Shakespeare’s Macbeth & Early Modern English Sara Rice EN 307 March 16, 2007

You Don’t Know Billy William Shakespeare is lauded as perhaps the most prolific and influential writer in the history of the English language. Why? He was one of the first people to initiate the tradition of dramatic literature in English. Prose was just starting to be used in plays as Shakespeare was born. He invented and brought thousands of new words into Modern English, including “bedroom” and “lackluster.”

The King’s Men In 1603, King James VI comes to power and takes Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as his own The King’s Men. In general, Elizabethan stage actors had about two weeks to rehearse and then put on each new play. The strain on the actors’ memory was enormous-- the use of iambic pentameter and blank verse were extremely helpful to memorization because they are sound patterns that are very close to natural human speech. A line of iambic pentameter is basically the length of one human breath.

Macbeth: The Historical Context Macbeth is supposed to have been written in 1606, three years after The King’s Men gained King James’s patronage. It is the play which best represents the relationship between Shakespeare and the King. King James claimed to be a descendant of the real Macbeth, with only eight kings in between them. James was also famous for his obsessions with the Divine Right Theory and with witchcraft, two big themes that Shakespeare incorporates into the play. King James VI

Historical Context, Continued… Shakespeare took the basic story of Duncan and Macbeth from Hollinshed’s Chronicles, which dates the reign of these two Scottish monarchs between 1034 - 1057. Because he had to please his patron, Shakespeare made the character of Macbeth much more villainous than he probably was. (Shakespeare used the same flattery to please his Tudor patrons in Richard III)

To frame the passage, here’s what you need to know: Macbeth and his wife, set on their path of murderous ambition by prophesies from a trio of meddling witches, have killed Scotland’s king and several others who were above Macbeth in line for the throne. By this time, in the fifth act, the Lords and Macbeth have gone to war over the kingdom and all of Macbeth’s deeds are catching up to him.

Act Five, Scene 5 Lines 9-28 Macbeth. I haue almost forgot the taste of Feares: The time ha’s beene, my sences would haue cool’d To heare a Night-shrieke, and my Fell of haire Would at a dismall Treatise rowze, and stirre As life were in’t. I haue supt full with horrors, Direness familiar to my slaughterous thoughts Cannot once start me. Wherefore was that cry? Seyton. The Queene (my Lord) is dead.

Act Five, Scene Five Lines 9-28: Continued… Macbeth. She should haue dy’de heereafter; There would haue beene a time for such a word: To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow, Creepes in this petty pace from day to day, To the last Syllable of Recorded time: And all our yesterdayes, haue lighted Fooles The way to dusty death. Out, out, breefe Candle, Life’s but a walking Shadow, a poore Player, That struts and frets his houre vpon the Stage, And then is heard no more. It is a Tale Told by an Ideot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.

Vocabulary Wherefore: archaic way to say “why” (Remember, Juliet doesn’t ask where Romeo is, she asks him why he has to be a Montague) Sences (senses): had several, interchangeable meanings. Here, it is likely that Macbeth means his sanity, his right mind. Dismall (dismal): had a different meaning in Shakespeare’s day-- it could mean calamitous, which is likely in this context.

Style and Grammar First half: soliloquy to the audience and to himself Soliloquies were common in Elizabethan theatre General conventions of the soliloquy: the speaker has to be honest in soliloquy-- they are performed in order to bring the character and the audience closer together This monologue of Macbeth’s is written in blank verse, with hints of iambic patterning. Punctuation: Shakespeare was notoriously cavalier and sparse with his punctuation. Modern editors usually make changes to clean it all up.

Grammar, Continued… The first word of every line is capitalized, even though many are in the middle of sentences -> poetic convention. In addition, many of the passage’s important words (from all parts of speech) are capitalized.

Spelling “Haue” and “vpon”-- in Early Modern English, the [u] and [v] were interchangeable. Some consonants were still doubled - “stirre” for stir Generally, a more phonetic spelling than even our Modern Standard English.

Pronunciations “and” was allowed to drop its last letter in speech: “an’” “with” was pronounced with an unvoiced “th”

For the Groundlings… The Globe was a twenty-sided, Open-air amphitheatre - It was built to hold 2,000 people but often housed an audience as big as 3,000 people - The stage was only five feet from the closest groundlings, but the actors had to compete with weather and crowd noise, so their speech had to be loud and clear.

Macbeth’s Legacy There are two very famous lines taken from Macbeth One is the Wyrd Sisters’ “Double, double toil and trouble: Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.” (Act IV, Scene I) The other is from this passage. If the last lines sound familiar, they should; William Faulkner took Shakespeare’s “Sound and fury” comment and named his famous novel after it (1929’s The Sound And The Fury)

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Sources Consulted The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, HarperCollins Edition Early Modern English by Charles Barber. London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1976. Oxford English Dictionary (Online)