Macbeth--scene summary

× I

× i. Witches on heath: fair is foul; foul is fair; fog and filthy air

× ii. Camp; bloody captain

× bleeding brave captain:

× blood; speak things strange; revolt of state, defeated and then new revolt; drowning swimmers; choking; splitting rebel with sword; mounting head; betrayed expectation- apparent happiness ; underlying discomfort; gashes cry;

× M's worthy brutality

× iii. Witches meet M.

× malevolent plots against sailors; pilots thumb--grotesque, sadistic, cruel; ritualistic

× ambiguity; shock; strangeness; curiousity --earth's bubbles; illusion, madness or real? instruments of darknes; Banquo's knowledgeability and wariness

× prophecy; M. is rapt; first part of prophecy fulfilled; enthralled by ambition; secret in his asides; reality overturned; vibrates with excitement

× inner struggle against temptation; hypocritical appearance

× Banquo apologizes for his raptness as LM will later

× time and the hour; fatalism; all is flowing

× iv. Duncan and M.

× Cawdor's noble death; Duncan's generosity and credulousness

× D. names Malcolm his heir; M. develops plan and dissociates: eye wink at the hand--hiding from others and himself

× v. M meets LM

× letter: aspiring to greatness; love for her

× she senses his unwillingness to break eggs; will egg him; he's suddenly there; breathless speed; invokes evil spirits to unsex her; turn milk to gall; night to hide knife from wound; darkness to shut out heaven

× future felt in instant; theme of time

× vi. Duncan's entry

× he and Banquo see pleasant seat; procreant; delicate air; courtesy vs. hypocrisy

× his ignorance; we know the truth; suspense

× vii. M and LM plot

× M hesitates; act wont just end, but will have consequences; fears justice; senses double betrayal; D's innocence; predicts guilt and punishment; pity as newborn babe; likes present popularity

× She goads him on with desire and recollection of his hope and vow

× M. insists on his human kindness, limitation

× her more powerful demonism overcomes it--I have given suck...dashed its brains out; to his fear of failure she outlines plot--getting warders drunk

× he admires her craft

× II

× i. Pre-sleep

× Banquo fears sleep because of cursed dreams; father child

× Strike bell when drink ready; her bell summons him to murder

× Dagger--fatal vision real and unreal; ambiguity; blood, gore night

× ii. The Murder

× alcohol turns her on; she senses M. doing it-owl's screetch; she's drugged grooms; she was a afraid because D. resembled her father

× he hears strange things --they awaken and pray; M. can't say amen; voice saying Mac does murder sleep.; blood on his hands; wash it off; he's catatonic; she takes daggers

× incredibly dramatic values

× more noises--knocking; guilt--he cant clean hands; wants not to know himself and to wake Duncan

× iii. Porter at gate; Macduff's entrance; discovery of crime

× Porter

× allusion to hell gate; devil-porter; crimes enumerated: greedy suicide, equivocator, Jesuit; asks for money

× drink provokes desire but not performance; equivocator--cf. LM on drink

× evil portents; horror, horror, horror; sacreligious murder; great doom's image; shake off sleep; rise up from graves

× Macbeth's equivocation: Had I but died an hour before this mischance...there's nothing serious in mortality

× misconstrual; fraud--witches equivocation; meaning interpreted by intention--cf. the atmosphere of Inverness

× Lady M. faints--look to the lady: Macbeth and Banquo

× Donalbain and Malcolm smell rat and split

× Banquo's intention to fight undivulged pretense of treasonous malice; not dressed yet--naked frailties

× [atmosphere of kennedy assasination]

× iv. Reactions and reports: Duncan's horses; Malcolm's flight

× III

× i. Banquo

× willing to play along with murder for his predicted gain

× hypocritical welcome

× hidden malice in both; Mac pumps for info

× planned discussion again put off till "tomorrow"

× M. soliloquy, indicating his commitment to devil and paranoia

× three desperate murderers persuaded by M.

× cf. RJ apothecary

× secrecy; hypocrisy

× also kill child

× no rubs or botches; compulsive cleanliness

× ii. M and LM tortured alone; cheer each other up; inner/outer

× past wont just go away; torture of the mind; thoughts are scorpions

× invocation of night; he wont reveal plot to her yet

× iii. B's murder

× only one half's done; what's undone

× Fleance like Malcolm escapes

× iv. the banquet--public scrutiny; private secret

× hypocritical host--always saying "heart"

× bloody murderer enters; "best of the cutthroats"--gruesome

× the ghost

× she reminds him to be convivial

× ghost enters;

× she covers with the company and tries to cheer him;

× her ignorance of deed;tells them not to question M

× he returns to wine; toasts Banquo

× Ghost reeenters; she chases them out quickly

× M. turns immediately to fear of Macduff; further into blood

× v. Hecate scene--unnecessary

× vi. Lennox and lord discuss tyranny and Macduff's flight

× IV

× i. witches haunt ; cauldron scene

× attraction and fascination of evil; bubble, bubble

× finger of birth-strangled babe/ ditch delivered by a drab; dance/music

× M. enters...deed without name; invokes all chaos and destruction

× treasure/of all nature's germens tumble all together,/Even till destruction sicken

× Apparations--

× armed head: beware Macduff; M's previous fear

× bloody child: equivocating--none of woman born shall harm

× M will kill Mac anyway

× child crowned with tree--Birnam wood

× prediction of B's line

× resolve to murder Macduff

× ii. Macduff's castle: horror scene [like Blinding Gloucester]

× Lady Macduff (contrast L M) attacks husband for abandoning her--scary situation

× dialogue with son; witty and frightened; Ross and messenger warn and abandon her too

× in this earthly world, where to do harm/is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly [foul is fair]

× child stabbed by murderers on stage

× cf. El Salvador, Chile, Romania, China

× iii. England: Malcolm-Macduff [contrast demonic evil of last two to holiness in this scene]

× issue of trust:

× tyranny's power of terror makes all suspect of treachery[e.g. Macduff's betrayal of family]

× Mal. will keep hope: Angels are bright still though the brightest fell....; but suspects Macduff since he left family behind

× fitness to rule

× Mal. worries his own vices will make him unfit to rule

× Is this reference to James?

× Macduff says he can hide his lust and get plenty of women to sleep with him

× also avarice and other vices; Macduff retracts

× only a test--equivocation

× King Edward cures the evil; heals diseases; king's mysterious and sacred powers

× reports from Scotland: alas poor country, afraid to know itself

× Ross equivocates to Macduff; hides the truth

× feel it as a man

×" Malcolm: convert woe to anger; counterattack

× V

× i. Dunsinane: LM sleepwalking

× Doctor and Gentlewoman frame it; ghostly spectacle ; he records in writing; also pantomime with commentary;

× another holy physician like King, but cant cure her evil

× compare M at feast

× sleep disturbed; keeps light on, moves in darkness; he cant sleep

× handwashing; spectacle of madness--sensational and moralized; spot like dagger

× her atheism and urging mixed with terror and guilt; unending blood; dantesque justice

× discontinuous speech and action

× I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body

× undressed--naked frailties of II; return of the repressed; time wont go on as in what's done cannot be undone

× the consequentiality of acts; opposed to rashness

× ii. Rebel force

× equiv: some say he's mad; others...do call it valiant fury

× imagery of holy battle against tyrant--medicine; country's purge; drown weeds

× iii. Dunsinane

× M acting mad in reliance on witches' prophecy and in open abuse of all his followers

× "Seyton" his servant; M's despair and willingness to die; desire for doctor to purge his land of English; completely isolated except for those he terrorizes

× iv. Birnam Wood--Malcolm's force

× war must decide the outcome

× v. Dunsinane castle

× M. reflects on his change; now fearless, inured to horrors

× LM dead; M's unemotional reaction;

× Life's but a walking shadow, poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/signifying nothing

× wood began to move; illusion; equivocation; miracle; staged miracle

M. discovers "equivocation of fiend that lies like truth"--his tragic realizations; his mistake; Shakespeare's didacticism

× vi. Outside castle: Malcolm's army with boughs--natural imagery

× vii. Battlefield

× Mac. compares himself to bear at stake

× Kills young Siward

× His soldiers desert

× viii. Battlefield

× Mac. as devil; fights Macduff with witches charm of prophecy

× M. fears Macduff when told of "double sense" of witches; equivocation

× Macduff's great language; "Lay on Macduff"

× Malcolm's victory; good death of young Siward

× Macduff with Macbeth's head

× Malcolm begins orderly rule

• critical notes

× SM

× sleep: most vulnerable, innocent and yet prone to nightmare and hidden desires and fears; the dark, unconscious, unknown, uncontrolled and yet necessary realm of experience

× struggle between conscious and unconscious; controlled and uncontrolled behavior

× equivocation--the porter; fair is foul; confusion; dreams equivocate; ghosts; witches; prophcies; bubbles in the earth; equivocation of the fiend V.vi. 43

× tyranny and tyrannicide...problem of evil; integrity, saving faith; mistrust--Noriega, Cieaucescu

× nature, kindness, growth, fertility, chain of generations, love, beauty vs. unnatural, monstruousity

× as much of heaven as of hell--anti atheism V.i. 41: "What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to accompt." didacticism; contra tamburlaine and mach.; cf. Faustus

× extremes of sanctity and unholiness; dantesque; manifestation of god's order in world

× Closeness to PL: Witches as serpent; AE in Garden; temptation, evil, guilt; Man and Women; milton planned tyrannicide story

× rashness and hesitation; contrast to Hamlet

× doubling: Macduff and Macbeth; two ladies; Banquo and Duncan;

× blood and blood--spilling of blood; bloodiness of the play and importance of blood as the continuity dynasty

× Cleanth Brooks

× apply New Crit--study of metaphysical use of metaphor-- to Sh.

× analysis of clothing imagery in one specific line--"daggers unmannnerly breech'd with gore--and throughout the play

× very concentrated and apparently incoherent metaphor that opens when unpacked, (esp. p. 210-11)

× symbol of babe--most powerful [prospero, lear, HIV]

× issue of fertility; growth; potential and future lineage; seed of Banquo--cf. babe Elizabeth in HVIII= tomorrow and tomorrow; the issue of futures; this is what M. learns is futile; his struggle doesn't give him tomorrow

× contrast HV's future; Macbeth not looking to the long term and neither is Henry

× Macbeth is trying to conquer the future--"war with the future"; found a dynasty; this is why he is so involved with LM

× If it were done when tis done

× wants to jump the life to come

× duties to Duncan are called "children"

× by killing Macduff's children and Fleance

× making war on future is making war on children

× child defies murderers

× like Herod's slaughter of the innocents; Xtian analogues to Malcolm

× she should have died hereafter

× returns to witches in IV to get rational control of future--two babes crowned and bloody

× control of the future (Weberian/Mach "consequence" and denial of past and present

× Sh. uses same symbol for unpredictable future as for pity (218)

× also plant symbolism

× movement of wood: nature rises against him in seeming; clothes symbolism--clothed in manliness is to reject babe

× Macduff ripped untimely from womb--unpredictable child; unpredictability of child and future; unpredictable breaking through net of calculation; naked babe is Macduff

× pity like new born babe is weak and yet fierce--strding the blast; avenging angel of apocalypse

× eye of childhood fears a painted devil--Lady Macbeth; sceptical rationalism like Edmunds

× imagery of clothing and nakedness--cf. Lear and Tempest

 

× OJ Campbell's attack on new criticism Signet 221

× forcing meanings--ungenerous, niggling

× "chain of imagery" and philosophic deeper meanings wont work; not Elizabethan (nonsense: Brook's allegorical approach as old as bible commmentary)