Macbeth: How Would you Perform Act IV, Scene I.

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How Macbeth : You Would Perform Act IV, Scene I The play 'Macbeth´ was written by William Shakespeare as early as 1606 and is thought to have been written for King James I who was especially afraid of Witches, who are important characters and affect many of Macbeth´s decisions throughout the play.Macbeth starts the play as a noble in the service of King Duncan I of Scotland. He starts as Thane (noble) of Glamis and soon becomes Thane of Cawdor, after putting down the rebellion in that region.Macbeth is favourite of Duncan but murders the king after he names his son (Malcolm) as heir to the throne. Lady Macbeth looses her mind, leading to her suicide due to the many evil acts the pair have committed, the most recent being the murder of Lady Macduff and her children.Lord Macduff has fled to England and raises an army with the help of King Duncan´s sons and the English Earl of Northumberland, Lord Siward. The English army marches on Macbeth´s castle at Dunsinane where they discover that Macbeth´s soldiers have fled, leaving their lord alone to face the English. Macbeth kills Siward´s son, only to be killed himself by Macduff.Throughout the story the Witches play a very important part. They predict that Macbeth will be given the title Thane of Cawdor as well as king. When Macbeth realises that the first prediction has come true he decides that the others will also, causing him to use any means necessary to enable this. The Witches also predict that Banquo´s (another Thane) children will become kings. Banquo is Macbeth´s best friend throughout the play but he still decides to have him murdered as to stop him having any more children who may take the throne away from him.By modern standards the language used in Macbeth is quite hard to understand and to fully take in what the play is saying it is important to go over each scene so that we understand what actually is going on. There are many words used by Shakespeare that are rarely, if ever used today (Fenny = Slimy - page 99 line 12) and words that today mean a completely different thing to what Shakespeare has used them to mean (impress = conscript - page 105 line 94.Today the word is more often word to make somebody realise how good you are etc…)There are basically two types of character in this Shakespeare play. These are the upper class characters such as Kings, Queens, noblemen etc… and the lower class characters which is everybody else. These two types of character have two different ways of speaking which makes it easy to determine whether they are an upper or lower class character. The two ways of speech are 'blank verse´ used for upper class characters and 'prose´, which is used for the lower class characters. Blank verse is unrhymed poetry that has a regular rhythm and line length and is called 'Iambic Pentameter´, which is the most common rhythm in English poetry. Prose is simple everyday speech and is also the way in which most novels are written. The way of speech can also be used to determine what sort of act a character is doing at the time. This means that if an upper class character is committing a murder or theft then they will speak in prose whereas a lower class character who is saving a life or doing some other noble deed will speak in Blank Verse. The two forms of speech are quite easy to differentiate and so the audience can easily deduce the rank of a character and whether they are performing a good or a bad deed.The Witches are interesting as they are evil characters but they speak in Blank Verse. They also use chants a lot. Perhaps the most famous of these is the one that first appears during Act IV Scene I on line 10: "Double, double toil and trouble;Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." A chant is a monotonous phrase or slogan which is repeated over and over. It can be used to clearly get a message across or to cause something important to happen, in this case a magic spell.I have chosen this scene as I think that it is the most important scene out of the three options we were given, as well as providing a wide window of opportunity.The scene contains Macbeth who is the main character of the play, as well as the witches who are the catalyst for many of the events of the play.
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It will be interesting to see how I interpret these characters in the play and how they fit in with the rest of the play.In this scene Macbeth once again visits the witches who he thinks are helping him. The Witches are of course evil characters and don´t have his good at heart. This is a fault of Macbeth´s who doesn´t realise it until it is too late and Macduff, with the help of Malcolm, has rallied support to overthrow him.The first time Macbeth meets the Witches it is shortly after the Rebellion of the thane of Cawdor has been ...

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