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This video is a line-by-line walkthrough guide for William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 5.
I provide a close reading of the entire scene, including: — Detailed explication — Commentary — Literary analysis
All commentary is supplemented by in-text, line-by-line study notes designed to help students: — Prepare for GCSE, A-Level, IB, and AP evaluation — Prepare for general high school and college quizzes, exams, and essays — Generate ideas for analysis essays — Participate knowledgeably in class discussions Click here to download the annotated text of Macbeth: https://sites.google.com/view/shakespeare-walkthrough/home
This video discusses :
PLOT: — Lady Macbeth is excited to read Macbeth’s letter about the witches’ prophecies. — She worries that Macbeth is “too full of the milk of human kindness" to murder Duncan, so she resolves to encourage him. — She learns that Duncan is coming to visit, and calls on evil spirits to “unsex” her, make her strong enough to murder him. — Macbeth arrives home and listens excitedly to Lady Macbeth’s plans for murder.
CHARACTER: — Lady Macbeth: ambitious; manipulative; negative mother figure; knows her husband well; defines manhood as pure masculine strength, minus feminine compassion — Macbeth: revealed as generally good, moral, “full of the milk of human kindness,” childlike, incapable of deceit; wholly under Lady Macbeth’s spell; child trying to please cold, demanding mother.
THEME: — Appearance vs reality — Distorted definition of manhood as pure masculine strength, minus feminine compassion; tragedy arising from this — Alienation from self; tragedy arising from lack of self knowledge — Ambition; hubris — Manipulation
