What is Macbeth's soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 3?

Answer 1

A soliloquy is thinking out loud. A soliloquy only involves one character (like a monologue). The character doesn't talk to anyone - they're just thinking out loud. Only the audience can hear what they are saying - other characters can't hear a thing.

Answer 2

To show how Lady Macbeth is the dominant one in the relationship. This scene also displays the first actions which eventually result in a series of tragedies including deaths of kind duncan, banquo, lady Macbeth and eventually macbeth

Answer 3

Not so much a soliloquy as an extended aside, since there are others on the stage talking at the same time, it starts with "Two truths are told as happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme."

Answer 4

Act I Scene 7 is the best scene in the whole play Macbeth. It is the turning point where Macbeth is persuaded to do evil although every argument tells him not to. It reveals that Macbeth is not motivated by ambition but is really motivated by what his wife thinks of him.

Answer 5

"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 is now the queen. She has what she wanted; her "desire is got". But she is surprised to find that she is not happy about it at all. She has her desire but she is not content about it--she feels like she has nothing and has spent everything--it's all turned to ashes in her mouth. She has found, all to late, that it's not the having of things that makes you happy, but being happy with what you have.

Her feeling that it would be better to have been Duncan, who was destroyed, than to have destroyed him and thus made herself totally miserable. She thus anticipates what Macbeth will soon say: "Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstacy. Duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."

The sentiment is quite different from Hamlet, where the king who was murdered does not sleep well at all, because he died without the sacrament. A different result for a different dramatic requirement.

Answer 6

Specifically, he says, "Besides, this Duncan has borne his faculties so meek, has been so clear in his great office that his virtues will plead like angels Trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of his taking off." The point he is trying to make is that Duncan is a beloved king, and people will be angry with his murderer if he is murdered. One should be careful, however, about accepting this at face value as a description of Duncan. First of all, Macbeth is talking about Duncan's reputation and not necessarily about his actual character. The virtues pleading like angels are the ones Duncan appears to have, not the ones he actually has, or lacks. Furthermore, this speech (which is one of the most wonderful in Shakespeare) is Macbeth trying to find reasons not to kill Duncan, which is something he doesn't really want to do. For the purpose of argument, he may be exaggerating Duncan's reputation. After Duncan is killed, we don't hear a lot of people talking about what a great king he was, do we?

Answer 7

From "two truths are told" to "nothing is but what is not

Answer 8

1. I would describe Macbeth's state of mind at this point in the play as disorientated and confused for as he contemplates over the assassination of Duncan.

Answer 9

its way too funny!