Thinking activity on Macbeth

Macbeth (full title The Tragedy of Macbeth) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare; it is thought to have been first performed in 1606.It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, who was patron of Shakespeare's acting company, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright's relationship with his sovereign.It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.

Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.



Reading materials

1)  The Source of Macbeth

2) Use of power by female characters

3) Use of power by meal characters

4) Values and morality

5) Power and duplicity

6) The role of fate

7) Gender and power through stylistic devices


Answer the question

1]  Who is responsible for Macbeth downfall ?


2] According to your reading, who is more powerful, Lady Macbeth is powerful or Macbeth is power ? Between them who is controlling to another can you illustrate that ?


3] How you look or interpreted the the supernatural power in Macbeth context.


4] Explain the quotation.
                   ""Fair is foul, and foul is fair."

5] Can  we say that Lady Macbeth is more greedy then any other character in this drama.

6] Who is more responsible for King Duncan's death ? Supernatural elements ? Greed of Lady Macbeth? Power desperate Macbeth? According to your reading who is responsible for this ?



Work Citation

1].     Feraru, Cornelia. “Macbeth.” Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/36458519/Macbeth.



2).  “Macbeth.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2020, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth.