shakespeare included a humorous scene at this point in the play?

2.   Why are we told about the strange events during the night?

3.  Macbeth has to act as if he is shocked and appalled. How does he do this? Would you have been convinced by him?

4.   Is Lady Macbeth any more believable?

5.   How do you think the rest of the court will react  to Malcolm and Donalbain running away?

Scene iv:

1.   If you were Shakespeare and you had got this far, how would you continue the  play?

2.   Would it be a good play if it ended here?

Act 3

Scene i :

1.    How can you tell from the way he behaves in the first part of the scene that Macbeth is now king?

2.   Why is he so concerned to have Fleance killed?

3.      What tactic does he use to persuade his henchmen to murder Banquo?

Scene ii:

1.      Why is Macbeth feeling so uneasy now that he is king?

2.   Why does he not tell Lady Macbeth about his plans for Banquo?

3.   Recall any other mention of sleep and bad dreams in the play so far?

Scene iii:

1.   Why do you think Shakespeare brought in the third murderer?

2.   Why did Shakespeare have the light failing and going out?

Scene  iv:

1.   Why is this banquet so important to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?

2.   Why do you think Shakespeare decided to haunt Macbeth with the ghost of Banquo rather than the ghost of Duncan?

3.   How does Lady Macbeth react to (a) Macbeth? (b) the rest of the guests?

4.   What does this scene tell us about Macbeth's state of mind at this part in the play?

Scene vi:

1.   Why is Lennox so careful in the way he describes what has happened?

Act IV

Scene i :

1.     What do you think Macbeth expects to hear from.the Witches? Inwhat

ways is Macbeth encouraged by what he learns?

2.    What causes him to be fearful?

3.    How does Lennox's news fit in with the witches' predictions?

Scene ii:

1.   We have not met Lady Macduff before and yet we are horrified by her death. How much do we know about her by the time she dies?

2.   What makes the murder so horrible?

Scene iii:

1.   Why do you think Shakespeare gives so much time to a scene in which good and bad kings are discussed?

2.   How does Shakespeare make us feel Macduff s shock at hearing the news of his

family ' s murder?

Act V, Scene 1

1.    Which of Lady Macbeth's strange words and actions do you understand, even though

the doctor  and the gentlewoman do not?

2.         How does Lady Macbeth compare now with the way she was when we last saw her, at the feast where Macbeth saw Banquo's ghost?

Scene ii:

1 .  Why do we particularly notice when the lords say they will meet the English at Birnam

Wood?

Scene iii:

1.    Not everything Macbeth says in this scene is brave and defiant.What else is running through his mind?

2.     Why can't the doctor  help Lady Macbeth?

Scene iv:

1.   From the evidence you have heard in this scene and the impression you had of

Macbeth's castle in the one before, which side is most likely to win the battle? Why?

Scene v:

1.    How does Macbeth take the news of his wife' s death (perhaps even suicide)?

Scene vii:

1.    How does Shakespeare, using only a few actors and a small stage, convey the idea of a battle with many soldiers?

Scene viii:

1.   How does Macbeth behave when he realises the witches have tricked him fatally?

2.   Old Siward is glad his son died fighting bravely. Who else was praised as a good soldier earlier in the play?

3.  Malcolm calls Macbeth and Lady Macbeth "this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen".

Do you agree with this description?

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OTHELLO - SHAKESPEARE - SYMBOLIC GEOGRAPHY IN OTHELLO

THE OUTER LIMITS OF THE WORLD OF OTHELLO are defined by the Turks—the infidels, the unbelievers, the ‘general enemy’. They are just over the horizon, ready to trick and confuse Christians in order to invade their territory and destroy them.

Out beyond the horizon, reported but unseen, are also those ‘anters vast and deserts ide’ of which Othello speaks. Out there is a land of ‘rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven’ inhabited by ‘cannibals that each other eat’ and monstrous forms of men ‘whose heads grow beneath their shoulders.’ On the edges of this land is the raging ocean with its ‘high seas, and howling winds’, its ‘guttered rocks and congregated sands’ hidden beneath the waters to ‘enclog the guiltless keel’.

Within the circle formed by barbarism, monstrosity, sterility and the brute power of nature lie the two Christian strongholds of Venice and Cyprus. 

Renaissance Venice was known for its wealth acquired by trade, its political cunning, and its courtesans; but Shakespeare makes Venice over into the form of The City, the ageless image of government, of reason, of law, and of social concord. The solemn presence and ordering power of the Senate is the most powerful of all.

So, in summary…

THE TURKS

At the far edge of the world of Othello are the Turks—barbarism, disorder, amoral destructive powers.

VENICE, THE CITY

Closer, more familiar, is Venice, The City—order, law and reason. (Iago’s attempts to create civic chaos are frustrated by Othello’s calm management of himself and the orderly legal proceedings of the Senate.)

CYPRUS

Standing on the frontier between barbarism and The City, is Cyprus—an outpost, weakly defended and far out in the raging ocean, close to the ‘general enemy’. (Society is less secure than Venice—the island is more exposed to the Turks—and Othello alone is responsible for finding truth and maintaining order.)

MOVEMENT OF THE PLAY

From Venice to Cyprus, from The City to the outpost, from organised society to a condition much closer to raw nature, from collective life to the life of the solitary individual.

At the end of the play the movement is back towards Venice, the Turk defeated; but Desdemona, Othello, Emilia and Roderigo do not returen. Their deaths are the price paid for the return.

OTHELLO - SHAKESPEARE - CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS

OTHELLO

CHARACTERS:

The vision of human nature which the play offers is one of ancient terrors and primal drives—fear of the unknown, pride, greed, lust—underlying smooth, civilised surfaces—the noble senator, the competent and well-mannered lieutenant, the conventional gentlewoman (the first four characters in the table).

Othello is one of the most formally constructed of Shakespeare’s plays. Every character is balanced by another similar or contrasting character. For example:

·        Desdemona is balanced by her opposite, Iago –love and concern for others on one end of the scale, hatred and concern for self alone at the other.

·        Cassio, true and loyal soldier, balances the false and traitorous soldier Iago.

BRABANTIO	Sophisticated, civilised Venetian senator Unable to comprehend that his delicate daughter could love and marry a Moor, speaking excitedly of black magic and spells to account for what his mind can’t understand
CASSIO	Gentleman-soldier, polished in manners and gracious in bearing, wildly drunk and revealing a deeply rooted pride in his ramblings about senior officers being saved before their juniors.
EMILIA	Sensible and conventional waiting woman, making small talk about love and suddenly remarking that though she believed adultery to be wrong, still if the price were high enough she would sell—and so, she believes, would most women.
‘HONEST IAGO’	Conceals beneath his exterior of the plain soldier and blunt, practical man of the world, a diabolism so intense as to defy rational explanation—it must be taken like lust or pride as simply a given part of human nature, an anti-life spirit which seeks the destruction of everything outside of self.
OTHELLO	In the beginning, appears as the very personification of self-control, of the man with so secure a sense of his own worth that nothing can ruffle the consequent calmness of mind and manner. But the man who has roamed the wild and savage world unmoved by its terrors, who has not changed countenance when the cannon killed his brother standing beside him, this man is still capable of believing his wife a whore on the slightest of evidence and committing murders to revenge himself.
DESDEMONA	Here the heart and the hand go together—she is what she seems to be. Ironically, she alone is accused of pretending to be what she is not. Her very openness and honesty make her suspect in a world where few men are what they appear, and her chastity is inevitably brought into question in a world where every other major character is in some degree touched with sexual corruption.