“Macbeth” is a play rife with images. Your assignment will be to analyze four images from the play in detail.
Instructions:
- Choose four images from the list below. All of these images figure prominently in “Macbeth.”
- blood
- night and darkness
- light and darkness
- animals and birds
- the unnatural
- weather
- clothing
- disease and sickness
- fear
- Find four quotes from the play for each image.
- For each quote, identify the speaker, the act, and the scene.
- For each quote, identify the situation; that is, determine where the scene takes place, and what has just happened before and after the lines are spoken. In other words, what is the context of the lines?
- Now explain the significance of the quote. Why is the quote important within the context of the play? What does the quote mean? Be specific and give details. Go to the internet or to the many, many, many sources available that discuss “Macbeth.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To recap, your assignment:
Image #1: 4 quotes explained
Image #2: 4 quotes explained
Image #3: 4 quotes explained
Image #4: 4 quotes explained
DUE DATE: MAY 2, 2016
Example of How to Do This Assignment:
Image: Night and Darkness
Quote:
Old Man: Three score and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowing.
Ross: Ah, good father,
Thou see’st, the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, ‘tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp;
Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
Act 2, Scene 4, Lines 1 – 11
Speaker: Old Man and Ross.
Situation: Outside Macbeth’s castle. Duncan has been murdered. Ross and the Old Man are about to be told by Macduff that because the king’s sons have fled, they are the murder suspects.
Explanation: Elizabethans believed that when the natural order of the universe was violated, nature would reflect the disorder and be thrown into chaos. There might be a storm, for example. In this case, when there should naturally be sunshine in the daytime, there is darkness. Ross is saying that because a king has been murdered, the universe is in chaos and that is shown by the darkness in daytime. The heavens are withholding light because of the shock that the king has been murdered. The Old Man says that in his lifetime he has never seen such a dreadful, unnatural (going against God’s laws) thing as the murder of a king.