Macbeth

"The bell invites me. Hear it not Duncan, for it is a knell which summons thee to heaven or to hell." A knell is the sound of a bell, in this case the signal bell which Lady M has rung. It has an especial connection with bells rung at funerals, which is appropriate under the circumstances.

"The king" here is Macbeth. He is exasperated by the attempts of Malcolm to raise an army against him. Therefore he "prepares for some attempt of war", and what does it mean to prepare for war? To raise an army, train and arm soldiers, that sort of thing.

The "filthy witness" which Lady Macbeth talks about washing from Macbeth's hands is, of course, Duncan's blood. "Filthy" because it is dirty and smells unpleasant. (Have you ever been covered in blood?) "Witness" because its presence on his hands marks him as the murderer--it testifies against him.

Well, they first met long before the play started because they are good friends at the start. At the beginning of the play they are fighting side by side against "the merciless Macdonweald." When we first meet them, they are travelling together from the field of battle. They meet again twice at Macbeth's castle at Inverness both before and after Duncan is murdered. They meet again for the last time in Act III Scene 1 just before Banquo is murdered.

Unbounded sexual lust, unbounded greed, and all other faults. This disguises Malcolm's true faults: he is tedious, cowardly, and doesn't like Scotland much.

It means that you cannot tell the difference between a line in the play and a footnote. "All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter" is a line from Act I Scene 3, said by the Third Witch. She is just greeting him, but in greeting him she calls him a future king. The part that says "A thane in early England . . ." is a comment by some indifferent scholar. I say indifferent because whoever added the footnote appears to be unaware that Scotland and England were two different countries and that the play takes place in Scotland.

This is a great question because it goes straight to the dynamic between the Macbeths. Macbeth does not have a "fatal flaw", but he does have weaknesses, the largest of which is his self-image as masculine. Lady Macbeth can get Macbeth to do just about anything by saying "If thou wert a man, then thou durst do it." It's like someone who cannot resist a dare, or the taunt that he is "chicken".

He means that when he shed blood that blood will come around and expose him as a murderer. He goes on to say that stones, trees and black birds all give signs which point the finger at "the secretest man of blood", the best-concealed murderer. He is talking about Banquo's ghost which has frightened him so much that he has given away his guilt.

Macduff and Lennox. They were supposed to arrive early in the morning and wake up the king. Unfortunately everyone in the castle had partied to late at night and they are all sleeping in, so Macduff and Lennox have to bang on the door.

This must be Act I scene 4 that we are talking about. The king has just announced that the party is at Macbeth's place, and so everyone is headed to Inverness.

The theme of manliness, which Lady Macbeth used in Act 1 Scene 7 to persuade Macbeth to do the murder, reappears in this scene. Lady Macbeth hopes to make Macbeth behave according to her wishes by questioning his manhood as she did before: "Are you a man?", "these flaws and starts . . . would well become a woman's story . . .", "Quite unmann'd in folly?". Macbeth buys into it: "protest me the baby of a girl", "I am a man again." But what Macbeth is dealing with is far too powerful to be controlled by this kind of talk.

Lady Macbeth wants to use their daggers to stab Duncan and then smear them with Duncan's blood. When Macbeth fails to do this, she does it herself.

Strangely enough, he doesn't. In fact he says explicitly that his desire to be king is not worth the cost of murdering Duncan. "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent save vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself." Therefore he tells his wife "we will proceed no further in this business." He is just not that ambitious. But she is and she knows just what buttons to push to get him to agree to the murder. Please note that she does not play on his ambition, which is insignificant, but rather on his sense of manliness. In order to understand this play you need to read or watch Act I Scene 7 over and over and over.

The context helps here. Duncan is surprised to find that the Thane of Cawdor turned out to be a traitor. He says, "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face; he was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust." We know what the second part means: Duncan trusted Cawdor completely. In the first part, the word "art" means skill or ability, "mind's construction" means the way someone's mind is constructed, or what they are thinking, so it means "there is no such thing as the skill or ability to find what someone is thinking in the face", or "you can't judge a book by its cover". Duncan is saying that you cannot tell what someone is thinking by looking at them, and this is true for Duncan anyway. Other people are capable of it.

According to this line, a monarch is not entitled to govern merely by birth, but only by the virtue of his actions. Monarchy should be a meritocracy; there is no divine right to rule. This is why it is legitimate to overthrow Macbeth.

He has been called Thane of Cawdor. But as far as Macbeth knows, the Thane of Cawdor is a "prosperous gentleman"; he is not aware of the events in Fife described by Ross in the previous scene where the Thane of Cawdor was revealed to be a traitor and captured by some other Scottish hero. The word "robe" here is a metaphor for a title. Macbeth asks why they are calling him by someone else's title, like dressing him in someone else's clothes.

"Borrowed robes" is a phrase used by Macbeth in Act I Scene 3 to describe being hailed by someone else's title. Angus has nothing to do with it, although he does use the phrase "giant's robe" in Act V. In both cases, a "robe" is a metaphor for a title.

Nobody, unless you count the voice that said that Macbeth had murdered sleep. He did kill the two grooms, but not until the next morning.

The three "predictions" uttered by the witches in Act I Scene 3 of Macbeth are: 1. He is Thane of Glamis (he already knows this), 2. He is Thane of Cawdor (this is true although he knows nothing about it or even about the battle where Cawdor was revealed to be a traitor.) 3. He will be King (This is the only real prediction since it is something which will happen in the future.)

Is it really that hard to read it yourself?

Basically, in Act 2 Macbeth kills Duncan, Malcolm and Macduff flee and Macbeth is crowned King of Scotland at the very end.

The daggers. He was supposed to leave them in Duncan's bedchamber to incriminate to grooms but he forgot. Lady Macbeth has to take them back, because Macbeth does not want to look at the murder scene again.

Having Macbeth describe it would be less dramatic. People often forget that Shakespeare was writing plays, and the rule in writing plays is "show, don't tell". From time to time Shakespeare feels constrained to have a character describe something in the middle of a play, because what is being described is hard or improper to stage or not worth staging For example, in Act 1 Scene 2 of Macbeth, the sergeant describes the battle, rather than going through the difficulty of staging it just to provide background. And in Taming of the Shrew we get a description of the wedding because it would be improper to portray a wedding on stage. However, it is much more effective to get the information out by having the characters interact with each other, with props or, as in this case, with figments of their imagination. Having Macbeth say, "The dagger appears to be insubstantial as it cannot actually be grasped and does not lose its form when a hand is passed through it" is pathetically limp compared to "Come! Let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still!"

He has forgotten that he is holding it. He is in a state of shock and does not fully understand what he is doing.

He is the man not of woman born mentioned in the witches' prophecy, which is why they warned him to "beware Macduff". He is not born of woman because he was delivered by C-section. Apparently in order to be born you need to be born in the natural way.