Macbeth

Macbeth has one of the scariest first scenes of any play.

It is dark, there is thunder and lightning, and out of a heavy mist three unrecognisable figures emerge.

They are three witches, standing around a cauldron, making spells and planning to meet the generals Macbeth and Banquo who have just completed a bloody victory over an army invading Scotland.

We know these witches mean no good - but we have to wait for several more scenes before we discover their exact plans.

Just read that tonight w/ my kids - Act II, Scene II - Lady M's second line.

the answer that the person gave was garbage i did you a favour by erasing it.

Or did i?? MUAHAHAHAHA

the cursed of macbeth was that she will curse witches

a soldier in some wore sees 3 witches that tell him he will be king so his evil wife tells him to kill the king

Macbeth is first 'Thane of Glamis'

then he is bestowed the title 'Thane of Cawdor'

then king of Scotland

The play is not clear on this point. The potion was drunk by Macbeth in the 1971 Roman Polanski movie starring Jon Finch. In the Trevor Nunn RSC production with Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench the potion is smeared on Macbeth's body. It's the director's call.

The banquet sales office is literally the heart of banquet services. This office is what ensures positive guest satisfaction and efficient banquet services. They deal with everything from reservations, follow-ups, cancellations, and more.

He suffered from hallucinations, sleeplessness. He got himself killed by Macduff for he got mad and insane and made people suspicious by his actions and hallucinations.

The second apparition was a bloody child. It said that no man born of a woman shall harm Macbeth.

The third apparition was a crowned child holding a tree. It said that Macbeth will not be vanquished until Birnam woods approaches Dunsinane.

Macbeth is based on a real Scottish King. Shakespeare got the idea for his play Macbeth from reading a book called Holinshed's Chronicles, which contains the plot pretty much as Shakespeare wrote it. Shakespeare did not change it to try and flatter King James, who was the King at the time this play was performed. The story was like that in Holinshed, because Holinshed's sources had changed it to flatter King James's ancestors.

The prophecy that Macbeth will be king puts the idea of murdering Duncan into both Macbeth's head and Lady Macbeth's. Before he even writes to her Macbeth says to himself, "why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair" and later, "let not light see my black and deep desires." She doesn't give him the idea.

On the other hand, Macbeth does not put even the whiff of a suggestion into his letter that he has thought about murder, and Lady M says "Thou art too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way." She is thinking murder, but is afraid he isn't.

Macbeth would have talked himself out of it, however, if Lady M had not pressured him into turning the idea of murder (which they both had) into reality.

Lady Macbeth says:

I hear a knocking

At the south entry; retire we to our chamber;

A little water clears us of this deed;

How easy is it then! Your constancy

Hath left you unattended. Hark! More knocking!

Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us,

And show us to be watchers. Be not lost

So poorly in your thoughts.

Let's go line by line:

"I hear a knocking at the south entry"--someone's knocking at the south door. We know it's Macduff and Lennox but they don't.

"Retire we to our chamber"--their chamber is their bedroom--that's where they should go

"A little water clears us of this deed; How easy is it then!"--It's easy to wash off the blood. Macbeth has asked "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood from my hand?" and answered "no". She didn't hear him (probably--it depends how you stage it, but she is off smearing the grooms' faces when he delivers this line) but her line sounds like an answer to his question. It is also an ironic foreshadowing of the last glimpse we will get of Lady M, trying desperately in her dreams to wash Duncan's blood from her hands. What a great line!

"Your constancy hath left you unattended"--and then what a stinker of a line. I think it makes more sense if you add a comma making it "Your constancy hath left you, unattended." His constancy, his faithfulness and perseverence has left him and he is now unattended. That's because Macbeth is just standing there looking at his hands.

"Hark! More knocking!"-obvious.

"Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, and show us to be watchers" She wants him to put on his nightie, and why? So if someone has to wake them up, they look like "watchers", witnesses of the crime, not the perpetrators. She wants it to look like they were sleeping through the whole thing.

"Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts"--he's lost in his thoughts--still staring at his hands.

So what does this all add up to? She wants him to stop staring at his hands (Be not lost in your thoughts, your constancy hath left you), go to the bedroom (retire we), put on his nightie (get on your nightgown), and wash his hands (a little water). Then he will look like someone who has been asleep in bed all night, not prowling around murdering the king, when whoever is knocking gets inside. She thinks that she is the strong person who has to make the arrangements to cover up the crime; she is going to find out different really really soon and is not going to like it.

It is a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth. One of the witches is being calle (presumably meowed at) by her familiar, a gray cat named "Graymalkin," and is called offstage.

Their dialogue in Act 1 Scene 2 suggests that they have powers beyond merely foretelling. The first witch has been insulted by the woman eating chestnuts. She proposes that she will revenge herself on the woman's husband, a sailor ("master of the Tiger"--Tiger is the name of his ship). She says, "Though his bark cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tost" which suggests that they can create winds and make the boat leaky and keep him from sleeping but that their powers do not go so far as to kill him--"his bark (ship) cannot be lost"

Before Macbeth killed Duncan he and Lady Macbeth were working together to aquire power. After Macbeth killed Duncan he went on to murder others without telling his wife. By the end of the play Macbeth does not care much about his wife as shown when he is told his wife is dead.

There is a disturbance going on during that night. Lennox is describing how there is a screaming of death going on.

who in Macbeth said 'the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures'

The audience would have been horrified because back in that time, the king symbolized God, and the king was a great promoter of the theory of the divine right of kings. Macbeth, however, had a different viewpoint: he says "he's here in double trust"--Macbeth is his "kinsman and his subject, both strong against the deed" and also his host. This is actually three reasons: killing a member of your family is much more wrong than killing some random person, killing someone whom you have sworn to serve is treason, a much more serious crime than an ordinary murder, and finally, to kill someone who you have invited to your home and entertained is a horrific offence against laws of hospitality which go back millenia. (Don't think so? Ask people how they feel about the Campbells and the massacre of Glencoe)

because Lady Macbeth talks about the murder, and the Lady in waiting has no witness for her speech

no he wouldn't have. if it weren't for his wife he wouldn't have either because when they first told him all he would become he said let it happen on it's own, if it's meant to be let it be. but then his wife was all like oh grow a pair your not a man kill Duncan and we can be king and queen and so ya...

mabeth wants to take macduffs child & wife away

Two men reigned as kings of Scotland in 'Macbeth'. With the play's end, a third was going to reign once he was crowned. The Shakespearean play began with the reign of King Duncan I [d. August 14, 1040]. But throughout most of the play, the King was Macbeth [c. 1014-August 15, 1057]. The play ended with the killing and beheading of Macbeth by Macduff, and the preparations of the subsequent King Malcolm III [d. November 13, 1093] to be crowned at Scone. But the play's end wasn't backed up by the historical record. According to history, Macbeth was succeeded by his stepson, King Lulach [d. March 17, 1058]. Lady Macbeth's [b. c. 1015] son from her first marriage to Gille Coemgain [d. 1032] was succeeded by King Malcolm III, who was King Duncan I's elder son and the murderer of his two immediate royal predecessors.

Killing Duncan has turned Macbeth into a paranoid. His "fears in Banquo stick deep"; he is afraid that he suspects him, and resents the prediction the witches made about him, that his children would be king. He hires two murderers to take Banquo and his son Fleance out, and sends a third to check up on the first two. The murderers jump Fleance and Banquo but only get Banquo.

Macbeth scene 6: Lennox suspects Macbeth, whom he calls a "tyrant," in the murders of Duncan and Banquo. The lord tells Lennox that Macduff has gone to England, where he will join Malcolm in pleading with England's King Edward for aid. News of these plots has prompted Macbeth to prepare for war. Lennox and the lord express their hope that Malcolm and Macduff will be successful and that their actions can save Scotland from Macbeth.