What did Macbeth's character, words and actions show about changes in his character? Why are these scenes important to the plot and structure of the play and how the themes are presented?

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Debbie Branford 9014        

Shakespeare

Language and Literature

Harry Cheshire Community High School

24195

In Macbeth, look at the following scenes: Act one, scenes one, two and three, Act two, scene two, Act four, scene one and Act five, scenes three, six and seven.

What did Macbeth’s character, words and actions show about changes in his character?  Why are these scenes important to the plot and structure of the play and how the themes are presented?

The play Macbeth is about a man whose rise to power and fall are influenced by his own ambitions, with help from the supernatural.

In the beginning of the play, Macbeth started off as a brave man, because he fought well in battles, even the King praised him for his courage.  This is shown when the sergeant was explaining what was going on the battle.  He explained that Macbeth had fought well

For brave Macbeth, well he deserves that name”

They know that he is brave and loyal.  However, in the scene before, three withes were planning to use him to do evil.  They must have known that there was something else to Macbeth than bravery and loyalty; there was a strong ambitious side that they could prey off.

Those two sides of Macbeth were shown together, the witches’ scene (scene one) was hinting Macbeth’s dark ambitious side and his vulnerability.  Straight after that scene was the scene with King Duncan saying how brave he was.  The audience would get mixed messages there and wouldn’t know what to think about Macbeth.

The audience learn more about Macbeth in scene three because he actually appears in the scene.

        It started with the witches telling each other about how they are going to kill someone’s husband because she didn’t give her any food.  This shows that the witches are evil beings and shouldn’t be trusted, yet Macbeth trusts them.  This shows that Macbeth actually has got a dark side.

        The witches posses great power.  This was shown when one of the witches say that she is going to go to sea in a sieve to follow a man in a boat.  It isn’t humanly possible to go to sea in a sieve, but Shakespeare uses this imagery to show the audience how powerful the witches are.  The other witches say they would give her a wind, this proves that they can control the weather. In the Elizabethan times, this would be shocking because they were firm believers in witchcraft, and all the things that went wrong in the world was blamed on witches.

        When the witches hear Macbeth coming, it seems like they cast a spell on him

“…Thrice to thine and thrice to mine

and thrice again to make up nine.

Peace! The charms wound up!”

Just after the “spell”, Macbeth says “so foul and fair a day I have not seen”.  The weather was reflecting what was going on in the play.  From the moment Macbeth meets the witches on the heath, Scotland is doomed.  I think this because when the witches told Macbeth the prophecies, his ambitious side kicked in and then one event led to another and he became king, a bad king. The weather might have been there to show that was a significantly important part of the play.

        I think that the prophecies were the things that changed Macbeth.  If the witches didn’t tell him that he could become king, he wouldn’t have killed Duncan.  He might have stayed the way he was before the witches had told him.

        The witches had successfully changed Macbeth by giving him small hints about what was going to happen. At one point, Macbeth asks Banquo if he hopes his children will be kings, yet he doesn’t say anything about himself becoming king.  It seems to me like he is planning something.  I think this because just before he talked to Banquo, he said ‘the greatest is behind’ and ‘my thought, whose murder is yet fantastical’.  He is thinking about murdering the king at that point, or thinking about what would happen if he did kill him.  In that one scene, Macbeth has gone from being loyal, to being deceitful, just because of what the witches had told him.  

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It didn’t seem to have affected Banquo in the same way.  He knew that the witches were evil and that they can’t be trusted.  He tried to warn Macbeth by saying:

“And oftentimes, to win us to our harms, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence”

 That roughly means ‘sometimes, to tempt us to evil, the devil wins our confidence with small bits of truth, then betrays us with the big things that really matter.’ That’s what the witches had done to Macbeth.  They had told Macbeth that ...

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