How to Understand Macbeth Teacher Notes
Background
● Author - William Shakespeare
○ Born - April 1564 in Stratford Upon Avon
■ His father was a glover and also for a period of time the mayor of
Stratford
○ Died - 1616 in Stratford Upon Avon
○ Classically educated (like all of you, but he actually appreciated it, because it was
either learn to read or be a peasant)
○ Married Anne Hathaway when he was 18 and she was 26 on November 28, 1582.
Their daughter, Susanna, was born May 26, 1583. Later William and Anne had
twins, Hamnet and Judith, February 2, 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at
the age of eleven.
○ We don’t know anything about his life from 1586-1592. These are known as
Shakespeare’s ‘lost years.’
○ By the 1590’s Shakespeare was performing in plays, writing plays, and managing
an acting troupe.
○ His theater was called the Globe. Guess why.
○ He wrote 37 plays
■ 14 comedies
■ 11 histories
■ 12 tragedies
■ I added it. It makes 37. You don’t need to check me.
● History
○ Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in 1606 (probably).
○ Shakespeare's plot is only partly based on fact. Macbeth was a real eleventh
century Scottish king, but the historical Macbeth, who had a valid right to the
throne, reigned capably in Scotland from 1040 to 1057. He succeeded Duncan,
whom he had defeated in battle, but the real Duncan was a weak man, around
Macbeth's own age, not the respected elderly figure we meet in the play. In
reality, Macbeth was succeeded by his own stepson, not by Duncan's son,
Malcolm, who came to the throne later.
○ Macbeth takes place in Scotland. It was written while King James I was the king
of both Scotland and England. James was Scottish by descent.
■ A character in the play, Banquo, was a real person and was an ancestor of
James I.
○ Macbeth deals with several topics that were interesting to King James I.
■ Betrayal and Assassination
● James I was nearly assassinated in 1605 in what became known as
the Gunpowder Plot.
○ English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, decided that
James I had to go. They wanted a Catholic King (or Queen)
who would allow the English to be a Catholic nation again
○ The conspirators decided to blow up a part of Parliament
called the House of Lords. This was where the members of
the English aristocracy would meet, in a way very similar
to our Senate. During their first session of the year King
James would be in attendance. With all of the heads of state
dead, the conspirators would set James’ nine year old
daughter Elizabeth up as the new queen, and more than that
as a Catholic queen.
○ A man named Guy Fawkes was chosen to be in charge of a
great number of explosives that would be hidden in the
Parliament building.
○ Fortunately, authorities were tipped off about the plot
through an anonymous letter.
○ On November 4, 1605 authorities searched the House of
Lords and found Guy Fawkes guarding THIRTY-SIX
BARRELS of gunpowder. He was summarily arrested. All
of his conspiracy friends abandoned him.
■ They were caught anyway and were sentenced to be
hanged and then drawn and quartered.
○ The British still celebrate how this assassination plot was
stoped every year on ‘Bonfire Night’ also known as ‘Guy
Fawkes Day. They do this by building large bonfires and
burning Guy Fawkes in effigy. The real moral is, don’t
mess with their monarchy.
■ The Supernatural
● James I was deeply religious.
● The King James version of the Bible was commissioned by this
dude.
● He wrote a book on demonology - how to identify and destroy
demons and demonic activity
● He legally prosecuted and persecuted witchcraft (many of the
accused were innocent)
■ The nature of Kingship
● James I believed in the divine right of kings - the idea that God
himself chose who would or would not be king and that a king’s
power and authority came directly from God. Regicide (the murder
of a king) was not just a political crime, but was also a spiritual
one,
● Other historical things to keep in mind
○ Shakespeare’s England had recently undergone some serious changes.
■ King Henry VIII had instituted a massive and incredibly controversial
religious change in the country after he split from the Catholic church and
declared that all English peoples must stop being Catholic and become
Anglican (a church Henry made himself the head of rather than the pope).
■ After Henry VIII’s death his son Edward, a staunch Protestant (nonCatholic Christian) ruled for a short amount of time. After Edward’s death
his sister Mary, a staunch Catholic, ruled England. Mary declared that
Protestantism was illegal and that all English peoples should be Catholic.
Eventually, shortly before Shakespeare was born, Mary’s sister Elizabeth
deposed her, declared that all English peoples should be Protestant, and
proceeded to rule England for forty-five years.
■ This wasn’t just politics or a theological debate. Dissenters, both
Protestant and Catholic were imprisoned or even put to death for their
beliefs depending on who was in charge.
■ Elizabeth I offered England a great deal of stability, but there was always,
as an undercurrent, the threat for assassination, deposition, or civil war.
■ After Elizabeth I died she was succeeded by James I. His rule was also
relatively stable. However, his son, king Charles I was deposed and
beheaded by a group of Protestants called Puritans because they believed
that Charles I was too Catholic. This sparked what is now known as the
English Civil War, where men who wanted England to become a republic
fought with men who wanted to restore the monarchy. Eventually those in
favor of monarchy won and the institution was restored with King William
of Orange and his wife Queen Mary.
● This was all after Shakespeare was dead, but it’s interesting how
the events of Macbeth seem to foreshadow what was to come.
Language
● Believe it or not, the English that Shakespeare used is not ‘Old English.’ You should be
grateful. Real Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) looks like this: “Hwæt! We
Gardena in geardagum,/ þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,/ hu ða æþelingas ellen
fremedon,” which translates roughly to something like “Listen! The Spear-Danes in days
gone by/ And the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. (Beowulf citation
here) (Beowulf, 1-3)
● The English that Shakespeare used was also not Middle English like Chaucer’s. “Whan
that Aprille with his shoures soote/ The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,/ And
bathed every veyne in swich licour,/ Of which vertu engendred is the flour,” (Chaucer
citation here)
● The English that Shakespeare used to write and to speak was modern English - the same
version of the language that you and I speak with two small exceptions.
○ People who lived in Shakespeare’s time had a pronoun that we no longer use. A
pronoun is a word that we use to replace a noun. For example, instead of saying
“Jasper went to the store and Jasper bought a cake from the store,” we use
pronouns to simplify the language, saying “Jasper went to the store and he bought
a cake from it.
○ We divide pronouns into two categories with three subsections in each category.
The first category is singular pronouns. These pronouns replace nouns that refer
to one person, place, thing, or idea. The second category, perhaps unsurprisingly,
is plural pronouns - pronouns that replace nouns which refer to more than one
person, place, thing or idea.
○ Both categories contain the same subcategories. Pronouns are divided into three
persons. First person pronouns refer to the person speaking (I, me, my, myself,
we, us, ourselves). Second person pronouns refer to the person to whom one is
speaking (you, your, yourself, yourselves, y’all). Third person pronouns refer to a
person, place, or thing, about whom a person is speaking (he, she, it, his, hers, its,
they, them, theirs)
○ In English pronouns also have very specific jobs. A pronoun can only do one
thing in a sentence. We have subjective pronouns which can only be the subject
in a sentence. (I went to the store; You are my friend; He threw the ball.)
■ Subjective Pronouns
Singular
Plural
1st Person
I
We
2nd Person
You
You
3rd Person
He/She/It
They
○ We have objective pronouns which may only be used as the object of a sentence.
(Seth gave the gift to me; I would like to thank all of you; I respect him.)
■ Objective Pronouns
Singular
Plural
1st Person
Me
Us
2nd Person
You
You
3rd Person
Him/Her/It
Them
○ Possessive Pronouns which show that something belongs to someone (That is
mine; The house is yours; The gift is his.)
■
Singular
Plural
1st Person
My/ mine
Ours
2nd Person
Yours
Yours
3rd Person
His/Hers/Its
Thiers
○ There are many other kinds of pronouns, but this is enough to start with.
Shakespeare’s pronouns were exactly the same as ours with a small exception in
the 2nd person singular pronouns. English, like modern day Spanish used to have
a formal and informal second person singular pronoun. When people wanted to be
more formal they would use you and yours. When people wanted to be informal
they would use Thou, Thee, Thy, and Thine.
■
Subjective
Singular
Plural
1st Person
I
We
2nd Person Informal
Thou
You
2nd Person Formal
You
You
3rd Person
He/She/It
They
Objective
Singular
Plural
1st Person
Me
Us
2nd Person Informal
Thee
You
2nd Person Formal
You
You
3rd Person
Him/Her/It
Them
Possessive
Singular
Plural
1st Person
My/Mine
Ours
2nd Person Informal
Thy/Thine
Yours
2nd Person Formal
Yours
Yours
3rd Person
His/Hers/Its
Theirs
■ Subjective: Thou art a great wit. Objective: I give thee a cake. Possessive:
Thy cat just hissed at me. Thine art is skillful. (Note: Thy is used before
words that begin with consonants and thine is used before words that
begin with vowels).
● The other difference between Shakespearean English and ours is found in the verbs. A
verb is a word that describes an action or a state of being. Verbs can be a bit tricky to
master because we change them based on who is doing an action. The act of changing the
way a verb is spelled to show who is doing an action is called conjugation. Like with
pronouns, we conjugate verbs based on whether one person is doing an action or more
than one (singular and plural). Additionally, like pronouns, we conjugate verbs based on
whether they would fit with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pronouns.
● Let’s take an easy example - the verb To Run
○
○
Present Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Run
(We) Run
2nd Person
(You) Run
(You) Run
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Runs
(They) Run
Most English verbs are fairly simple to conjugate. We do, however, have some
verbs that are a bit more complicated. Look at the verb To Be.
○
Present Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Am
(We) Are
2nd Person
(You) Are
(You) Are
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Is
(They) Are
○ Verbs are also divided into tenses. They describe actions that happen in the past,
present, and future. Look at To Run again.
Present Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Run
(We) Run
2nd Person
(You) Run
(You) Run
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Runs
(They) Run
Past Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Ran
(We) Ran
2nd Person
(You) Ran
(You) Ran
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Ran
(They) Ran
Future Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Will Run
(We) Will Run
2nd Person
(You) Will Run
(You) Will Run
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Will Run
(They) Will Run
Present Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Am
(We) Are
2nd Person
(You) Are
(You) Are
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Is
(They) Are
Past Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Was
(We) Were
2nd Person
(You) Were
(You) Were
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Was
(They) Were
Future Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Will Be
(We) Will Be
2nd Person
(You) Will Be
(You) Will Be
3rd Person
(He/She/It) Will Be
(They) Will Be
○ And again with To Be
● Shakespeare’s verb conjugations were exactly the same as ours except for the second
person singular informal (2psi) conjugation and the third person singular (3ps)
conjugation. Rule of thumb - verb + (e)st = 2psi; verb + (e)th = 3ps.
○ To Run
Present Tense
Singular
Plural
1st Person
(I) Run
(We) Run
2nd Person Informal
(Thou) Runnest
(You) Run
2nd Person Formal
(You) Run
(You) Run
(He/She/It) Runneth
3rd Person
(They) Run
○ Several Verbs
Present
Tense
To Do
To Have
To Be
To
Drink
To Fight
To Love
Singular
1st (I)
Do
Dost
2nd
Informal
(Thou)
Have
Am
Drink
Fight
Love
Hast
Art
Drinkest
Fightest
Lovest
2nd
Formal
(You)
Do
Have
Are
Drink
Fight
Love
3rd
(He/She/
It)
Doth
Hath
Is
Drinketh
Fighteth
Loveth
Plural
Do
Have
Are
Drink
Fight
Love
Do
2nd
Informal
(You)
Have
Are
Drink
Fight
Love
2nd
Formal
(You)
Do
Have
Are
Drink
Fight
Love
3rd
(They)
Do
Have
Are
Drink
Fight
Love
1st (We)
● That’s it. That’s literally the scary part. The only other thing that makes Shakespeare
difficult to read is that he uses some words we don’t use any more - which is totally fair
since he lived more than five hundred years ago. And I guess the other thing that makes
Shakespeare difficult is that he was perhaps the most genius person in the history of the
English language at playing with the language and making it do crazy things, but we’ll
set that aside for now.
○ Turn it Upside Down
○
○
○
○
○
■ Use a double negative to indicate a positive, such as “not unkindly” for
“nice,” “not unlovely” for “pretty,” or “not ill-formed” for “shapely.”
Do be do be do
■ Add some form of the verb “to do” to the front of an action verb to give it
a slight emphasis. “He did fight well this day.” “She does speak highly of
the boot merchant.”
Shorten “it”
■ Use contractions with the pronoun “it” and the verb “to be.” ‘Tis, ‘Twas,
‘Twould, ‘Twasn’t, Is’t? Avoid all other contractions.
Not!
■ Put “not” after an action verb to negate it. “I know not where I left my
purse.” “He ate not at lunch today.” “I care not for mushrooms.” “She
fought not this day.”
Double it
■ Double comparisons add a little flavor to life, and can be either positive or
negative. “That was the most unseemliest remark.” “A more lovelier dress
I never did see.”
Words to Replace
■ Okay
● We use “okay” to indicate agreement, to indicate a state of
wellness, or to indicate acceptance or approval. Below is a
delightful array of words used in this period to convey these
meanings.
●
Instead of...
Try...
“Okay” when asked if you will
do something.
Willingly, Gladly, Certainly,
Right willingly, For certes, By
your command, Aye
Are you okay? I’m not okay.
Are you well? Art thou well? I
am ill. I am unwell.
■ Hi/Bye
● Instead of “Hi!” or “Bye!” try Good morrow, Good day, Good
even, Good evening, I give you greetings, Fare you/thee well.
■ Pretty It Up
●
Replace…
With
Anything
Aught
Nothing
Naught
Here
Hither
There
Thither
Over there
Yon
Later
Anon
Maybe
Perchance, Perhaps
Lack
Dearth
Before
Ere
Please
Prithee, I pray thee
As you read, don't be afraid to look up words as you go. The edition we’re reading has a glossary
on the right side of every page.
Plot
Three witches tell the Scottish general Macbeth that he will be King of Scotland. Encouraged by
his wife, Macbeth kills the king, becomes the new king, and kills more people out of paranoia.
Civil war erupts to overthrow Macbeth, resulting in more death.
Tools
●
●
●
●
●
Understanding History
Kingship
Foul and Fair Tool
Fate versus Free Will
Appearance versus Reality
○ Equivocation