MACBETH… tips and hints….

Some “catch-up” tips… 4&feature=related 4&feature=related

Some of the most famous scenes of the play You should understand the basic plot line of the play by now, so I thought I'd toss in some of the most famous scenes of the play – 1.The witches prophecies – which Macbeth (as a Christian Knight) should know better than to believe! 2.The scene where Macbeth changes his mind and decides NOT to kill King Duncan – but he should “be a man” – and that she would “bash her new born baby’s brains out” before she would ever be so is filled with so much guilt (for murdering his King and his best friend that he starts hallucinating!! First – he imagines that he sees Banquo’s ghost… and then he believes that he sees the “daggers before him” – the daggers which he had used to murder King Duncan 3.Lady Macbeth tries to wash off blood from the wall - a sign of her guilt. She is haunted by this and eventually dies of insanity Macbeth’s final battle with MacDuff ( who is now alone in the world because Macbeth killed his wife and babies!). Macduff slices off Macbeth’s head as he says that he was born by caesarean – and not by “natural” birth.

A Shakespeare Mini Glossary You should be able to name and know these dramatic techniques… and language techniques… blank verse: Poetry in which the lines do not rhyme. Shakespeare used a mixture of prose, rhymed verse, and blank verse in his plays, but mostly he used blank verse. comedy: A play in which the heroes do not die, but usually get married. Most comedies are lighthearted, but a few are somber until the final scene, when everyone is reconciled. couplet: A pair of lines that rhyme. A couplet often marks the end of a scene or act.

exeunt (“eg-ZOONT”): Plural form of exit, used in stage directions when many people leave the stage at once. flourish: A stage direction for a fanfare of drums and trumpets, usually announcing the entrance or exit of a king or queen. history: A play that recounts historical events. Shakespeare’s history plays are historical fiction. He altered time, people, and events.

iambic pentameter: A form of verse in which every other syllable is stressed (as in “dah-DUM”) and each line contains five stressed syllables. quatrain: A stanza of four lines, usually rhyming on alternate lines. rhyme royal: A verse form of seven- line stanzas rhyming in the pattern ababbcc.

sennet: A stage direction for a trumpet fanfare, like a flourish. soliloquy: A monologue that reveals a character’s inner thoughts and feelings. sonnet: A poem of 14 lines that follows a particular rhyme scheme. Shakespeare included sonnets in a few of his plays, and he wrote 154 sonnets as a series. Most of Shakespeare’s sonnets rhyme in the pattern abab cdcd efef gg.