Macbeth: A Study Commentary - Contents and Sample Section

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CONTENTS

 

Act One Scene One              

 Commentary   1

Overview

   2

Student Response

   3

 

    

Act One Scene Two              

 Commentary   4

                                               

 Overview   7

                                               

 Student Response   8

 

Act One Scene Three           

 Commentary  10

                                               

 Overview  15

                                               

 Student Response  17

  

Act One Scene Four             

 Commentary  19

                                               

 Overview  20
                                                            Student Response  21
            
            Act One Scene Five               Commentary  22
                                                            Overview  27
                                                            Student Response  28
            Act One Scene Six                 Commentary  30
                                                            Overview  30
                                                          Student Response  31
            Act One Scene Seven            Commentary  32
                                                            Overview  36
                                                            Student Response  37

Additional Essay Questions (A Level) 

  39

Commentary Practice – General

  39 

Practice Commentary 1

  41

Model Commentary

  44

Commentary – Further Suggestions 

  46

Act Two  Scene One              

 Commentary  48

                                                 

 Overview  51

                                                 

 Student Response  52

Act Two Scene Two               

 Commentary  53

                                                

 Overview  55

                                                 

 Student Response  56

Act Two Scene Three            

 Commentary  57

                                                

 Overview  61

                                                 

 Student Response  62
             Act Two Scene Four
             Practice Commentary 2  64
             Additional Essay Questions (A Level)  68

Act Three Scene One             

 Commentary  69
Overview  72

                                               

 Student Response  73

Act Three Scene Two             

 Commentary  75

                                                

 Overview  77

                                                

 Student Response  78

Act Three Scene Three         

 Commentary  79

                                                

 Overview  79

                                                 

 Student Response  80

Act Three Scene Four            

 Commentary  81

                                                

 Overview  86

                                                

 Student Response  86

Act Three Scene Five            

 Commentary  88

                                                

 Overview  88

                                                

 Student Response  89

Act Three Scene Six              

 Commentary  90

                                                

 Overview  92

                                                

 Student Response  92

Additional Essay Questions (A Level) 

  92

Practice Commentary 3

  93

Act Four Scene One              

 Commentary  95

                                                

 Overview 100

                                                

 Student Response 102

Act Four Scene Two              

 Commentary 103

                                                 

 Overview 105

                                                

 Student Response 106

Act Four Scene Three          

Commentary 108

                                                 

 Overview 114

                                                

 Student Response 116

Act Five Scene One              

Commentary 118

                                                 

 Overview 120

                                                

 Student Response 121

Act Five Scene Two               

 Commentary 122

                                                 

 Overview 124

                                                

 Student Response 124

Act Five Scene Three          

Commentary 126

                                               

 Overview  129

                                                

 Student Response 129

Act Five Scene Four            

Commentary 130

                                                

 Overview 130

                                               

 Student Response 131

Act Five Scene Five             

Commentary 132

                                                

 Overview 135

                                               

 Student Response 136

Act Five Scene Six               

Commentary 138

                                                

 Overview 138

                                               

 Student Response 138

Act Five Scene Seven          

Commentary 139

                                                

 Overview 139

                                               

 Student Response 140

Act Five Scene Eight           

Commentary 142

                                               

 Overview  143

                                               

 Student Response 144

Act Five Scene Nine            

Commentary 146

                                               

 Student Response 146

                                               

Practice Commentary 5

 147

Additional Essay Questions (A Level)

 148

Further Essay Questions (International Baccalaureate)

 149

Further Essay Questions (A Level) 

 150

Advanced Placement Free-Response Questions 

 151

Commentary ‘Help’ Pages 

 152

                             

Act One Scene Five  

Commentary   

Lady Macbeth is half-way through Macbeth’s letter when she enters –  a realistic effect.
1-2 ‘By the perfect’st report’ (on the most reliable grounds): Macbeth is still, in spite of Banquo’s warning, 
pinning his faith on the ‘trifle’ the Witches have given him, as proof that their promises can be trusted. 
3 ‘Burned in desire’: Can you recall the word Banquo used to suggest how Macbeth might be excited at the 
prospect of kingship?


     ‘That, trusted home, might enkindle you to the crown’ (Act One Scene Three lines 120-121)
4 ‘Made themselves air’: Banquo’s ‘bubbles’. They vanished into another world.
‘Rapt’: That interesting word again, but this time without any suggestion that he is hiding something – he is just 
‘enraptured’.
7

‘The coming-on of time’: Macbeth still hopes that kingship will ‘come on’ to him without his having to do very 

much. He continues to be reluctant to take any initiative himself – which may be why he is eager to involve 

 

his wife as quickly as possible. She, he knows, has it in her to be pro-active, if that is what will be needed. 

Lady Macbeth in her response to this letter shows that she knows her husband well; there’s no reason to 

suppose that Macbeth knows any less about her. So when he says he has written to her so that she can share 

the good news, he really means, ‘Tell me what to do.’

The letter is in prose (usual) and Lady Macbeth’s response to it is in blank verse (expected). What effect does 
the switch from one to the other have?


        Macbeth has written in a clear and ordered manner and has kept his excitement in check. His language 
        is largely non-figurative (literal).

        Lady Macbeth’s speech is strong in both rhythms and imagery. She is immediately more passionate 
        about the prospect before them than Macbeth has so far been.
14 ‘What thou art promised’: The possibility is so enormous that she cannot speak of it in plain terms – the 
prize, and the means to it, are unnameable. All the way through this speech she uses indirect phrases to refer 
both to the kingship and to the murder which will lead to it. List them.


     The kingship:
          'be great'
          'ambition'
          'what thou wouldst highly'
          'that which cries'
          'the golden round' (the crown - a bit more to the point)
     
     The murder:
          'the nearest way'
          'the illness'
          'wrongly win'
          'Thus thou must do'
          'that which...thou dost fear to do'
 
14 Lady Macbeth fears Macbeth’s ‘nature’, she says. But she doesn’t simply mean  that he’s too weak for the 
job. It is his human nature which is at fault. That’s what ‘human kindness’ is – it would be more clearly 
written as ‘humankind-ness’, and refers to what makes us people, as distinct from animals – or witches. So 
Lady Macbeth isn’t complaining about Macbeth, but about us. We are not fitted for the kind of action which is 
necessary to make us ‘great’; we don’t deserve greatness. 
That essentially human nature (which Lady Macbeth does see as weak) is passed down to us through the 
15 generations, in the very ‘milk’ with which we are nursed. To become truly great we must be prepared to deny 
our inheritance and act ruthlessly in our own self-interest. So Lady Macbeth’s speech is a rejection of all that 
we have seen happening (in the previous scene) in Duncan’s court, where humane (another spelling of the 
word with slightly different connotations) and kind (in the more modern sense) behaviour is both ordained and 
practised. Lady Macbeth, in other words, wants Mankind to take a different path in his evolution.
Womankind, too. Women can out-man men. She herself asks in a moment (lines 45-46) to have her milk 
turned to gall (bitter fluid); and in Scene Seven (lines 54-58) she claims (boasts, even) that she would snatch 
her nipple from her feeding baby’s mouth and dash its brains out, if she had sworn to do it. You can’t get 
much more of a denial of humankind-ness than that.
It's important that you grasp that full meaning of those easily misunderstood lines (14-15). If you say, in an  
essay or a commentary, ‘Lady Macbeth thinks Macbeth is too kind to kill Duncan,’ you’ll have missed an
opportunity.
16 Macbeth has been ‘seized’ by the idea of kingship, you will remember. He in his turn must seize – ‘catch’ –  
the swiftest means to achieve it. Lady Macbeth does not think he will.

The next few line are maybe overburdened with antithesis. It’s as if Lady Macbeth has drawn up two lists:

  • What Macbeth wants

  • Why he will never get it without help

She moves from one to the other in a manner which makes for a very contrived speech (and a demanding one 
for an actress); but the rhythms generated are powerful and convincing. She seems to know what she is 
talking about.
23 ‘Hie thee hither’ has some dramatic impact (get used to that phrase). Things are about to move swiftly. 
Duncan will arrive before night and be dead before morning. 
24 She wants Macbeth here so that she can ‘pour [her] spirits’ in his ear. She may mean ‘the spirit of boldness 
25 (‘valour’) which will put the new Mankind wholly in control of his own future’. But if you know Othello and 
Hamlet you’ll perhaps remember that the only thing poured into people’s ears in those plays is poison.
27-28 ‘Do seem to have thee crowned withal’: The phrasing is strange. (‘Withal’ just means ‘with’.) The tense of 
the verb suggests that Macbeth is already crowned – in the world from which the Witches come, and perhaps 
also in Lady Macbeth’s imagination.
29 'Thou'rt mad to say it': She starts in much the same way Macbeth did earlier; she too has been caught 
thinking bad things. The unexpected arrival of the king has something of the same impact, briefly, as the 
knocking on the gate which will wake up the household (in Act Two) to the discovery of his death. Her 
reaction here is that of a guilty person. (Some commentators have even suggested that when the Messenger 
says, ‘The king comes here tonight’ she is so far forward in her imaginings that she thinks he means King 
Macbeth, and is momentarily flustered – and guilty – when she comes to her senses.)
She does attack the messenger, rather.
He is apologetic. You probably wouldn’t want to contradict Lady Macbeth either.
36

The messenger has brought ‘great news’ (‘news of greatness’ would be more accurate) and deserves to be 

rewarded, at least by being taken care of (line 34).
Ravens croak to announce imminent death (it was believed); the more important the death the louder the 
croak (we might imagine). This one has croaked himself almost to silence. Shakespeare needs us to be aware 
  of just how momentous the impending murder will be: it will shake the very structures of the world.
38 ‘Under my battlements’: Why ‘under’? Why ‘my’?

 
     The impression given is that the battlements will loom over Duncan threateningly. (Look at what he
     himself says about the battlements when he arrives, however.) 

     This is Lady Macbeth's, not Macbeth's, castle - a telling slip. It will in a sense be her plot too, since she
     becomes the force which drives it to its conclusion...and she's the one who cleans up afterwards. 
Just who or what the ‘spirits’ are to which Lady Macbeth refers here and in line 46 (‘murdering ministers – 
if both sets of supernatural creatures are the same) we don’t really, as commentators, know. But as an 
audience in the theatre we will assume she means the Witches (or something very like). As often in drama, it’s 
the impression, not the facts, which matters.
‘Unsex me here’ doesn’t really confuse the issue of the New Mankind discussed above. The New Person will 
be sexless, and will have neither the softness of a woman nor the principles of a man; there will be no room 
inside this creature for anything but ‘direst cruelty’. Its blood will be too thick to carry feelings such as 
compassion (‘remorse’) to its heart and it will have no conscience (‘compunctious visitings of nature’). Its 
purposes will be ‘fell’ (‘ruthless’); and it will be very efficient at doing what it is programmed to do (nothing  
will come between its ‘purpose’ and the ‘effect’ – the carrying out of that purpose).
Recognise the picture? Isn’t it eerily like one of those science-fiction creations, androids, which look like people 
but aren’t and which go around proving how indestructible they are while destroying lots of real men and 
women? Has Lady Macbeth looked into the same future as some of our film-makers? 
48

‘Nature’s mischief’ may give us a bit of trouble, unless we see it as referring not to human nature (in which 

there is not enough mischief according to Lady M) but to Nature as a whole (ie Creation), including that part 

of it in which evil spirits live. There are other glosses (possible interpretations), but that’s the most 

straightforward one.

The last part of this speech echoes Macbeth’s in the previous scene, where he too calls for the stars to hide 

their fires so that he can act unseen. But Lady Macbeth’s thinking and her poetry are much more fully

developed.
Night is to be ‘thick’ like the blood of the creature Lady Macbeth wishes to become, and will hinder sight in the
same way that the thickness of  her blood will ‘stop up th’access’ (line 42) to human feeling. The darkness 
(gloomy smoke from hell) in which it will wrap itself will act as a ‘pall’ (both a cloak capable of hiding  
something and a funeral winding-cloth). 
50 ‘My keen knife’: Does Lady Macbeth think she will have to commit the murder herself? She almost has to