Macbeth

The contents of Macbeth's letter to Lady Macbeth was about Macbeth's prediction from the 3 witches he met in the beginning - about him being the Thane of Cawdor (thane means prince/king) and then the King of Scotland. Lady Macbeth becomes hyped, because she was waiting for the chance to have all the power to be a queen.

Not really. He's still the same little wart at the end as he is at the beginning.

"Hear his speech but say thou nought."

It's a disaster. Lady Macbeth has to send the guests home without eating because Macbeth acts so crazy.

It is a truism about theatre that if you cannot show something, you have one character tell another about it. That is what happens whenever there is a wedding in any Shakespeare play, because it was illegal to imitate a sacrament on stage. So, for example, in The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio's outrageous behaviour during the wedding ceremony is described not portrayed. Similarly, in Act IV Scene 1 of Macbeth, Macbeth describes his vision of an unending line of decendants of Banquo, because portraying such a thing would be difficult on the Elizabethan stage (or any stage, really).

On the other hand, the witches do not describe, for example, the apparitions, since they were intended to be displayed. There was a hole in the stage which smoke could come out of and then the apparition would suddenly appear. This was bound to bring gasps from the crowd, and there was no need for the witches to describe it. Something similar happened when the witches disappear at the end of the scene. It is possible that the head witch flew up into the ceiling (they could do that too) or other tricks were employed. This scene was intended to be a tour de force of the best that Elizabethan special effects could achieve.

over ambition- greed

They don't. They are riding from the battlefield where they have dealt with the traitor Macdonweald to their camp at Forres (that's actually the name of a place in Scotland 25 miles east of Inverness, not a misspelling of forest) where the king awaits them. They are accosted by three witches of whom Macbeth asks, "why upon this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting." A heath is defined as an area of open uncultivated land, the very opposite of a forest.

I see that in your production you have cast Macbeth with a woman. That's interesting. (otherwise you must say "he says" not "she says")

The quotation you are referring to is:

If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much.

I pull in resolution, and begin

To doubt the equivocation of the fiend

That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood

Comes toward Dunsinane.

He's speaking to a messenger who has just told him that Birnam wood is coming to Dunsinane, an event about which he said, earlier in the play, "That can never be!" As the passage clearly shows, he says that if the messenger is telling the truth, he cannot rely on the prophecy "fear not, till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane", because it is "equivocation"--it seems to say one thing and means another. And who is the "fiend that lies like truth"? You'll need three guesses because there were three of them around that cauldron.

The information they bring (in Act 1 scene 3) is that Macbeth has been made Thane of Cawdor. What Macbeth does with this information is to pass it on to his wife.

Read the play and outline it. Take those ideas and make 10 points out of them.

It doesn't. On the contrary, if you didn't already know from the title of the play, (The Tragedie of Macbeth, as it's called in the First Folio), you would think from what the witches said that everything will be going great for Macbeth: he's Thane of Glamis, he is going to become Thane of Cawdor, and he will eventually become King. Who could complain about that?

Yes it is.

Lennox: The night has been unruly; where we lay

Chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,

Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death

And prophesying with accents terrible

Of dire combustion and confused events

New-hatched to the woeful time. The obscure bird

Clamoured the live-long night. Some say the earth

Was feverous and did shake.

Macbeth: 'Twas a rough night.

Macbeth interpreted it as meaning "having a mother", which meant the same as being a human being. But in fact it meant "being delivered in the usual way" as opposed to by Caesarian section.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to ask about the visions which do happen in that scene? I mean, really.

Macduff teams up with Malcolm to fight Macbeth. In fact they meet in England.

Lady Macbeth says king Duncan resembles her father, so she encourages macbeth to murder him.

Macbeth: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No."

Lady Macbeth: "All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand."

Sounds the same to me.

None of the predictions made to Banquo come true in the course of the play. The first prediction which comes true is that Macbeth will become king (He is already Thane of Cawdor when they meet the witches, so that is not a prediction.)

Real witches, who cursed the play because Shakespeare used real incantations in the verse

Marry in lent, you will learn to repent.

In Act 1 Scene 7 Lines 35-45 and 47-59, Lady Macbeth goads her reluctant husband to kill their king. At the beginning of her speech, she compares his unreliability as an assassin to inconstancy in love. Thus, at lines 35-39, she chides, 'Was the hope drunk/wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?/And wakes it now to look so green and pale/At what it did so freely? From ths time/Such I account thy love.' In reality, Lady Macbeth's first husband had carried out King Duncan I's orders to have Macbeth's father killed, in 1020. With Gille Coemgairn's death in 1032, his wife married Macbeth and thereby became Lady Macbeth. In 1040, King Duncan I invaded Macbeth's lands. During the ensuing battle, he was killed on August 14, 1040 by his own men under Macbeth's leadership.

This is a personal preference question. Only you can answer it. That means you have to read the play and react to it.

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes" Why is Macbeth wicked? He has not only killed his king, but he has also arranged for the murder of his friend for no clear reason. That's pretty wicked.