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Macbeth Act 1

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Setting

Scotland 1000s
Thanes
The Real Macbeth
The Real Duncan
How do you get to be king anyway?

Warring clans battled to control land and trade. Each side was led by a thane whose castle was an important power base. The government included a king and his immediate council of warlords and church officials. The real Macbeth was born around 1005 into a powerful family that ruled the lands of Moray and Ross. His father was murdered by his own cousins. Macbeth was in a strong position for the crown because he was descended from royalty. The real King Duncan was regarded as ineffectual and unpopular. Macbeth took Duncan’s throne by force and was elected High King of Scotland around 1040.

In England successions followed the law of primogeniture--eldest son. But in Scotland at this time--tanistry. Tanistry is where the throne is passed not through father but through mother. This meant that the heir called the tanist might be the son of the reigning king’s sister instead of the eldest son of the king himself. The tanist had to be of age and healthy. But in the play Duncan seems to moving towards primogeniture.

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Major Themes in Macbeth

Ambition
Appearance vs Reality
Leadership: Kingship vs Tyranny
Gender
Fate

· Ambition

Ambition is not necessarily bad. Macbeth is a bold and courageous warrior which requires some ambition. But unchecked ambition that uses violence to move beyond one’s place in the Great Chain of Being is destructive and leads to chaos. Look for chaos in the natural world as well as chaos in the political world.

· Appearance vs Reality

Lady Macbeth advises her husband to “look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't” (I.v. 65-66). King Duncan admits that he can’t read a man’s face and was clearly deceived by the Thane of Cawdor’s appearance of loyalty (I.iv. 11-14). Consider how individuals use appearance to deceive others. Look for imagery that develops this theme.

· Leadership: Kingship vs Tyranny

Duncan is generally viewed as a good king, while Macbeth becomes a tyrant. What is the difference between them? What leadership skills does Macbeth possess? Where does he fail? What message does this play send about leadership?

· Gender

Characters in Macbeth frequently dwell on issues of gender. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband by questioning his manhood, wishes that she herself could be “unsexed,” and does not contradict Macbeth when he says that a woman like her should give birth only to boys. Women (Lady Macbeth, and the Witches) seem to be the source of evil in the play. What conclusions can we draw about the cultural views of gender during Shakespeare’s time?

· Fate

From the moment the weird sisters tell Macbeth and Banquo their prophecies, both the characters and the audience are forced to wonder about fate. Is it real? Is action necessary to make it come to pass, or will the prophecy come true no matter what one does? Different characters answer these questions in different ways at different times, and the final answers are ambiguous—as fate always is.

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Act 1 Scene 1 Summary and Considerations

Witches appear
Chant
Make plans to meet again to confront Macbeth

How does this scene establish atmosphere?
How would reactions between an Elizabethan audience differ from a modern audience?

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Act 1 Scene 2 Summary and Considerations

Exposition time: King Duncan asks wounded captain for news
Captain praises Macbeth and Banquo
Revealed that Macbeth killed Macdonwald (traitor)
Thane of Ross tells Duncan about Thane of Cawdor’s treachery
King tells Ross to give title to Macbeth

Imagery of brutality: “[Macbeth] unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops,” (1.2.22).
King’s inability to judge character.
Pattern of treachery (foreshadowing)

At a military camp near his palace at Forres, King Duncan of Scotland asks a wounded captain for news about the Scots’ battle with the Irish invaders, who are led by the rebel Macdonwald. The captain, who was wounded helping Duncan’s son Malcolm escape capture by the Irish, replies that the Scottish generals Macbeth and Banquo fought with great courage and violence. The captain then describes for Duncan how Macbeth slew the traitorous Macdonwald. As the captain is carried off to have his wounds attended to, the thane of Ross, a Scottish nobleman, enters and tells the king that the traitorous thane of Cawdor has been defeated and the army of Norway repelled. Duncan decrees that the thane of Cawdor be put to death and that Macbeth, the hero of the victorious army, be given Cawdor’s title. Ross leaves to deliver the news to Macbeth.

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Act 1 Scene 3 Summary and Considerations

Witches appear in storm near battlefield.
Witches hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, Cawdor, and future king.
Banquo: paradoxes
Witches vanish
Macbeth and Banquo discuss
Ross arrives to give Macbeth the good news.

Language of contradiction “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.36)
Macbeth the hero vs Macbeth the ambitious.
Would Macbeth have gone any further if it weren’t for Lady Macbeth? Unconscious desires

On the heath near the battlefield, thunder rolls and the three witches appear. One says that she has just come from “[k]illing swine” and another describes the revenge she has planned upon a sailor whose wife refused to share her chestnuts. Suddenly a drum beats, and the third witch cries that Macbeth is coming. Macbeth and Banquo, on their way to the king’s court at Forres, come upon the witches and shrink in horror at the sight of the old women. Banquo asks whether they are mortal, noting that they don’t seem to be “inhabitants o’ th’ earth” (1.3.39). He also wonders whether they are really women, since they seem to have beards like men. The witches hail Macbeth as thane of Glamis (his original title) and as thane of Cawdor. Macbeth is baffled by this second title, as he has not yet heard of King Duncan’s decision. The witches also declare that Macbeth will be king one day. Stunned and intrigued, Macbeth presses the witches for more information, but they have turned their attention to Banquo, speaking in yet more riddles. They call Banquo “lesser than Macbeth, and greater,” and “not so happy, yet much happier”; then they tell him that he will never be king but that his children will sit upon the throne (1.3.63–65). Macbeth implores the witches to explain what they meant by calling him thane of Cawdor, but they vanish into thin air.

In disbelief, Macbeth and Banquo discuss the strange encounter. Macbeth fixates on the details of the prophecy. “Your children shall be kings,” he says to his friend, to which Banquo responds: “You shall be king” (1.3.84). Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Ross and Angus, who have come to convey them to the king. Ross tells Macbeth that the king has made him thane of Cawdor, as the former thane is to be executed for treason. Macbeth, amazed that the witches’ prophecy has come true, asks Banquo if he hopes his children will be kings. Banquo replies that devils often tell half-truths in order to “win us to our harm” (1.3.121). Macbeth ignores his companions and speaks to himself, ruminating upon the possibility that he might one day be king. He wonders whether the reign will simply fall to him or whether he will have to perform a dark deed in order to gain the crown. At last he shakes himself from his reverie and the group departs for Forres. As they leave, Macbeth whispers to Banquo that, at a later time, he would like to speak to him privately about what has transpired.

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Act 1 Scene 4 Summary and Considerations

Duncan hears about Cawdor’s execution from Malcolm
Cawdor’s noble death
Duncan thanks Macbeth and Banquo
Malcolm named heir
Dinner plan

Duncan can’t judge character well.
Macbeth distressed by the fact that Malcolm stands in his way...
Duncan has all the power even though it is people like Macbeth who make his power possible. What would a Marxist say?

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Act 1 Scene 5 Summary and Considerations

Lady Macbeth gets a letter.
Considers that her husband is too “th’ milk of human kindness” to take the steps necessary to make himself king (1.5.15).
Asks evil spirits to “unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty” (1.5.38–41).
Macbeth arrives. She tells him to leave the plan to her.

Gender roles
What does this say about gender and power?

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Act 1 Scene 6 Summary and considerations

Duncan arrives
Talks about how nice the castle is
Lady Macbeth says it’s her duty to be hospitable since Duncan has been so good to them

Appearance vs reality
Summer as an archetype: growth, maturity, love (irony)

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Act 1 Scene 7 Summary and Considerations

Macbeth takes a break from the dinner party to think about Duncan’s good qualities
“If it were done when ’tis done,” he says, “then ’twere well / It were done quickly” (1.7.1–2).
But he knows how bad regicide is.
Lady Macbeth comes in and calls him out for hesitating. Taunts him.

blood=guilt
“bloody instructions . . . being taught, return / To plague th’inventor” (1.7.9–10)]
Gender roles as insult: “What beast was ’t, then,�That made you break this enterprise to me?�When you durst do it, then you were a man;”

Macbeth muses on Duncan’s many good qualities, reflects that Duncan has been kind to him, and thinks that perhaps he ought not to kill his king. This is Macbeth’s first lengthy soliloquy and thus the audience’s first peek inside his mind. Yet Macbeth is unable to quell his desire for power. He evades answering his own questions of loyalty and yearns unrealistically for the battlefield’s simple and consequence-free action—“If it were done when ’tis done,” he says, “then ’twere well / It were done quickly” (1.7.1–2). At the same time, Macbeth is strongly conscious of the gravity of the act of regicide. He acknowledges that “bloody instructions . . . being taught, return / To plague th’inventor” (1.7.9–10). This is the first of many lines linking “blood” to guilt and cosmic retribution.