 When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in 1606 James I had been King of England for three years. He was also the king of Scotland.

 Macbeth is a tragedy.  Tragic hero =  A person of importance; ie: king  Has a fatal flaw—usually hubris  Must make an important moral choice  Moral choice leads to tragic hero’s destruction  Destruction becomes widespread, affecting those around the tragic hero

1. Meter refers to the pattern of syllables in a line of poetry 2. Pentameter is simply penta, which means 5, meters. 3. An unstressed/stressed foot is known as an iamb 4. In basic iambic pentameter, a line would have 5 feet of iambs, which is an unstressed and then a stressed syllable.iambic pentameter Example: if YOU | would PUT | the KEY | inSIDE | the LOCK da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM

Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest: go pronounce his death, And with his former title greet Macbeth. EXAMPLE:

 A comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem.  Example: Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

 a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience.  the audience is meant to realize that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage.

 from Latin: "talking by oneself"  a device often used in drama whereby a character speaks to himself or herself, relating his or her thoughts and feelings and sharing them with the audience.  Other characters are not aware of what is being said.

 * The Earth was the centre of the universe and everything was arranged in an orderly fashion.  * Society reflected this order with its fixed classes from the highest to the lowest – kings, churchmen, nobles, merchants, and peasants  * The Elizabethans called this hierarchical structure The Great Chain of Being.

 Scotland—around 1100  * height of the Viking era  * clan system mixed with feudalism (castles, kings, lords)  * thane—Scottish title equivalent to a lord or baron  The “real” Macbeth  * died 15 August 1057  * probably not a tyrant  * Shakespeare’s story based on legend 

Strong belief in the supernatural— ghosts, witches, prophecy

 concept roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny  from the Old Norse for “fate, doom, fortunes”  “weird” related to it