The Extract.
Remember the question will ask you to ‘ Look at how the characters speak and behave here. How do you think an audience might respond to this part of the play? ‘
Audience.
Do mention the effect/impact of the scene on the Jacobean audience. Is there any dramatic irony too?
( Shocked, numbed, disgusted, uncomfortable, encouraging, full of questions, horrified, intrigued, repulsed, fascinated, powerless, pitying, helpless, angered, unnerved, sympathetic, uneasy, emotionally drained, compelled, terrified, admiring, condemning etc)
Speak and behave.
Examine and explore the relationship or dynamic between the characters. Is this part of the play pivotal? Does this moment present an epiphany or revelation for the characters? Is this part of the play an irreversible turning point? What type of intimacy is created here? Are the characters’ behaviours reinforcing their speech or at odds? Hypocrisy? Is the audience in possession of more knowledge than the characters? Dramatic irony.
Are the characters talking authentically? Or are they insincere? Hypocritical? Appearances versus reality?
Do we detect any opportunism on the part of the characters? Fateful?
If a character is speaking in the aside, then what does this suggest about their behaviour and state of mind? Are they being furtive? Secretive? Conspiratorial?
Where are the characters speaking from? Setting. Think about the social hierarchies or power structures presented in this extract and where the power dynamics change and if so, why?
Are they at home or in a formal situation-aware of their audience on stage?
Or are they in a forbidden, wild, anti-social space where the conversation will be very different?
Or are they on a battlefield where inauthenticity has no place?
The tone of the characters :
Secretive. Personal. Self-doubting. Conspiratorial. Furtive. Malevolent. Cruel. Disrespectful. Insulting. Sycophantic. Flattering. Resigned. Despairing. Agitated. Anxious. Ironic. Needy. Executive. Familiar. Friendly. Serious. Detached. Faux friendly. Exhausted. Exhilarated. Arrogant. Grandiose. Deluded. Deceitful. Deceptive. Grief-stricken. Horrified.
Track an analysis after a framing idea.
For example; The shattering news of Lady Macduff’s barbaric and senseless murder is announced by Ross to Macduff and Malcolm using a triple, ‘castle…wife and babes savagely slaughter’d’ in a mechanical numbed way as if he cannot even believe the horror of his own words. The revelation begins ironically in the present tense as if the abject images are still playing on in Ross’s mind, ‘ Your castle is surprised’ underlining the freshness and immediacy of the disturbing revelation ‘Your wife and babes savagely slaughter’d‘ The alliteration intensifies the evil spectacle communicated to the two listeners which the audience already have already uncomfortably witnessed first hand, but now have to witness again, as we monitor the effect on Macduff and Malcolm who react…..
Part Two : The Second Question on Macbeth.
Ensure you make your response clearly relates to the question. Underline the key features of the question and keep focusing on these ideas in your answer. Check as you are writing your answer that you are staying on point.
For example: Write about the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and how it is presented at different points of the play. (2017)
Word Bank.
Relationship: Passionate, dangerously intimate. Fiercely intimate. Roles swapped. Shocking versions of masculinity and femininity? Usurped. Transgressive. Affectionate. Soul mates. Telepathic. Romantic. Dependent. Tumultuous. Almost a form of sexual consummation through murder. Disturbing intimacy. Insulting. Belittling. Undermining. Dominating. Progressively estranged. Undermining. Insulting. Isolated. Lonely. Redundant. Neglected. Rejected. Aversion. Secretive. Excluded. Blame. Grief-stricken. Mourning impossible.
Paragraph One.
Early-stage of relationship: Act One Scene Five. The letter scene. ( Powerful connection. Passionate intimacy. Aware of her husband’s capacity for conscience and ‘ kindness’ which Lady Macbeth regards as a limitation and surprises the audience after Macbeth’s capacity for extreme brutality on the battlefield. Why did Macbeth want to inform his wife of the predictions even before he arrives home? Dynamic of their intense relationship. Wants her to admonish him if he falters in his secret desire to be Kin. Knows her ambition. Hence Primes her with the letter.)
Two.
Act One Scene Seven. Belittles her husband. Attacks his manhood and virility. Potency a key issue between husband and wife. Her version of masculinity connects manliness to violence and cruelty. Lawlessness. Where are The Macbeths’ children? Is this his vulnerable area as he knows he is without an heir, unlike Banquo and Duncan? He applauds her brutal demeaning of his valour. A Shocking revelation about their strangely dependent, sexually violent relationship.
Three.
Act Three. Banquo’s ghost. Queen has been excluded and supposedly protected from the plan and details of Banquo’s murder. She is a consummate actress, improvising excuses for her husband’s bizarre and revelatory behaviour in front of the nobleman. Quick-witted and loyal. Protective of her husband’s status and her own. Shows her continued loyalty to her husband despite her exclusion. Ironically the repetition of the belittling attack on his manhood fails. This vision is too disturbing to be swept away via humiliation. The supernatural dismissed conveniently here despite the ‘unsex me here’ speech. Selective belief system or lack of Sensitivity and imagination.
Four.
Act Five Scene One.
Shocking change in Queen. Vulnerable. Haunted. Diminished society. Alone with servants. Her sleepwalking ironically leaking guilty revelations. Seclusion and loneliness forced her into self-reflection which has agitated her mind and conscience. Interestingly she is repeating her husband’s guilty behaviours and thoughts from Act Two after the murder. Shows strong psychical connection remains despite her seeming redundancy in his life as a monarch.
Five.
Act Five Scene Five. The Queen is dead. Mourning impossible with the impending battle to fight. Words to grieve no longer available. Macbeth numbed by his realisation of epic failure and hubris. The futility of their mutual ambition. Their marriage and passionate intimacy ironically destroyed by their greed. Her death returns Macbeth to the human. His final soliloquy powerfully admits the nullity of overblown ambition. Each has been destroyed by their own hamartia.
Another example: ‘Macbeth is a play about violence.’ Write about how Shakespeare presents violence at different points in Macbeth. Refer to characters and events from the play in your answer.( 2018)
Example response.
Introduction.
The verbally corrupting violence of the witches is shockingly apparent in the play’s opening scene when the witches declare that ‘fair is foul’ , which foreshadows the contaminating effects of different forms of violence in the play. These forms of violence can be divided between the physical, the verbal and the mental.
Paragraph One.
The physical violence of the play is made apparent by King Duncan’s opening words, ‘what bloody man is that? ‘ drawing attention to the way war legitimizes violence and also to Duncan’s dependency upon Macbeth and Banquo to support his faltering, even weak kingship. When the Sergeant testifies to Macbeth s brutal and even unnecessary violence on the battlefield,’ unseam’d him’ this is seen as something to be celebrated and praised, ‘ Like Valour’s minion’, despite the extremity of the violence wreaked on Duncan’s enemy by ‘ brave Macbeth.’ Wanton violence is approved of in this Scotland as long as it remains supportive of the elected hierarchy.
Two.
Of course, this celebration of ‘noble Macbeth‘ and his capacity for violence becomes transformed when the loyalty of Macbeth yields to ‘vaulting ambition‘ culminating in his cowardly murder of King Duncan whilst the latter is innocently sleeping. Ironically, ‘ Bellona’ s bridegroom’ is now operating independently and for his own selfish reasons, yet his regret is immediate revealing that the physical destruction of Duncan has also violently destroyed the better part of ‘noble Macbeth’ and that mentally Macbeth will be tormented violently for what he has done’ To know my deed, ’twere best not to know myself.’ This mental torment is eventually duplicated by the Queen in Act Five, where her sleepwalking reveals her leaking conscience and leads to her suicide. ‘ Here’s the smell of blood still.’ The physical violence committed by her husband Macbeth with her encouragement has rebounded on the Queen mentally so that her mental life has become violently nightmarish and spiritually intolerable.
Three.
The physical violence of the murder of Banquo in Act Three is committed by assassins under the orders of Macbeth who avoids the actual deed out of cowardice and even self-deception. Macbeth verbally incites the killers to assassinate Banquo bringing together all the most depraved and violent aspects of his now fallen nature. ‘ Know Banquo was your enemy.’ He deliberately corrupts the minds of the assassins so they will use violence against Macbeth’s best friend whom Macbeth believes undermines the authority of his reign.’ To be thus is nothing’ Ironically the betrayal of Banquo leads to Macbeth’s terrifyingly violent hallucination of his ghost alerting the court to his mental instability and probable guilt over his absent friend’s death. This violent hallucination also highlights the growing estrangement between husband and wife and contributes to her eventual madness and suicide.
Four.
The gratuitous murder of Lady Macduff and her children is again perpetrated by assassins under Macbeth’s orders. This violence reveals the abject cruelty of Macbeth when his violent, tyrannous nature demands spiteful revenge for Macduff’s absence. Macbeth fails to recognise that the verbal warnings and cryptic promises of the witches are a form of both mental and verbal violence that manipulate Macbeth into the most of degenerate actions against those who were formerly allies or friends: Duncan, Banquo and Macduff. Ironically the witches’ conniving verbal violence also condemns both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself to death too, as their actions lead to consequences that bring violent ruination upon them.
Five.
In the play therefore, violence is disturbingly made manifest in the actions, words and the minds of the characters, all coming together in the bleak epiphany of Macbeth in his final soliloquy when he recognises his life’s abject ruination due to his fatal hubris and hamartia ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
