Tag Archives: Macbeth

‘Macbeth’ by Boil in the Bag

Senior students in the college were given a treat today – we welcomed Boil in the Bag productions to the College to perform scenes from ‘Macbeth’. The scenes were performed in a classical Shakespearean manner but were also given a modern twist. It is easy to see from their production why ‘Macbeth’ is a timeless classic.

The focus of the production was the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and it was clear how that relationship deteriorated as the play progressed. The modern twist helped us to fully understand that Shakespeare’s characters and themes are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago. The actors were outstanding. It was a pleasure to watch them combine humour, ambition, superstition, grief and tragedy into a show that was truly spellbinding.

For more information about the production see:

www.boilinthebag.ie

Winners of Macbeth Challenge

Congratulations to all fifth years who took part in the Macbeth Challenge 2012. They are all winners!!! All performances were outstanding.

Participating in the Soliloquy Challenge were:

  1. Liam Schnober Smyth – Hecate’s speech
  2. Cian Harrington – Two truths
  3. Dylan Brady – Two truths
  4. Jamie Daly – Thou hast it all
  5. Eoin Sweetman – Dagger
  6. Duncan Walker – Dagger
  7. Sean Hayes – Dagger
  8. Niamh Kelly White – The Prince of Cumberland
  9. Chris Mullen – Two truths
  10. Matthew Mollahan – Thou has it all
  11. Robert Tully – Tomorrow and tomorrow
  12. Joe Dunne – The raven is himself is hoarse
Participating in the Drama Challenge were:
  1. Robert Tully and Duncan Walker – Macbeth and Banquo (2.i)
  2. Ciaran McGinley, Cathal Niall, Matthew Mollahan – Witches  (4.i)

Those presented with trophies were Duncan for the Dagger Soliloquy and Ciaran, Cathal & Matthew for the Witches Scene!! Excellent performances by each of them.

Here you can see the participants and those who received trophies. Thanks to Mr Flynn for his great photos.

5th Year Macbeth Challenge

Macbeth Challenge 2012

Fifth years are you ready for the 2012 Macbeth Soliloquy and Drama Challenge?

Tomorrow you have the chance to recite your favourite soliloquy – the dagger soliloquy seems to be a popular choice – in a way that conveys the meaning and mood of the speaker in the context of that soliloquy. In addition or instead, you may join with a partner or two to dramatise a piece from a compelling scene of your choice.

Aside from the fame and glory of winning the Macbeth Challenge, there will prizes galore of the material kind. Best soliloquy and best drama will receive a coveted trophy. Book tokens will also be awarded to winners and high achievers. Apart from that, a few goodies will be thrown into the mix. Who could resist?

As you have been practising since long before the midterm, a very high standard is anticipated for this competition. In order to set the bar high and put you under pressure to aim for excellence, Mr Lavin will be present for the competition.

Best wishes to you all – and don’t let anything “impede thee from the golden round” and please show that you have no “spur to prick the sides of [your] intent, only vaulting ambition”. And if you are really feeling confdent, you may call “fate into the list to champion [you] to the utterance”.

Macbeth’s soliloquies and asides

Here is a guide to some of the important soliloquies in ‘Macbeth’, spoken by the protagonist himself.

Act I Scene 3 Line 128
The witches have just made their predictions and Ross and Angus have brought news of his new title of Thane of Cawdor. The attractions of ‘the imperial theme’ begin to unsettle Macbeth. His latent ambition is evident.

Act I Scene 4 Line 48
In this aside, Macbeth is aware of the evil nature of his desires, ‘my black and deep desires’, yet he avoids accepting moral responsibility for what he plans.

Act I Scene 7 Line 1
Macbeth’s better judgement seems to prevail and he realises the folly of murdering the virtuous Duncan. Lady Macbeth’s arrival just as he finishes is a key moment in the plot.

Act II Scene 1 Line 33
A dagger points the way to Duncan’s chamber. Macbeth is intent on murder, his mind is made up. His moral sense has become corrupted.

Act III Scene 1 Line 48
Though acknowledging the immorality of what has happened, Macbeth now determines to shape his future and challenge fate. Banquo must die. The tyrant in him is emerging.

Act IV Scene 1 Line 144
In the immediate aftermath of his second encounter with the witches, Macbeth feels he must act impulsively from this point on and the first to suffer will be Macduff’s clann.

Act V Scene 3 Line 20
The emptiness of Macbeth’s life is the subject of this speech. He has thrown away his soul for nothing.

Act V Scene 5 Line 9
Lady Macbeth’s piercing death cry does not startle Macbeth. He is numbed and has lost all human feeling.

Important Quotes – Macbeth Act 3

Here are some important quotes from Act 3. Be sure you know and understand each of them.

Banquo: “I fear /Thou play’dst most foully for it.”

Banquo: “My duties / Are with a most indissoluble tie / Forever knit.”

Macbeth: “Fail not our feast.” Banquo: “My lord, I will not.”

Macbeth: “Filling their hearers / With strange invention.”

Macbeth: “To be thus is nothing, / But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo / Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature / Reigns that which would be feared.”

Macbeth: “There is none but he / Whose being I do fear;”

Macbeth: “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, / And put a barren sceptre in my gripe.”

Macbeth: “For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind; / For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered.”

Macbeth: “So, come Fate into the list / And champion me to the utterance.”

Macbeth: “Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.”

Macbeth: “Though I could / With barefaced power sweep him from my sight.”

Macbeth: “For it must be done tonight / And something from the palace.”

Macbeth: “Banquo, thy soul’s flight, / If it find Heaven, must find it out tonight.”

Lady Macbeth: “Nought’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content; / Tis safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”

Lady Macbeth: “Things without all remedy / Should be without regard – what’s done is done.”

Macbeth: “We have scorched the snake, not killed it”

Macbeth: “But let the frame of things disjoint – / Both the worlds suffer – / Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep / In the affliction of these terrible dreams / That shake us nightly.”

Macbeth: “Duncan’s in his grave; / After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,  / Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, / Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing / Can touch him further.”

Lady Macbeth: “Gentle my lord, sleek o’er your rugged looks, / Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.”

Macbeth: “Make our faces vizards to our hearts / Disguising what they are.”

Macbeth: “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife.”

Macbeth: “Ere the bath hath flown / His cloistered flight…there shall be done / A deed of dreadful note.”

Macbeth: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck / Til thou applaud the deed – Come seeling night… / Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond / Which makes me pale!”

Macbeth: “Things bad begun make themselves strong by ill.”

Macbeth: “You know your own degrees; sit down:  / At first and last the hearty welcome.”

Macbeth: “We’ll drink a measure / The table round.”

Macbeth: “Tis better thee without than he within.”

Macbeth: “Thou art the best o’ th’ cut-throats… / …thou art the non-pareil.”

Macbeth: “Then comes my fit again; / I had else been perfect – / Whole as the marble, founded as the rock.”

Macbeth: “Now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears.”

First murderer: “In a ditch he bides, / With twenty trenched gashes on his head; / The least a death to nature.”

Macbeth: “There the grown serpent lies; the worm that’s fled / Hath nature that in time will venom breed.”

Lady Macbeth: “You do not give the cheer; the feast is sold.”

Macbeth: “Here had we our country’s honour roofed, /  Were the graced person of our Banquo present.”

Macbeth: “The table’s full.”…”Which of you have done this?”

Macbeth: “Thou can’st not say I did it – never shake / Thy gory locks at me.”

Lady Macbeth: “Sit worthy friends, my lord is often thus… / The fit is momentary; upon a thought / He will be well again.”

Lady Macbeth: “Are you a man?”

Macbeth: “Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that / Which might appal the devil.”

Lady Macbeth: “O proper stuff! / This is the very painting of your fear: /This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, / Led you to Duncan… / When all’s done / You look but on a stool.”

Macbeth: “Our monuments shall be the maws of kites.”

Macbeth: “The times have been / That, when the brains were out, the man would die, / And there an end; but now they rise again, / With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, / And push us from our stools.”

Lady Macbeth: “My noble lord, / Your worthy friends do lack you.”

Macbeth: “I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing  / To those that know me.”

Macbeth: “To our dear Banquo, whom we miss; / Would he were here.”

Macbeth: “Avaunt and quit my sight, let the earth hide thee – /  Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold.”

Macbeth: “What man dare, I dare:  / Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, / The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger, /  Take any shape but that.”

Macbeth: “Hence, horrible shadow / Unreal mockery, hence.”

Lady Macbeth: “You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, / With most admired disorder.”

Macbeth: “Can such things be, / And overcome us like a summer’s cloud.”

Macbeth: “You can behold such sights /  And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, /  When mine is blanched with fear.”

Lady Macbeth: “He grows worse and worse / Question enrages him… / Stand not upon the order of your going, / But go at once.”

Macbeth: “It will have blood they say: blood will have blood.”

Macbeth: “There’s not a one of them but in his house / I keep a servant fee’d.”

Macbeth: “Now I am bent to know, / By the worst means the worst. For mine own good / All causes shall give way. I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er: / Strange things I have in head that will to hand, /Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.”

Lady Macbeth: “You lack the season of all natures, sleep.”

Macbeth: “We are yet but young in deed.”

Hecate: “Loves for his own ends, not for you”

Hecate: “And by the strength of their illusion / Shall draw him on to his confusion.”

Hecate: “He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear / His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace and fear.”

Hecate: “Security / Is mortal’s chiefest enemy.”

Lennox: “The gracious Duncan…the right valiant Banquo…to kill their gracious father…How it did grieve Macbeth…”

Lennox: “And ’cause he failed / His presence at the tyrant’s feast, I hear / Macduff lives in disgrace.”

Lord: “The most pious Edward”

Lord: “We may again / Give to our table meat, sleep to our nights / Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives”

Lord: “He prepares for some attempt of war.”

Lennox: “That a swift blessing / May soon return to this our suffering country, / Under a hand accursed.”

Bloody imagery in ‘Macbeth’

There are many images of blood, murder, torture and physical pain in ‘Macbeth’. Here are some of them:

Duncan to Malcolm
‘What bloody man in that? He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.’
(Act I Scene 2)

Captain to Duncan
‘For brave Macbeth – well he deserves that name –
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave.’
(Act I Scene 2)

Lady Macbeth (soliloquy)
‘The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it!’
(Act I Scene 5)

Macbeth (soliloquy)
‘But in these cases
We still have judgement here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.’
(Act I Scene 7)

Lady Macbeth to Macbeth
‘I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.’
(Act I Scene 7)

Macbeth (soliloquy)
‘I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Whic was not so before. There’s no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes.’
(Act II Scene 1)

Lady Macbeth to Macbeth
”Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go carry them, and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.’
(Act II Scene 2)

Macbeth (alone)
‘What hands are here! Ha! They pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand: No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.’
(Act II Scene 2)

Lady Macbeth to Macbeth
‘My hands are of your colour, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
I hear a knocking
At the south entry; retire we to our chamber;
A little water clears us of this deed.’
(Act II Scene 2)

Macduff to court
‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord’s anointed temple, ans stole thence
The life of the building!’
(Act II Scene 3)

Macduff to court
‘Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight
With a new Gorgon: do not bid me speak;
See, and then speak yourselves.’
(Act II Scene 3)

Macbeth to court
‘Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breeched with gore.’
(Act II Scene 3)

Ross to Old Man
‘Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?’
(Act II Scene 4)

Ross to Macduff
‘Is’t known who did this more than bloody deed?’
(Act II Scene 4)

Macbeth to Lady Macbeth
‘We have scotched the snake, not killed it:
She’ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.’
(Act III Scene 2)

Macbeth to Lady Macbeth
‘Blood hath been shed ere now, i’ the olden time,
Ere human statute purged the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been performed
Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.’
(Act III Scene 4)

 Macbeth to ghost of Banquo
‘Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with.’
(Act III Scene 4)

Macbeth to Lady Macbeth
‘It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.’
(Act III Scene 4)

Macbeth to Lady Macbeth
‘I am in blood
Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
(Act III Scene 4)

Second Apparition (a bloody child)
‘Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.’
(Act IV Scene 1)

Macbeth to Lennox
‘Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits;
The flighty purpose never is o’ertook
Unless the deed go with it; from this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thought with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to the edge of the sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I’ll do, before this purpose cool:
But no more sights!’
(Act IV Scene 1)

Macduff to Malcolm
‘Each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds
As if it felt with Scotland and yelled out
Like a syllable of dolour.’
(Act IV Scene 3)

Malcolm to Macduff
‘I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
Is added to her wounds.’
(Act IV Scene 3)

Malcolm to Macduff
‘I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name; but there’s no bottom, none,
Im my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up
The cistern of my lust; and my desire
All continent impediments would o’erbear
That did oppose my will; better Macbeth
Than such a one to reign.’
(Act IV Scene 3)

Macduff to Malcolm
‘O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d,
When shalt thou see they wholesome days again,
Since that the truest issue of thy throne
By his own interdiction stands accursed,
And does blaspheme his breed?’
(Act IV Scene 3)

Ross to Malcolm and Macduff
‘Alas! poor country;
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rent the air
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead man’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.’
(Act 4 Scene 3)

Ross to Macduff
‘Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughtered: to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry of these murdered deer,
To add the death of you.’
(Act IV Scene 3)

Lady Macbeth (sleepwalking)
Out damed spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis tie to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard: What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’
(Act V Scene 1)

Lady Macbeth
‘The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What! will these hands ne’er be clean?’
(Act V Scene 1)

Lady Macbeth
‘Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
(Act V Scene 1)

Macbeth (alone)
‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t. I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.’
(Act V Scene 5)

Malcolm (to court)
‘We shall not spend a large expense of time
Before we reckon with your several loves,
And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,
Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland
In such an honor nam’d. What’s more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exil’d friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace
We will perform in measure, time, and place:
So, thanks to all at once and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.’
(Act V Scene 8)

Note:
Simply knowing these quotes is not sufficient for a Higher Level essay on ‘Macbeth’. You must also be able to state the role and function of this bloody imagery, write about why it is included in the play and how it adds to the themes of the play.  Perhaps you may like to comment below to practice writing your opinions on these topics!!

Macbeth’s horrific deeds

6A2,

You are currently preparing the following essay:

Describe any two of Macbeth’s most horrific deeds in the course of the play.

Here are some of the deeds that you may have chosen to write about:

  • The murder of Duncan (Act 2 Scene 2)
  • The murder of Banquo (Act 3 Scene 1)
  • Macbeth’s seeking out of the Witches (Act 4 Scene 1)
  • The murder of Lady Macduff and her son (Act 4 Scene 2)

Remeber to fully explain why they are horrific deeds and to include plenty of quotation in your notes so that you will be able to use them in your answer.

More on ‘Macbeth’

Here are some links worth checking out if you are studying ‘Macbeth’:

Bitsize covers the basics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/dramamacbeth/

More basics from Sparknotes
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth

A clip about the character of Lady Macbeth
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/macbeth-lady-macbeth-in-context/3041.html

 Some challenging stuff from the RSC
http://www.rsc.org.uk/explore/macbeth/

More excellent work from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dtvpl/features/macbeth

The Witches in ‘Macbeth’

Some points on the Witches to include in your essay:

They represent evil and cosmic disorder.
Their words are full of equivocation – evil works through deceit and false appearance.
They are perverse .
They create a sinister atmosphere.
They call themselves ‘the weird sisters’.
At the start of they play, they purposely seek out Macbeth in order to try to corrupt him.

It is Macbeth’s own choice to believe them – they cannot force him to do anything.

Some quotes:
‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair.’
(I.1)

‘Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempst-tost.’
(I.3)

‘What are these,
So wither’d and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’inhabitants o’ the earth,
And yet are on’t? Live you? Or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.’
(I.3)

‘If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.’
(I.3)

‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.’
(I.3)

‘How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!’
(IV.1)

‘Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff;
Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.’
(IV.1)

‘Be bloody, bold and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.’
(IV.1)

‘Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.’
(IV.1)

6th year ‘Macbeth’ essay

6th years,

You are currently planning and preparing an essay on ‘Macbeth’. Here is a reminder of that essay:
Discuss the view that Lady Macbeth has more in common with the Witches than with Lady Macduff. Support your answer with suitable reference or quotation.

As part of your planning you should:
~Give one A4 page to Lady Macbeth, one to the Witches and one to Lady Macduff
~On each page start by writing down a list of adjectives to describe that character and add information you know about them
~Continue on each page with all the quotation you know for each character (use your book at this stage to ensure their accuracy)

You will then need to decide for yourself where you stand in relation to the question you have been asked – do you agree or disagree with the premise that has been presented to you?

This will give you the start of an excellent essay – remember that there will be a timed test this Friday 7th September.