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notes on Shakespearean drama
shakespeare historical plays summary
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In 1606, William Shakespeare wrote a play called Macbeth. It takes place in 11th century Scotland. Macbeth tells the tale of two murderous souls that paint Scotland with blood. Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth are two people that, during the entire play, have internal conflicts over their disastrous actions. As they violently attempt for royalty, both have a rollercoaster of emotions. However the headspace of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both change dramatically. Possibly influenced by the events happening, their mental issues become more and more obvious and difficult to deal with.
“All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter” (Shakespeare 1.3.50). It is these words that starts the chain events that would eventually lead to the downfall of Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth. Before the sinister double-meaning of the witches’ prophecy could come to light, the couple both start their descent to malice. While it is true that Lady
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His actions and words show evidently his grappling at the idea. “Let not light see my black and deep desires” (Shakespeare 1.4.51). However, after Duncan’s murder, Macbeth strays farther and farther from the innocence he once had. His mind is overcome with haunting, murderous, and somewhat destroying thoughts. Possible mental illnesses start to come to light as Macbeth descends his homicidal rampage. “Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act-III, Scene -I, which helps the audience and the readers to peep into the sole of protagonist, reflects the disturbed mind concerned with the presence of Banquo” (Mitra). He starts to see more and more hallucinations which only degrade his sanity. They warn him of upcoming dangers that he tries his best to prepare for. In opposite, his actions make his mental situation known. Macbeth eventually meets his death after a clashing
To begin with, Macbeth is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare that believed to have taken place around 1606. This play dramatizes the physical, emotional, and psychological effects of those who seek power for ones’ sake. In this play a Scottish General named Macbeth receives predictions from three witches that voice him he will one day become the King of Scotland. With determination his wife takes action convincing him to murder King Duncan therefore he would become king. Macbeth then becomes paranoid and filled with guilt, forcing him to commit more murders to protect himself from suspicion. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth then receive the madness of death.
In Act I Macbeth is very uneasy in his and Lady Macbeth’s decision to kill Duncan. He says, “We shall proceed no further in this business. For he hath honored me of late.” (I.7.31-32) This is an unmistakable example of how Macbeth is not fully confident in his decisions. He feels guilt and anguish, as does Lady Macbeth, for she will not commit the murder herself, due to the fact that King Duncan looks too much like her father. At this point in the play, it is quite questionable as to weather either of the conspirators will consummate to the killings. Duncan’s death can be identified as the turning point of Macbeth’s sanity. This is when Macbeth starts to clearly display numerous symptoms of schizophrenia. O One of the most common symptoms of schizophrenia is the inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Macbeth displays this characteristic as he speaks vehemently to an empty chair, which he believes is the ghost of his old friend Banquo, who he just recently had killed. He says, “Prithee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you? Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites.” (III, 4) Macbeth is the only one to see the ghost, not even the audience is allowed by Shakespeare to see this apparition. After this, his mental stability begins to deteriorate throughout the course of the play. Guilt and obsession are also among the leading features associated with schizophrenia. After Macbeth is coaxed into killing Duncan, he is plagued by the blood, which he has spilt. However, he still manages to kill anyone who threatens his reign, even those who are very close to him. One could say that his obsession with maintaining his royal sta...
Macbeth, one of the darkest and most powerful plays written by Shakespeare, dramatizes the disastrous psychological effects that occur when evil is chosen to fulfill the ambition for power. Throughout the play, Macbeth’s character loses mental stability and becomes enthralled with the idea of being king. Empowered by the three witches, this situation consumes Macbeth’s consciousness until his mental state becomes deranged. This mental deterioration is evident in what he says and does as he evolves into a tyrannical ruler attempting to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. In an attempt to fulfill his ambition for power, Macbeth displays mental deterioration and becomes increasingly bloodthirsty.
He tells lie after lie and keeps making them bigger. Him and Lady Macbeth are planning to kill the king. “When we have marked with blood, those sleepy two of his own chamber and used their very dagger” (324). They are going to lie about who killed the king by framing the guards that stand outside his room protecting him. They are going to spill blood on them and then the daggers that they used to kill the king, they will plant on the guards. When the king is announced dead, Macbeth and his wife both act sad and shocked like everyone else. After Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost at the banquet, he starts acting weird. Lady Macbeth says to everyone not to worry that it is just a sickness he has had since birth. “You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder” (351). Lady Macbeth is annoyed at her husband because he could have revealed what they had done to the king, so she had to also lie. Everyone had to leave because Lady Macbeth made them to cover Macbeth’s lie. When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, it reminds him of the crime he committed and what he made two other people
Lady Macbeth Mental Illness William Shakespeare tragedy in Macbeth. Macbeth was a Thane, which is a noble. Lady Macbeth wants to be Queen of Scotland. Lady Macbeth wants to be king no matter what it takes, Lady Macbeth was going to be king and Lady Macbeth was going to be queen. Lady Macbeth was a very strong person.
Macbeth is a play about tragedy. It tells the tale of one man’s evil rise to becoming king and his tragic downfall that led to his death. Nevertheless, it is also a play about the political history surrounding that king. Shakespeare took the story of Macbeth from Raphael Holinshed’s Scottish Chronicle in 1570 and even more from the second edition, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1587. From these books he was able to take bits and pieces of history, combine events, omit others, create his own tale of King Macbeth and make it appealing to the King and people of his time.
Macbeth feeling this way convinces a pair of men to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. By having Banquo and Fleance murdered, Macbeth believes that it will prevent Banquo's sons from becoming king. Macbeth also hires the murderers to kill Macduff's family. This demonstrates Macbeth's obsession because it indicates that Macbeth values his power over his friends. His obsession with power causes Macbeth to feel guilty and lose his sanity. Macbeth's guilt and loss of sanity is indicated in the hallucinations he experiences. His first hallucination occurs just before killing King Duncan. Macbeth sees "A dagger of the mind, a false creation" (act II, scene I, line 38).
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a fictional play written by English poet William Shakespeare. The play is set in eleventh century Scotland, during the reign of King James the first. Shakespeare evidently writes in this time period to describe the link between leaders and their supreme or ultimate power. The play was first performed in the year 1606, at the world famous Globe Theatre, and is considered one of the most profound and compelling tragedies ever told. The Tragedy of Macbeth tells the tale of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth and his ambitious desire to become king of Scotland. While he and another commander named Banquo return home from war they stumble into three hagged looking witches. The witches offer the men an enticing prophecy that leads to a more pivotal role found later in the play. Throughout the play Macbeth is seen confronting his own moral ambiguity to the heinous acts he must perform to get the position he most desires. “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, [s]hakes so my single state of man” (Shakespeare 1.3.152-53). This uncertainty, present in the scenes of Duncan’s murder, the feast, and the witch’s final predictions each unfold the ambiguity needed to understand the basis of the work as a whole.
Shakespeare's Macbeth is a heroic tragedy that shows the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition for those who seek power for its own sake. These psychological effects can be seen in many characters, but are most clearly displayed in the main character Macbeth. Macbeth begins the play as a noble and stable character- a loyal husband, subject, and the Thane of Glamis. However, as Macbeth receives more power and becomes more ambitious, he loses his mental stability. Macbeth’s mind deteriorates from his strong ambition, his guilt of killing, and the paranoia that comes of power. You can also see Macbeth’s mind deteriorate by examining his visions, attitude toward fear and death, and how
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both show signs of what would today be diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as "a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought, and conduct." There are three major symptoms of the disorder; not being able to distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality, incoherent conversations, and withdrawal physically and emotionally. The most common and most well known symptom of schizophrenia is when people cannot distinguish between what is real and what is not. Schizophrenics often suffer from delusions and hallucinations. A delusion is a false belief or idea and a hallucination is seeing, hearing, or sensing something that is not really there. Some people diagnosed with the illness may speak with disjointed conversations. They often utter vague statements that are strung together in an incoherent way. Lastly, some schizophrenics withdraw emotionally, for example, their outlook on life is deadened and they show little or no warmth, and also physically, such as their movements become jerky and robot-like.
Although Macbeth, hesitates at the beginning to kill King Duncan. His wife, Lady Macbeth, convinces him by saying,
The story mainly focuses on Macbeth’s subsequent actions that help to drive the story. However, in major contrast to most protagonists, Macbeth was not considered to be a hero. Lord Macbeth was described as being “damned in evils” (IV.iii.58-59) due to his maleficent rule of Scotland. Although not a protagonist, Macbeth was considered to be the main character of the play. Macbeth dominated every scene that he was in and dictated whether a character had to right to live or die. Throughout the course of the play, Macbeth is demonstrated to change greatly in demeanor. He begins the story being hesitant to commit crimes, as demonstrated by his hesitant nature to kill King Duncan “We will proceed no further in this business” (I.vii.31). However after Macbeth heard the witches prophecies, he switched his actions to actively condemning people to be killed, “The moment on‘t; for ‘t must be done tonight” (III.i.136) This change in mood from that of a collected demeanor to that of a ruthless killer helped Shakespeare establish Macbeth’s dynamic disposition. While Macbeth is demonstrated as an anti-hero, there are those who demonstrated the other side of the spectrum. While Macbeth was characterized as being cruel and dishonest, Banquo was honest to his king and did not seek further power, but rather accepted his rewards from King Duncan. Banquo is established as Macbeth’s foil mainly on the basis of the
During the excursion to become king, Macbeth successfully murders King Duncan, Macduff’s wife and children, and with the help of a group of murderers Banquo; a brave general who will inherit the Scottish throne. Throughout the whole play, while such darker occurrences are used to create deep moods, Shakespeare also uses strong language and words. Such as when Lady Macbeth calls upon the gods to make her man-like so she will have the fortitude to kill King Duncan herself in this quote, “Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here. Make my blood thick. Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark.”
I decided to analyze Act II, Scene II in MacBeth using Psychoanalysis. I have previously examined the passage using Marxism and Queer Theory, so I thought it might be beneficial to scrutinize the scene from yet another angle. However, I will also discuss another scenes, as well, in order to fully, yet briefly, demonstrate MacBeth’s two opposing psychological constructions.
Macbeth is a very complex character whom reflects man's thirst for power through the drastic changes of his personality; thus being one of the slightest reasons in which make this intriguing character, greatest of all Shakespearean’s well-known works.