SHAKESPEARE

WEEK 1:

INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE:

1. The Renaissance spirit:

- It is a term that means “rebirth” or “revival” of the classics(classical literature that was produced
in classical Greece or Rome
- As such, Renaissance England was a period marked by creative energy and the emergence of a
world view more than medieval. Ex: everyman
- It began in southern Europe(Italy) and then spread throughout Europe
- The period extended from the 14th century to the 17th century

- So what are the characteristics of the Renaissance spirit that mark Shakespeare?

1. A tendency toward secularism

- During the middle ages, life was considered as a stage that prepared us or life after death and
the church was at the very heart of society
- However, during the renaissance people enjoyed life
- They enjoyed art, literature, nature as well as their gasp over the world
- Scholars also looked at the achievements of the pre-Christian era and engaged in the revival of
the classics
2. The emphasis on the individual
- During the renaissance, there was a focus on the individual and on achieving human potential
- “the Renaissance Man”, cultivated his potential to the maximum ex: Dr. Faustus
- Human beings became the center of the universe
- Their key goal was to ensure a harmonious balance between the emotional, rational, social, and
spiritual forces in life

- The Ptolemaic universe: man and the Earth at the center and the “premium mobile” (primary
moving force) or “Habituculum Dei” (God’s Hand) as the last sphere. (you can search for the pic)

3. Revolt against authority

- As a result of secularism and individualism there was a revolt against authority
- They did not obey the church and questioned theories of the medieval scientists
4. A Surge in discoveries and art
- The renaissance expended the academic psychological, and geographical boundaries of the
Medieval world
- The translation of Greek and Latin texts brought new knowledge in medicine, astronomy,
physics, and mathematics
- Gutenberg’s discovery of the printing press in 1440 increased literacy
- Innovations in navigations lead to new geographical discoveries
2. The Tudor Monarchs
Henry VIII (1491-1547):
- He is mostly famous for his six wives and for breaking with Rome and declaring the Church of
England or Anglican Church

Mary I of England (1516-1558)

- Henry VIII’s first child succeeded her frail brother King Edward VI
- She was a fervent Roman Catholic and attempted to drive Protestants out of England, burning
many at the stake
- At the time of her death by execution, she was hated by many
- She died at the age of 42

Queen Elizabeth I: “The Virgin Queen” (1533-1603)

- Succeeded her sister Mary I
- Was the child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
- Her reign was a glorious and prosperous period in the History of England
- She never married and declared herself the Virgin Queen

The Elizabeth Era:

- Queen Elizabeth was educated in Latin and Greek and interested in art and literature
- She was moderate when it came to religion, ending religious persecution
- She was a smart diplomat and stopped England’s futile wars
- She was able to beat the Spanish Armada fleet (1588)

The end of the Tudors: The Stuart Dynasty

- Following Elizabeth’s death, her cousin James VI of Scotland became James of England (1566-
1625)
- He was really interested in witches and had written a book about them
- One of the plays that were interviewed to James is Macbeth
- He was followed by his son, Charles I
- At this point, a split began between the king and people

3. Elizabethan, Jacobean, and 17th century Drama

On Elizabethan drama:
- It was one of the greatest achievement of the English renaissance
- The genre had 3 sources: -
- Medieval miracle, mystery and morality plays performed in churches, inns and private homes
- Popular entertainment provided by jugglers, acrobats and actors
- Latin and Greek dramas revived during the renaissance at Oxford and Cambridge
- One of the famous Elizabethan playwrights was Christopher Marlowe who influenced with
Shakespeare
 - Ben Jonson’s were popular among royalty
- Shakespeare’s Theater dominated the theater of the late 16th and early 17th century
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
- Ben Jonson described Shakespeare by saying he “is not of an age, but for all time”
- What we know about Shakespeare is that we don’t know much-> facts about his life are scarce
because his works were the focus of attention + his biography was attempted 30-40years after
his death
Early life:
- He was born in Stratford, a town on the banks of the Avon River (hence, Stratford- upon- Avon)
in 1564 and baptized on April 26 (so we can guess he was born on April 23, as children were
baptized 2-3 days after their birth
- He entered the Stratford grammar school at the age of 7 and studied Latin grammar,
composition and literature for six days a week
- No other subjects were included, except, possibly Greek. Students were English at home,
spelling was done phonetically

Marriage and Family life

- On November 17, 1582, he obtained a license to marry Anne Hathaway, who was eight older
than him
- His daughter Suzanna was born six months, later and his twins three years later
- Little is known about his life between 1585 and 1592, and some believe he might have been a
teacher, soldier, printer, etc., but no evidence exists

Prime Years

• When the theaters reopened, Shakespeare began rewriting plays, producing two to four plays
per year (a total of 37 plays in around 20 years)

• He joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men). It was a prestigious acting
company led by Richard Burbage.

• In 1599, Shakespeare and other members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men opened the Globe
Theater, the finest theater in London

Later Years

• In the 1590's, Shakespeare underwent a change in mood. He had lost his only son in 1596, he
had lost many of his friends, and his acting company was being challenged by others.

• At this point, Shakespeare turned from history and comedy to tragedy. He produced his greatest
tragedies during that period: Julius Caesar (1599), Hamlet (1600), Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), and
Macbeth (1606).

• The plague struck again in 1608, and then when it opened, Cymbeline (1609), The Winter's Tale
(1610), and The Tempest (1611) were performed. These tragicomedies indicated his return to tranquility
and optimism.
• In 1613, Henry VIII, a play written to glorify Queen Elizabeth, was being performed at the Globe.
Canons were shot at the performance, and this caused the Globe to catch fire and burn down.

Shakespeare's Language and Style

• Shakespeare mastered the English language and experimented a lot with style.

• In his plays, he combined formal diction with slang, and poetry with prose.

• He was playful in using language: his writing was characterized by ambiguities, connotations,
double meanings, vivid images, and figures of speech.

• His vocabulary was estimated at 24,000 words, whereas the average persons was 3,000 words.

• His characters remain memorable and relatable, reflecting his understanding of human nature
and psychology.

• His plays build on the works of classical dramatists, English morality drama, Italian Renaissance
drama, and the plays of Christopher Marlowe, and the masques of Ben Jonson.

The Globe Theater

James Burbage built a theater-called "the Theater" in the London suburbs in 1576. Other theaters were
being constructed on the city limits of London to escape the license requirements and closings imposed
within the city.

In 1598, because of a dispute over the Theater, Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain's Men bought
land south of the Thames River tore down the Theater, took its material to a new site, and began
working on the Globe Theater

.Structure of the Globe

•The Globe was octagonal in stage (had eight sides). Five sections were used by spectators and three by
the actors and stage crew.

On performance days, a flag would fly over the Globe Theater.

•The entry fee was one penny for those who wished to watch performance from the yard. Those who
stood in the yard were called "groundlings, and were the least educated. These could spit at the players.

• If they wished to sit in the upper gallery, they paid another penny.

If they wanted a cushioned seat in the first gallery (the best seat), they paid a third penny

•The audience interacted with the performance, expressing pleasure, sorrow, disappointment, etc.

No reservations were made ahead of time.

A packed theater meant 2,000 persons were inside.

The Stage and Its Audience

The Stage

• The stage was surrounded by spectators on all three sides.

• On either side, there were doors for entrances and exits.

• There was no curtain or artificial lighting.

• A canopy sheltered actors from the rain.

• -Trapdoors were used for the appearance of ghosts and spirits and the disappearance of bodies.

• Behind the main stage was an inner stage for scenes that required props. It could become a
tavern, prison, throne room, etc.

The Audience

• The audience had to rely on imagination; there was little scenery, and boys played women's
roles.

• The audience consisted of people of all classes-students, courtiers, servants, workers, thieves,
and pickpockets except for the Puritans.

• New plays were added each year and unpopular ones were dropped

Week 2:

Issues of publications

• When Shakespeare died in 1616, only half of his plays had been published in short one-play
editions

• Seven years after his death (1623), the first folio (collected edition of the plays) was published,
containing an additional 18 plays

• Nicholas Rowe (1709) became the first modern editor of Shakespeare's plays

• During each age, Shakespeare's plays were edited by different editors that have had to address
a variety of issues

• Today, the different collections and editions of Shakespeare's plays can be found in the Folger
Shakespeare Library in the United States

• A main challenge concerning Shakespeare’s plays is that they come in different forms

Quartos

What are quartos?

• About half of Shakespeare’s play were published as quartos during his life time

• Quartos are publication of single plays (with a special folding to be discussed)

• Challenge: while some of the quartos for the same play were consistent, other varied across
different editions

One of the earliest quartos of Titus Andronicus. It does not include Shakespeare's name, but the name
of the company that first performed the play

The First Folio

What is the first folio?

• Seven years after Shakespeare's death, his friends and colleagues in his acting company John
Heminge and Henry Condell collected almost all of his plays in a folio edition.

• Today, this edition is referred to as the First Folio.

• The First Folio groups the plays for the first time into comedies, histories, and tragedies

The First Folio of William Shakespeare Image source: https://www.folger.edu/publishingShakespeare

What's a Folio?

• A folio is a large book in which printed sheets are folded in half only once

• As a result, readers had two double-sided leaves or four pages

• Folios were more expensive and far more prestigious than quartos

• The 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, however, is the earliest folio consisting only of an author's
plays.

During Shakespeare's time, books had to be opened and cut to be read Image source:
https://collation.folger.edu/2016/08/uncut-unopened-untrimmed-uh-oh/

Later Editions

• The First Folio sold well enough.

• Nine years later (1632), it was followed by the Second Folio.

• In 1663, that was followed by the Third Folio.

• In 1685, that was followed by the Fourth Folio.

• The latter two added many new plays, most of which are not today considered to be by
Shakespeare.
The 1709 Edition of Shakespeare's plays Image source: https://www.folger.edu/publishingShakespeare

Editing Shakespeare

• Shakespeare's plays have been edited through time.

• In 1709, Nicholas Rowe became the first editor of Shakespeare's plays.

• Editors faced a lot of challenges because of variations in the quarto and folio editions of the
plays.

• Here are some of the changes he made:

1. He added act and scene divisions to every play.

2. He included lists of the characters, or dramatis personae.

3. He also introduced exits and entrances based on the sense of the text.

Following Rowe, Shakespeare had numerous editors, each of whose edition of his work reflected the
spirit of their time.

Image of Nicholas Rowe Image source:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicholas-Rowe

Bowdlerizing Shakespeare

• In 1807, an English doctor Thomas Bowdler published The Family Shakespeare, an edited and
censored version of Shakespeare's plays

• He and his sister Henrietta Bowdler had edited the plays removing sexual elements and
elements of Roman Catholicism.

• Today, the term bowdlerize is used to refer to censorship and the omission of undesirable
material.

• The main purpose behind bowdlerizing Shakespeare was rendering him suitable for women
audiences.

• Later on, Henrietta Bowdler was herself censored and only her brother's name mentioned.

• In the preface to the family Shakespeare, she wrote: "The language is not always faultless. Many
words and expressions occur which are of so indecent Nature as to render it highly desirable that they
should be erased."

A bowdlerized Shakespeare Image source:

http://bloggingshakespeare.com/11540-2
Shakespeare, "the Upstart Crow"

• Robert Greene (1558-1592) is said to have described Shakespeare as "an upstart Crow,
beautified with our feathers."

• "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a
player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an
absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."

• Issue regarding the authenticity of the plays arose in light of Shakespeare's modest origins.

• Many believed Christopher Marlowe to be the actual author of the plays. Others (like Mark
Twain, Charlie Chaplin, etc.) considered it was Edward de Vere. And many thought it was the queen
herself.

• Debate between Stratfordians (Shakespeare) and Oxfordian (Edward de Vere)

• Proof that Shakespeare wrote his plays: bon Jonson

Challenges in reading Shakespeare

Language (1)

1. The Lexis of Early Modern English

• While many assume that Shakespeare wrote in Old English (the language of Beowulf), he
actually wrote in Early Modern English.

• He also wrote for the popular classes (keep in mind the audience at the globe).

• It is really important to keep in mind how his language is similar to and different from ours.

• One such distinction is the various pronouns for you.

Example:

Observe the usage of you in the following exchange taken from Much Ado about Nothing Benedick Lady
Beatrice, have you wept all this while? Beatrice Yea, and I will weep a little longer.

Benedick I will not desire that.

Beatrice You have no reason; I do it freely.

Benedick Surely, I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.

Beatrice Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her!

Benedick Is there any way to show such friendship?

Beatrice A very even way, but no such friend.

Benedick May a man do it?

Beatrice It is a man's office, but not yours.

Benedick I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?

Language (2)

2. Grammar

a. Verb forms

Below are some verb forms from Richard III

Hath = has, hast = have, hadst = had, canst = can, mad'st = made, drink'st = drinks, didst = did, dost

= does, shalt = shall, liest = lie, wast = was, loveth

= loves

b. Inversion

e.g. "Plots have I laid."

"Here Clarence comes."

c. Negatives and Interrogatives

→ Negatives were formed by placing "not" after the verb

e.g. "I blame you not" rather than "I don't blame -you"

"I found not ..." rather than "I didn't find" not ... rat

→Interrogatives are formed by inversion (rather than with do)

e.g. "Know you any, my lord?"

Languages (3)

3. Metaphors

Shakespeare’s language abounds with metaphors

e.g. here’s an excerpt from Macbeth:

“… Out, out brief candle,

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”

4. Allusion

It also abounds with allusion

e.g. whom do these verses by henry IV allude to?

“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross”

5. Rhymes

Rhyme is not always easy to notice:

E.g. ere is pronounced "air" (meaning before),

fie rhymes with "high", and "prove" with "love"

Aspects of Drama (1)

"Shakespeare's plays were written to be performed, not studied in a classroom."-Roma Gill

1. Stage Directions

Given the lack of stage directions, we have no clear sense of how a seen is being performed, or even
who is on the stage at a particular moment.

e.g. This excerpt from A Midsummer's Night Dream can be enriched by pointings :

"Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,

And interchang'd love-token with my child:

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung..."

It is important to pay attention to implied stage directions:

e.g. Richard Vouchsafe to wear this ring.

Anne to take is not to give.

How Can We Read Literature and Shakespeare?

1. Close reading

2. Distant reading (Computational Approaches)

3. Digging deeper: Character and Theme Analysis

4. Reading through a theoretical lens

So Close Reading...

Close reading is one of the most widespread scholarly methods in literary criticism and constitutes an
indispensable tool for literary readers.

• Focuses on the text itself and its formal elements

• Aims to “stay close to the text”

• Aims to “stay close to the text”

• Ignores the social, biographical, and historical contexts

• Focuses on reading the text without the context

Distant Reading: The Direct Opposite of Close Reading

CLOSE READING

• Focuses on single texts

• Identifies formal elements

• Disregards context

DISTANT READING

• Draws on natural and social sciences

• Surveys hundreds and thousands of texts

• Identifies patterns across centuries and boundaries

• Utilizes visualizations like graphs, maps, etc.

e.g. Keyword analysis in Romeo and Juliette

Digging Deeper: Character and Theme Analysis

Character Analysis:
• Plot influences character's fate
• Characters as shaped by their social milieu
• Characters' uncertainties and flaws (revealed through soliloquies)

Theme Analysis
• Analyze the different themes in the play

Reading through a Theoretical Lens (Critical Approaches)

• Formalist/Textual Approach: Focuses on form; it stresses symbolism, imagery, structure,
and how parts relate to entire work.
• Psychological/Psychoanalytical Approach: Focuses on the inner motivations of
characters and/or how the text is an expression of psychological problems of the artist.
• Myth Criticism: Focuses on connections to mythology, the bible, archetypes, symbols,
characters, themes.
• Historical / New Historicism: Focuses on how the work is connected to the historical
background and period in which the text was written.
• Structuralism: Focuses on the structure of the plot and binary opposites.
• Post-Structuralism: Focuses on deconstructing the binary oppositions.
• Feminism and Gender Studies: Focuses on female characters and their representations.
• Postcolonial: Focuses on issues of colonialism and political/power struggle.
• Interdisciplinary: Focuses on combining more than one discipline.

Week 3:
Shakespeare: introducing a midsummer night’s dream

The Place of Laughter during the Renaissance

• Debates regarding laughter during the Renaissance in relation to decorum" (comedy as
a lower genre)
• For many decades, Shakespeare's comedies were ignored
• Shakespeare's comedies present different views regarding laughter and sadness a
• In many of his plays, we see clowning in the form of a figure whose job is to entertain
the audience (Who has that function in A Midsummer Night's Dream)
• Mixing of genres in Shakespeare
• Many people consider the Pyramus and Thybes scene in Shakespeare as the funniest

Pre-Shakespearean Comedies and Models for Shakespeare

• Shakespeare was influenced by Roman comedy and the plays of Terence and Plautus
• Their plots usually displayed the triumph of the young lovers, aided by servants, over
father-figures
• Sixteenth-century Italian comedy: commedia erudita (literary comedy played in
aristocratic courts and academies) and commedia dell'arte (the work of travelling playing
companies)
• The highly literary plays if John Lyly and George Peele
• Shakespeare's main rival was Marlowe-luckily, Marlowe had no interest in comedy
• Image source: https://images.app.goo.gl/PUR8APtjLHSkKif9

Shakespearean Comedies
• Shakespeare wrote most of his comedies in the 1590s
• Comedies were indecorous, which led to their being frowned upon
• Shakespearean comedies also included clowns-the audience expected crowns and
songs:
o The servant, based on the commedia dell'arte
o The country clown, an English creation (grave-digger in Hamlet, old man in Macbeth,
etc.)
• They are characterized by plays within plays (the-Mechanicals' performance of Pyramus
and Thybes)
• What do Shakespeare's comedies have in common?
• They all end in marriage →Hence Emma Smith's podcast

Shakespeare’s comedies:
All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
Comedy of Errors
Love's Labour's Lost
Measure for Measure
Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
Taming of the Shrew
Tempest
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter's Tale

Characteristics of Shakespearean Comedies

Here are some characteristics of Shakespeare's comedies:
• Young lovers who struggle to overcome problems
• Elements of separation and reunification
• An immense reliance on dramatic irony (we know more than the lovers)
• A clever servant
• Mistaken identities and disguise (pertinent to gender)
• Family problems that are solved in the end (restoration of order)
• Complex, interwoven plot-lines

Play's Context and Sources

• The play was written in 1595-1596, and its closest neighbors are Romeo and Juliet and
Richard
• Debate about the play: Was it written to celebrate the 1596 wedding of Thomas
Berkeley to Elizabeth Carey (the daughter of Lord Chamberlain, Shakespeare's patron)?
• Others suggest it was written to Queen Elizabeth to celebrate the feast of St. John
• Some would suggest that it was also inspired by
o Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD)) (especially the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe))
o Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale (for the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta)
o Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) Robin Goodfellow)
o Apuleius's The Golden Ass (written in 200 AD, translated in 1566) (for Bottom)
Image source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses#/media/File:HaydenWhite11.jpg

Performance
How did you find the performance of the play?
• In Shakespeare's time, A Midsummer Night's Dream was presented during the day on an
Elizabethan playhouse
• The balcony at the rear of the stage provided Titania with her bower
• The play had no scenery and a minimum of props
• The audience focused on the richly evocative language of the play

Emma Smith: Background

• A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in 1595-1596
• Its closest counterparts are Richard II and Romeo and Juliet
• The play has four plots:
1. Theseus and Hippolyta
2. Hermia and Lysander - Helena and Demetrius
3. Oberon and Titania
4. The practice play: Bottom etc.
What is the key question Emma Smith explores?
Who marries who?
What is her key argument?
The play is a satire of love and is more about sex.

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Key approaches/readings to a midsummer night’s dream

1- Structuralist Reading
• Doubles
• Repetitive rhetorical structure (linguistic doubling)
• Rhymes
• Plot → partner is nameless and faceless; they happen to be the nearest
• (Day (Athens) vs. (Night (the forest)
Image source: https://images.app.goo.gl/HXMeSSCe3kNmggKw9

2- Historical
• The Terrors of the Night by Thomas Nashe (1594)
→Do dreams come from the inside or outside? (Notion of agency in Macbeth)
• The play has a dream motif
• Dreams are the looking glass of the body
• What might have dreams meant to Shakespeare?
• Dreams stand for the theater and imagination
• At some point, all characters in the play fall asleep
• There is a possibility that the play is our dream

3- Gender and Sexuality

• All genders and sexes are confounded
• Marriage perceived as regulating sexual desire
• If the play is a sex play, how come it was considered suitable for children (as it had
fairies)?
• In 1999, "a Coventry teacher Stephen McGraw led his class of eleven-year-olds from the
theatre in Strafford-upon Avon, after the Fairy Queen Titania and Bottom, dressed as a donkey,
started writhing around on a bed.
• Mr. McGraw said: "The children were all embarrassed. What we saw was not what we
were expecting. It was sexually explicit."
• On the definition of love meaning both sex and romance
• The play is not about marriage: although it begins and ends with marriage, it presents
many sexual alternatives to marriage

What are the key themes to trace in the play (and other plays)?
• Sleep and Dreams
• Theater
• Marriage vs. Sexuality
• Mixture of Genres
• Doubling
• Gender and women
 • Metatheater and theatricality

Other themes:
• Appearance vs. Reality
• Marriage
• Order vs. Disorder
• Love

Discussing/reading the play

• The play take place in the woods which stands for dreams
• Athens stands for "reality"
• Each character sleeps at least once
• Another theme: magic or the supernatural

Analysis/ reading of the play:

List of characters:
- 3 lists: the Athenians, the fairies and the mechanicals
- Men are presented first (gender and sexuality)
- Opening versus are about the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta
- Opening of A MID SUMMER NIGHTS DREAM
- He has on his mind the wedding night, he’s counting the days
- She’s making him wait
- Moon, the night (link to the title)
- Even the play itself is a dream
-
- Hippolyta is a war prize
Main idea of the opening of the play:
- Establishes the dynamics between Theseus and Hippolyta
- It highlights the fact that the play is about sexual desire
- Shows who is in power in the relationship
- Then we have the 4 lovers showing on stage:
- We have Egeus and his daughter Hermia and Lysander and Demetrius
- Lysander loves Hermia and Hermia loves him but her father wants her to marry Demetrius
- These versus are about the father Egeus
-If she doesn’t marry Demetrius her father is allowed the kill her (Athenian, patriarchal law)
Theme here: gender
- Here we have an image, you’re kind of an art piece (as a form in wax), so he can either leave the
figure or disfigure it, your father has the right to kill you
- A form of wax is something that can be easily disposed of
- If she doesn’t marry Demetrius her father will kill her or will send her away so she can become a
nun. ( she will be deprived of sex and everything that comes with it if she becomes a nun)
- Syntax of the versus: inversion of subject verb
- Language of Lysander and Hermia here on stage: weather devices: cheek pale, roses fade so
fast, belike for want of rain(tears)-> metaphors, flowery language
- He is asking her to run away with him, they’re going to meet at night in the woods ( setting)
- Helena comes in
- Rhyme: we link rhyme to doubling, repetition
- The verses echo , doubling also at the level of lexic
- The lower class speak in prose and upper class speak in verse
- Quince and Bottom intend to perform a play, meta-theater: we have a play and within this play
we have 2 characters talking about performing another play
- Title of the new play: Pyramus (mix of genres)
- Some of the themes: - meta-theater, mixing of genres, marriage and sexuality, gender, doubling
- We have Puck and Fairy :
- Importance of the fairy speech: rhymes, language very nice, introduces to fairy queen, magical,
supernatural
- Main issue: Puck is confirming us about the issue between Oberon and Titania, this conflict is
about the stolen Indian boy, he’s a prince
- What’s does India tell us about the Renaissance period: colonies, expanding Europe
- They’re both fighting over that boy
- Puck is a clown he pays pranks on ladies
- He continues introducing himself
- Oberon and Titania echo each other, they’re presented as king and queen of fairies
- Doubling also takes place at the level of performance
- Doubling at the level of characters: 2 lovers
- Conversation between Oberon and Titania: argument between them, Titania was in love with
Theseus, and Oberon had a relationship with Hippolyta
- Oberon is complaining about his empty bed
- Titania is kind of forsaking his company and then they both discovers suddenly that they both
had affairs with the Theseus Hippolyta couple
- Then they talk about what they did to them

Week 4:

- Theseus is talking about his haunting plans and they’re returning the Athens, the world of
civilizations
- Three and three would be Theseus, Hippolyta and the 2 lovers
- “we” could refer to the audience
- Titania is talking about the Indian boy
- Oberon is asking Puck to bring the flower that will make anyone fall in love with who they see
next, kind of love at first sight but supernatural, sleepy eyes ( dreams)
- So he kind of wants to take his revenge on Titania by making her fall in love with a beast, or an
animal that he thinks it’s funny and he has the power to reverse it whenever he wants to with
another flower
- Oberon can’t be seen by others, he’s invisible the audience can see him on stage and in their
minds they would know that he’s invisible and this is why the lovers can’t see him
- Demetrius and Helena are on stage, Oberon is still on stage
- Helena is pursuing Demetrius and Demetrius is telling her to not pursue her and he’s following
Lysander and Hermia because they heard that they want to meet at the woods
- Oberon is also going to hear their conversation and he decides that whom he’s going to use the
potion on the couple
- We have Demetrius and Lysander and we also have Hermia and Helena, so Puck is going to get
things mixed up
- Oberon is going to put the juice on Titania’s eye and they both exit
- Titania enters
- Titania sleeps she’s the 1st person to go to sleep
- Oberon comes in and puts the juice on her eyes
- Lysander and Hermia enter
- They got lost in the woods
- “one heart, on bed, two bosoms, and one troth” part of the sexual dimension of the play
- The couple’s going to sleep
- Puck is going to enter
- He places the potion on Lysander’s eyes and when he sees Hermia laying away from him he
assumes that she hates him
- Helena and Demetrius come in
- Lysander wakes up and sees Helena she thinks she’s being mocked
- Everything is focused and Helena
- Then Hermia wakes up and she’s going to find that Lysander’s gone
- She’s waking up because of a dream, nightmare and then she exists
- Titania is still sleeping on stage
- Bottom, Quince and Snout are going to enter
- Bottom is really taking the role of a stage director. So to the mechanicals, Shakespeare is making
a statement about the theater
- They start to rehearse that they’re going to play
- Bottom is taking into consideration the audience
- Bottom has no clue about how theater works
- They realize that the play also has a lion
- Statement about illusion
- A play within a play
- Puck comes in as the actors are rehearsing, they are not professional
- Bottom has gained donkey ears (human combined with animal) got shocked, monstrous
- Robin goodfellow did this to him
- Titania’s going to wake up next and is going to see Bottom singing
- She falls in love with him
- Imagery: visual imagery (fairies, Titania)
- Titania’s tower should be located in the balcony, presented as flowery and green
- Puck describes Bottom as the stupidest
- Things didn’t happen as expected
- Demetrius comes is followed by Hermia the couples are mixed up
- Hermia wants to kick Demetrius away
 - Hermia thinks that Demetrius killed Lysander
- 2 motifs in Shakespeare: animal, garments (characterization, costumes ...)
- Demetrius goes to sleep
- Lysander and Helena come in
- Demetrius falls in love with Helena and wants to kiss her
- They keep going back and forth
- Eyes are so prominent in this play because of sleeping and the flower
- Oberon begins to blame Puck
- Mistaken identities: key theme
- Lysander is looking for Demetrius
- Demetrius comes in
- Mechanicals are rehearsing and Bottom has left
- Quince and Bottom comes in together
- Puck is invisible to the characters
- Lysander comes in, Demetrius and Pucks comes in
- Lysander and Demetrius falls asleep
- Helena comes in and then she sleeps she says that when you sleep you forget you sorrows
- Hermia enters and sleeps

Act 4:

- Bottom is being surrounded by all of Titania’s fairies

- He’s living like a dream and giving them orders
- He’s making the best of this situation
- Titania and Bottom are going to sleep
- Puck and Oberon come in
- Main themes here: dreams, gender,
- He took the child
- The man is being given power
- Titania’s going to wake up
- She thinks that all that she went through is a dream
- Reference to sleeping, dreams
- Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus present Athenians and they’re entering the world of the forest
- Theseus is reminding Egeus that he doesn’t approve Lysander and that Hermia should either
submit his will of marrying Demetrius, die or being committed to the life of a nun
- He ask about how they all sleep next to each other
- Simile: Demetrius is saying that he no longer care about Hermia and that he loves Helena
- We’re going to have 3 weddings instead of 1
- 3 and 3 (me and the other couples)

Week 5:
PLAY STARTED IN ATHENS THEN MOVED TO THE FOREST, CHAOS THEN BACK TO ATHENS
-bottom's speech is in prose to distinguish them from the upper class/ here we have figures of
speech bottom is mixing things up he's so shaken from his dream, play on words "man is but in
ass", "a dream that had no bottom", bottom has had this dream and has woken it is going to be
transformed to a play, an art. this a statement about theater; theater is like a dream, fictional
moment bottom exist
- We have the mechanicals now
- Silly statement, bottom comes in and tells them to go and play the play
- Theseus seems to be comparing 3 categories of people: the lunatic, the lover and the poet. all
of them have an excess of imagination: the lunatic sees more devils, the lover sees beauty in
everything because he is in love, the poet here is referring to the playwright, losing imagination
turns things unknown into shapes and gives them a local habitation in the name
- This could be read as one of the metatheatrical moment of the play
- Theseus says that the lovers are coming in, they're full of joy
- The mechanicals are described as hard-handed men that work . they never hard to work their
brains
- In quince's speech we do not have stage directions but in Lysanders doesn't really know where
to stop and how to do this
- Lysander's speaking in prose
- 2 comments on quince's speech -> implied stage directions because Lysander and Hippolyta’s
speech give a comment on how to act
- he's introducing the characters, 9quince) it breaks the notion of reality in theater
-bottom's turn: he's speaking in verse. It allows the characters in the play to be what they're not
it's kind of promoted in the way of class
-snug's speech: he's self-centering himself and not la lion and you Theseus saying a very gentle
beat and not of a good conscience
- So here you can see the mocking comments on the play. It's like the man are making fun of the
play
-they're kind of breaking the illusion of reality showing that the play is only a play
- Audiences reactions to the play: this is a play within a play. Then they get to the end of the play
- It's a comment of the play very metatheatrical
- Theseus is announcing the epilogue. He's rushing to bed themes: lust and sleep. He's telling
them to go to sleep. "we" could be the audience the bigger audience watching the play . There's
a reference to the play within the play and the play itself
- Oberon and Titania: they're also sending the other people to sleep
- Puck in the epilogue is also trying to apologize to the audience purpose: so that if the
audiences didn't like the play they would still come back and watch them
- They kind of appeal to the audience to come another time
- Puck refers to the play as a dream. it is important because it's one of the themes
- The play itself is a dream, they are the product of imaginations
- A comedy ends happily
Remark: comedies usually end on a lighter and happier tone like here all the couples made up at
the end

Introducing tragedies
• The Greeks invented tragedies
• Shakespeare was more influenced by roman tragedies not greek tragedies
• Most famous line to be or not be by hamlet in the hamlet play
• Shakespeare was influenced by Marlow’s tragedy
• Sleep is a main theme in Shakespeare

PowerPoint introducing Shakespeare’s tragedies

Shakespeare and Aristotle
Who invented tragedy?
"Now, according to our definition, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and
whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A
whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not
itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be.
An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by
necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as
some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at
haphazard, but conform to these principles."-Aristotle, Poetics, ch. VII

Aristotle's Caveats in Reading Shakespeare

Tragedy according to Aristotle involves:
• A protagonist who is usually of royal or noble birth
• Which causes his downfall (failure, misery and, often, death at the hands of an
antagonist)

• Who has revealed a fatal flaw (a character defect) or " Hamartia"

• stirring up feelings of fear and pity in the audience (catharsis)
• BUT Aristotle was only describing tragedy, not saying what tragedy should be

However, Shakespeare and other European playwrights were more influenced by Seneca (a
Roman playwright of the first century BC) than by Classical Greek Drama and Aristotle.
→In this sense, Shakespeare's tragedies were a revival of Classical Roman Tragedy
→Shakespeare never read Aristotle

Shakespeare and Roman Drama (Seneca)

In Hamlet, Polonius states in Act 2 Scene 2:
"The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene in dividable, or
poem unlimited; Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light."-Hamlet (2.2.396-401)
→Shakespeare's models were Roman plays.
Seneca had a great influence on Elizabethan drama:
(1) Violent and sensational content (especially in revenge tragedy)
(2) The development of an elevated rhetoric

Seneca on the England Stage

A number of Seneca's tragedies were performed in England.
• Alexander Nowell's production of Seneca's Hippolytus at Westminster School (mid-1540s)
• Seneca's Troades was performed in Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge (1551-2) translation of
his
Seneca's works were translated toward the end of the 1550s
Thomas Newton's collection of (Seneca His Ten Tragedies was published in 1581.

Seneca's Influence and Revenge Tragedy/Play

What is the revenge tragedy?
A form of tragic drama in which someone (usually a hero or a villain) rights a wrong. (e.g.
Aeschylus's Oresteia)
What are the main traditions of the revenge tragedies?
(1) The French-Spanish tradition that focused on the theme of honor and the conflict between
love and duty (e.g. Racine and Corneille)
(2) The Senecan tragedy that greatly influenced drama between 1580 and 1630 whereby plays
were sensational and included vengeance and bloodstred

One of the earliest Senecan-type tragedies in England was Gorboduc (1516)

However, the most important revenge tragedy was Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
(1586) that included the basic elements of the genre
→Shakespeare was also influenced by Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
(1589 or 1590), another popular revenge tragedy
Image Source:
https://images.gp.goo.gl/8 w5UDT964vt856

Earliest Examples of Tragedy in England:

Gorboduc
Gorboduc (1562) by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton is usually considered as the earliest
English tragedy. It imitated classical style.
•Some would argue that is was preceded by Thomas Preston's King Cambyses (c. 1558-69). It
was more vernacular.
•Gorboduc was innovative in classical and non-classical ways.
→So, what was so important about Gorboduc?
• Its adherence to classical principles
• Its use of dumb shows (mime) before each act →Shakespeare used a dumb show in the
play within a play in Hamlet
• Its use of blank verse

Earliest Examples of Tragedy in England: Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy

What is the Spanish Tragedy and why is it so important?
• •The Spanish Tragedy (1586) was a sensational play that was very popular during the
Elizabethan era.
• It echoed Kyd's innovation in terms of technique.
• It greatly builds on Seneca but brings Christian ethics into play. It combined bloodshed
with heavily rhetorical language.
• It was popular and influential at the times.
• Shakespeare acted in the play.
• The play also influenced his later works.
• Shakespeare's first attempt at the revenge tragedy genre was Titus Andronicus (1594)

Characteristics of Revenge Plays/Tragedies

What are some characteristics of the revenge tragedy?
• A hero avenging a terrible deed -Macbeth
• Scenes of death and mutilation
• Insanity -Macbeth
• Sub-plays
• The violent death of the hero
• Long, reflective soliloquies
• Moralizing

Shakespeare's first attempt at the genre was Titus Andronicus (1594)-one of his most violent
plays.
→He also produced Hamlet (1604), which is considered to have raised the genre to its highest
levels

A List of Shakespeare’s Tragedies

• Antony and Cleopatra
• Macbeth
• Othello
• Romeo and Juliet
• Coriolanus
• Timon of Athens
• Cymbeline
• Titus Andronicus
• Hamlet
• Troilus and Cressida
• Julius Caesar
• King Lear

On the Garishness of the Revenge Play: Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus
Word on Shakespeare's Tragedies

TRAGEDY

I must have passions that must move the soul,

Make the heart heavy, and throb within the bosom,

 Extorting tears out of the strictest eyes,

To rack a thought and strain it to his form,

Until I rap the senses from their course,

This is my office.

Induction to A Warning for Fair Women (1596-1600)

On the Individual vs. the State and the Restoration of Order

Individual vs. State + Restoration of Order

• Elizabethan and Shakespearean tragedy would not emphasize the individual at the
expense of the state.

• One key feature or Elizabethan and Shakespearean tragedies is the restoration of

political order following the death or deaths of individuals

• Shakespeare was very experimental

Session 6:

INTRODUCING MACBETH:

Smith’s approaches to Shakespeare:

- What is the question that Emma Smith attempts to answer in her podcast?
- What are Emma Smith’s approaches to reading Macbeth?
- What are the implications of her question?

Question 1: what makes the things that happen, happen?

Implications: the question of agency is also a question of responsibility

Key approaches/ reading to Macbeth:

Why do things that happen, happen?
- Historical approach
- Genre criticism
- Audience reception
- Performance studies
- Theatrical reading

➔ 1)Historical approach:
- King James , Shakespeare’s new patron had an interest in witches
- The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is a book by Robert Burton that compiles information about
melancholy
- He explores whether the causes are supernatural or natural
 - He ponders on the nature of spirits or devils
- Is it God, Devil, Magicians? Is it nature? Is it passions>
- Melancholy is caused by the love of learning and the misery of scholars
- Burton like Shakespeare sees a range of different causes:
1. The melancholic person himself
2. Other people
3. Supernatural/ magical world( witches)

➔ 2)Genre criticism:
- History: the downfall of a king is part of continuity and progress
- Tragedy: in tragedy. It is an end. Once the king is down everything is over
- Macbeth highlights the inevitable change of rule in society
- Macbeth takes power from a weakened warlord who has power taken away from him
- Genre: detective story -> who did it?
- The play also has characteristics of the domestic tragedy (somebody in the family)

Why do things that happen, happen?

Does Macbeth willingly or unwillingly direct the action?
- Do others influence him?
- Is he puppeted by spirits?
And the question of agency entails the question of responsibility: who is to blame?
- The tendency is to blame Lady Macbeth

What about Lady Macbeth?

- Lady Macbeth takes over Macbeth and makes him act

- She makes her husband go through an unwilling act
- She is a powerful female character

Audiences vs. Witches/Action:

- Who knows more? Did the witches know something we already knew?
- The witches are interposed in a scene of human action
- The public loves the witches
- The witches have limited powers and a limited amount of influence
- Shakespeare does not suggest they are active agents but passive predictors
- The witches are part of Macbeth; they tell us what Macbeth wants like lago is part of Orthello
and Laertes is part of Hamlet
- The witches could be Macbeth’s internal voice

➔ 3)Audience reception:
- How were plays received by the audience?
- The visit of Simon Forman to the Globe in 1611( his diary of watching plays at the Globe)
- Forman wrote: Macbeth is responsible for killing Duncan. Lady Macbeth too
- There is confusion about the response to the play; there is confusion about agency; after all,
they are a couple
- The play encourages to think of Macbeth would not have done it had Lady Macbeth not
encouraged him

Counter- argument:
- Her collapse removes the question of her agency
- She is not unfaithful: she is not greedy

➔ 4)Theatrical approach:
- Questions of the theater are intrinsic to the play and the question of agency
- The play focuses on the theater as an epistemology
- Thinking about the stage
- What makes a play happen: Actor’s bodies? Words? Audience?

➔ 5)Performance:
Two films on Macbeth:
- A film by Welles in 1948
- A film by Polansky in 1978
- Welles cuts a scene -> movie witches make things happen
- In the theater, we know that it is not necessarily the witches who make things happen
- Polansky’s movie has so much violence and blood, recreating the mood in Macbeth

Themes in Macbeth:
- Kingship: who is the better king?
- Jealousy + ambition
- Revenge
- Gender
- Regret (after Lady Mb’s death)
- Melancholy (Lady Mb’s -> sleepwalking)
- Supernatural/ fate
- Madness
- Deceit
- Death
- War/ medieval times
- Violence
- Blood( motif)
- Divine right of kings
- Good and evil
- Agency
- Transfer
- Language

Reading the play:

 What is the link between Macbeth and Richard II
Dramatis personae
Act 1 scene 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 -> equivocation
Act 2 scene 1.2,3,4
Act 3 scene 1,2, 3
Act 4 scene 1
Act 5 scene 2,3,5,6,7,8,9

Analysis of Macbeth:
Dramatis personae: we don’t really know the women’s first names
Opening of the play:
- Stage direction: thunder and lightning
- We have the 3 witches
- Macbeth’s name is mentioned before we actually meet him
- It foreshadows the supernatural elements in the play
- The language of the witches is unclear

- How do you compare the opening of Macbeth to the opening of A Midsummer night’s dream?

➔ A midsummer night’s dream begins in the world of civilization in Athens whereas Macbeth
begins in the world of supernatural, of chaos
- In act 1 scene 2: the king comes in. we have Duncan, the king Malcom, Donald-Bain, Lennox,
with Attendants, meeting a bleeding captain
- Duncan is the king of Scotland.
- Kings are important in Shakespeare because they are his main audience and kingship is one of
the main issues in his plays because during Shakespeare’s times, the king was thought to be
representative of God on earth, so in a way he was appointed by God and the killing of a king
was one of the greatest crimes a person could commit
- One word that occurs in the witches speech is the word “war”, so they’re kind of describing the
war
- We’re going to hear about Macbeth before we meet him, we already know that he is brave and
the captain also ends that he is brave
- The scene is very violent
- “brandished steel” stands for Macbeth’s sword which is smoked with bloody execution
- Because Macbeth killed many people and blood Is hot, his sword started smoking
- So his sword was smoking with blood
- Then he began carving out is passage by the fact that faced the slave so there’s the enemy
- The slaves head was detached from his body
- So Macbeth slaughtered his enemy
- How did Macbeth and Banquo react to the attack? They doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe
- We have a simile here, compared to cannons overcharged with double cracks
- Ross and angus come in
- The king of Cawdor is Macbeth. They’re trying to say that Macbeth fought so well and he won
- We also learn that Macbeth has killed the king of Cawdor and then we’re going to see how
Macbeth himself got the title and became the king
- At the end we were told that he has lost, Noble Macbeth has won ->paradox, language is very
ambiguous
- The three witches enter
- The sailor’s wife had chestnuts and one of the witches asked her for some but she didn’t give
her so she decided to punish her husband
- Her husband was singing to Aleppo in the middle east
- They sent him a storm, his bark shall be tempest tossed
- That shows that the agency of the witches is limited
- Then we hear a drum on stage
- Macbeth and Banquo enter
- So foul and fair a day I have not seen -> echoes the language of the witches
- Macbeth is going to describe the witches
- The witches had beards. Theme : gender
- Paradox: that look not like the inhabitants of the earth
- Thane of Glamis is Macbeth’s title
- Thane of Cawdor is the title that Macbeth is going to acquire
- This is Banquo addressing the witches
- Here Macbeth is being a little bit awkward
- The witches vanish, they’re out
- Macbeth and Banquo begin to talk
- The witches disappear, they kind of altered their prophecies to Macbeth and then they’re gone
- Ross and Angus enter
- They’re telling him what happened with the Norwegians and what the king did
- Macbeth’s title is going to be Thane of Glamis and the witches told him you’re going to be Thane
of Cawdor and then Ross comes in and tells him the king has asked me to call you king of
Cawdor
- The king of Cawdor has betrayed the king and now his title has been ripped away from him
- Macbeth hear speaks in an aside, only the audience can hear him
- Banquo and Macbeth started to believe to prophecies of the witches
- Another aside by Macbeth which is little like a soliloquy
- He’s confused
- If it’s really good why do I feel so anxious about what they told me
- And then he ends with another paradoxical statement: nothing is but what is not
- Chance# agency
- Macbeth I saying if I’m going to become a king by chance then I shouldn’t do anything about it
and I’m going to become king
- Then they hear that the king of Cawdor has confessed his dreams and died
- Here we have Duncan the king and Macbeth
- This exchange is very important because it kind of reveals about how Macbeth feels about the
king, about Duncan
- Macbeth respects Duncan as a king
- Malcom is going to become the prince of Cumberland
- Another aside by Macbeth
- This passage has images of disassociations
- He’s asking the start to disassociate themselves from fires so that their light does not see their
black deep desires
- He also wants the eye to not look at the hand so that the eye does not see what the hand is
about to do
- He started thinking about killing the king

Scene 5:
- We have Lady Macbeth
- She finishes the letter and we can hear her speaking
- She’s afraid that he won’t kill the king because he’s too kind. Theme: agency( he will not do it, I
will make him do it), gender
- Golden round = crown
- She’s going to pour her spirits in his ear (theme of agency)
- She will be doing the convincing: I need to do things to help you get your crown you have been
promised
- Lady Macbeth calls on the spirits
- She’s calling for her to be like a man (gender)
- She’s calling the spirits to fill her with cruelty
- Images of blood along with Macbeth’s sm
- smoking sword
- I want to dissociate the effect of what I’m going to do from the action
- Gal = poison
- She’s calling on the knife so that her knife does not see the wound it makes (dissociation)

Session 7:
Theme: equivocation of language: the witches are women with beards and they speak in a
mysterious language
Theme: agency: why do the things that happen in Macbeth happen, happen, is it because of the
witches, is it because of Macbeth himself etc…
- The play opens with the news of Macbeth’s courage of his violence on the battlefield, we see
his sword with blood
- We see how the king decides to honor him and to stay at his house and he also grants him the
title of thane of Cawdor

Act 1 scene 6:
- In this scene we have the king coming in
- Duncan is going to visit Macbeth
- He describes the castle (setting)
- Lady Macbeth enters
- Duncan praises her for hospitality (imp theme during the renaissance)
- This scene has some kind of irony because she’s going to plan his murder
- Act 1 scene 7
- we have people of lower classes servants and Macbeth
- he’s talking about assassination and says if he’s going to do it he’s going to do it quickly
- he’s hoping that even if he kills Duncan, there aren’t to be any consequences
- he’s talking about sometimes when you commit a horrible act it’s going to haunt you
- he’s talking about justice
- he’s counting the reasons why he shouldn’t kill Duncan
- ambitious is the only thing guiding him to commit his murder
- lady Macbeth comes in
- she’s accusing her husband of being a coward
- she tests him
- I would kill my newborn child If I said I would she’s saying that
- Sleep common theme between the 2plays
- Being asleep is being half dead
- He’s suggesting that because she’s so tough she should not bring children
- We see the king as honest and generous
- Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are plotting to kill the king and he’s giving them a diamond
- Macbeth is alone on stage now
- He starts imagining a dagger
Act 2 scene 1
- He began hallucination
- His eyes are not really connected to rest of his body
- Theme of sleep
- The bell rings it indicates the time to kill Duncan
- Act 2 scene 2
- Lady Macbeth comes in
- The man crying has made her courageous
(gender
- Macbeth comes in with 2 bloody daggers, he killed the king
- An owl shrieks it brings bad luck it is symbolic
- Why did Lady Macbeth not do it? The king looks like her father she couldn’t do it
- She’s telling him to forget about what he did
- He’s telling her what’s going on in his mind now, he’s not going be able to sleep
- She’s comforting him in a way
- She’s telling him to stop thinking about it
- He tells her that he’s afraid to think about what he has done
- Her reaction is smart and he’s very emotional
- She’s going to lose it in the end
- Overstatement: with all great Neptune’s ocean wash his blood -> clean your hands from this
murder, Macbeth doesn’t believe this
- Macbeth is feeling bad, guilt, remorse
- They hear knocking the porter comes in
- He speaks in prose
- He’s going to describe unnatural scenes
 - Nature also reacts to a king’s murder
- MACDUFF AND LENNOX COMES IN
- Macbeth enters the porter leaves
- They ask him if Duncan woke up he tells them not yet
- The nature went to chaos
- Macduff has discovered the dead body of the king
- Temple, the Lord, the building, sacrament religious
- The killing of the king is something huge
- Lady Macbeth comes in
- Macduff replies by all gentle lady , irony
- Macbeth is left alone
- He’s wishing that he has died
- They’re trying to find who has done this murder
- The two guards are being blamed
- Macbeth is lamenting Duncan
- Blood imagery
- Here we have a conversation between Ross and an old man
- - unnatural events, chaos, God is angry
- Act 3 scene 1:
- Banquo is going back to the witches prophecy
- You have a theory but it has no basis
- He’s crowned king now
- He’s doubting Banquo
- He’s afraid of him because of the prophecy of the witches
- He’s putting the blame on the witches
- He’s obsessing about Banquo’s children becoming kings after his death

Session 8:

Act 3 scene 1:

- Animal and nature imagery (many names for dogs)

- Macbeth is meeting with murderers
- He’s insulting them
- He’s giving them a target
- He’s planning to kill Banquo
- They have in common other friends he and Banquo, they’ll be betrayed if they know that he will
kill him
- Macbeth talks about Fiance, he’s planning to kill him too, Banquo’s children
Act 3 scene 2:
- We have Lady Macbeth and a servant
- Her joy is incomplete
- They dwell in doubtful joy
- Remorse
 - Enter Macbeth
- Feeling of guilt
- Themes of death, violence, sleep he compares death to sleep a lot
- Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are the ones suffering
- Images of dissociations
- Macbeth did murder a king which makes heaven suffering (king representative of God)
- The face should not match what the heart is feeling
- He’s obsessing about the thrown the hair of the king
- Apostrophe: talking to the night to something which is not present
- he asks the night to scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day (the sun) , personification, metaphor
- he’s asking the night to not allow the sun to come up
- he doesn’t want the morning to come
- we have a reference to his bond with Banquo
- he’s commenting on the tension between light and darkness
- symbolism of the night: chaos, murder happen in the night
- 1st crime killing Duncan 2nd crime killing Banquo

Session 9: (just watched scenes from the plays)