Macbeth

Concepts/Terms:
 * Imagery, Motifs, and Close Reading
 * Tragic twist - Can there be tragedy without a tragic hero? Does much of life involve tragedy minus the hero?
 * Shakespeare the politician - Writing Macbeth for James I

Week 1: In order to prepare for any challenging text, orient yourself by considering some of the common questions scholars have posed about that text: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/macbeth.html

Week 2: Harvard Article: [|"The Witches and The Witch: Verdi's Macbeth"]

1. Read AND ANNOTATE the first two pages of Albright's article referenced above.

2. In your journal, please select at least three sentences from the article that express opinion about the character of the witches or Lady Macbeth. Then, locate evidence that either refutes or supports those statements. (You may include no more than two sentences in the abstract at the article's beginning.)

3. Use a chart like this to record your work:
 * || Sentence 1: (Write it out) || Sentence 2 (Write it out) || Sentence 3 (Write it out ||
 * Evidence || Record lines here ||  ||   ||
 * Evidence ||  ||   ||   ||
 * Evidence ||  ||   ||   ||

===** For your consideration: Since Aristotle first delineated the elements necessary for tragic drama, societies have agreed that successful tragedies require a protagonist with whom the audience sympathizes. But does Shakespeare’s Macbeth inspire sympathy? **===

// Shakespeare's Workmanship: Crafting a Sympathetic Macbeth //
// From Notes on Shakespeare's workmanship by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch. New York: H. Holt and Company. //

// But (here lies the crux) how could he make us sympathize with him — make us, sitting or standing in the Globe Theatre some time (say) in the year 1610, feel that Macbeth was even such a man as you or I? He was a murderer, and a murderer for his private profit — a combination which does not appeal to most of us, to unlock the flood-gates of sympathy, or indeed (I hope) as striking home upon any private and pardonable frailty. The Chronicle does, indeed, allow just one loop-hole for pardon. It hints that Duncan, nominating his boy to succeed him, thereby cut off Macbeth from a reasonable hope of the crown, which he thereupon (and not until then) by process of murder usurped, "having," says Holinshed, "a juste quarrell so to do (as he took the mater)." // // Did Shakespeare use that one hint; enlarge that loophole? He did not. // // The more I study Shakespeare as an artist, the more I worship the splendid audacity of what he did, just here, in this play. // // Instead of using a paltry chance to condone Macbeth's guilt, he seized on it and plunged it threefold deeper, so that it might verily // // the multitudinous seas incarnadine. // // Think of it:— // // He made this man, a sworn soldier, murder Duncan, his liege-lord. // // He made this man, a host, murder Duncan, a guest within his gates. // // He made this man, strong and hale, murder Duncan, old, weak, asleep and defenseless. // // He made this man commit murder for nothing but his own advancement. // // He made this man murder Duncan, who had steadily advanced him hitherto, who had never been aught but trustful, and who (that no detail of reproach might be wanting) had that very night, as he retired, sent, in most kindly thought, the gift of a diamond to his hostess. // // To sum up: instead of extenuating Macbeth's criminality, Shakespeare doubles and redoubles it. Deliberately this magnificent artist locks every door on condonation, plunges the guilt deep as hell, and then — tucks up his sleeves. // // There was once another man, called John Milton, a Cambridge man of Christ's College; and, as most of us know, he once thought of rewriting this very story of Macbeth. The evidence that he thought of it — the entry in Milton's handwriting — may be examined in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. // // Milton did not eventually write a play on the story of Macbeth. Eventually he preferred to write an epic upon the Fall of Man, and of that poem critics have been found to say that Satan, "enemy of mankind," is in fact the hero and the personage that most claims our sympathy. // // Now (still bearing in mind how the subject of Macbeth attracted Milton) let us open Paradise Lost at Book IV upon the soliloquy of Satan, which between lines 32-113 admittedly holds the clou of the poem: // // O! thou that, with surpassing glory crown'd — // // Still thinking of Shakespeare and of Milton — of Satan and of Macbeth — let us ponder every line: but especially these: — // // Lifted up so high, // // I 'sdain'd subjection, and thought one step higher // // Would set me highest, and in a moment quit // // The debt immense of endless gratitude. // // So burdensome, still paying, still to owe: // // Forgetful what from him I still receiv'd; // // And understood not that a grateful mind // // By owing owes not, but still pays, at once // // Indebted and discharg'd. .. . // // And yet more especially this: — // // Farewell, remorse! All good to me is lost: // // Evil, be thou my good. //

// Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir. Notes on Shakespeare's workmanship. New York, H. Holt and Company, 1917. __Shakespeare Online__. 20 Aug. 2000. 23 April 2013. //