Shakespeare, Year 10: ambition, guilt and kingship (Macbeth option)

That his son Malcolm is to be his heir

提示Someone now stands between Macbeth and the throne.

为什么Malcolm is named Prince of Cumberland. Macbeth calls it “a step / On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap”. He asks for darkness because he already knows what he wants is wrong.

milk

提示A drink linked with babies and gentleness.

为什么She thinks he has ambition but not the ruthlessness to act on it. So she decides to “pour my spirits in thine ear”.

Macbeth is his host

提示Think of the duty you owe a guest under your roof.

为什么A host “should against his murderer shut the door, / Not bear the knife myself”. Macbeth sets out every reason against the murder and then does it anyway.

Being king is worth nothing to him unless he is secure on the throne

提示He has what he wanted and still cannot rest.

为什么Said in Act 3 Scene 1, while he waits for the men he has hired to kill Banquo. Power taken by violence has to be kept by violence: the crown brings fear, not satisfaction.

He has killed so much that going back would be as hard as carrying on

提示Picture someone halfway across a river.

为什么He says it after the banquet. He does not claim more killing is right, only that it is no harder than stopping. This is ambition turned into something he feels trapped in.

dagger

提示A short stabbing weapon.

为什么He cannot grasp it, and wonders whether it is “a dagger of the mind”. His conscience is showing him the crime before he commits it.

Amen

提示The word that ends a prayer.

为什么“I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ / Stuck in my throat.” (Act 2 Scene 2.) He feels cut off from God at once.

sleep

提示What he has just destroyed for himself, and what Duncan was doing when he died.

为什么He killed a sleeping man, and from now on neither he nor his wife can rest. Lost sleep is one of the play's signs of a guilty mind.

Macbeth, moments afterwards

提示The speaker is staring at his own hands.

为什么He answers himself: no, his hand would turn the green sea red. His wife, in the same scene (Act 2 Scene 2), says a little water will do. Their reactions to guilt start far apart.

scorpions

提示Small creatures with a sting in the tail.

为什么The image is of being stung from the inside. He has the crown and is tormented, mainly by the thought that Banquo and Fleance are still alive.

Nobody: only Macbeth sees it

提示His wife has to make excuses to the guests.

为什么The lords see their king shouting at an empty stool. Whether the ghost is real or made by guilt is left open; either way it comes from what he has done.

Broken out of their stalls and eaten each other

提示Tame animals turning savage.

为什么Ross and an Old Man swap reports of unnatural events, including darkness in the daytime. The idea is that killing a king upsets the whole natural order.

Macbeth's murder of King Duncan

提示A lesser creature brings down a greater one.

为什么An owl normally hunts mice; a falcon is a noble hunting bird. Their swapped places show the proper order turned upside down.

As a gentle and blameless king, whose virtues will plead against his murder

提示He uses words such as “meek” and “clear”.

为什么Duncan “hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been / So clear in his great office”. Shakespeare makes the victim a good king so that the murder has no excuse.

To test whether Macduff is loyal to Scotland or a spy for Macbeth

提示He takes it all back as soon as his listener despairs.

为什么The scene sets out what a good king needs, and shows Malcolm as careful where his father was too trusting.

grave

提示Where the dead are laid.

为什么A country should nurture its people as a mother does. Under a tyrant it only buries them. The state of the land reflects the kind of king who rules it.