Notes- Act 2
Scene 1:
setting:
Fleance –
scene 2:
the murder plan:
scene 3:
porter –
Macduff –
Scene 4:
Fife -
Act 2: Vocabulary
http://www.shakespearehigh.com/classroom/guide/page3.shtml
Act 2
husbandry
summons
repose
largess
shut up
entreat
augment
palpable
stealthy
prate
possets
multitudinous
porter
carousing
anointed
countenance
scruples
predominance
benison
Vocabulary
_____ 1. augment
A. existing in great number
_____ 2. palpable
B. sly; furtive
_____ 3. stealthy
C. to make greater; enlarge
_____ 4. multitudinous
D. declared sacred
_____ 5. equivocate
E. tell falsehoods
_____ 6. anointed
F. superiority
_____ 7. predominate
G. capable of being touched or felt
1. The porter refers to a liar “who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not _____
to heaven.”
2. Banquo tells Macbeth he does not want to lose any of his honor “in seeking to _____ it…”
3. Macbeth says the hand that killed Duncan will never wash clean but “will rather / The _____
seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.”
4. Referring to the dagger he pictures in his mind, Macbeth says, “I see they yet, in form as
_____ / As this which I now draw.”
5. After learning that Duncan has been murdered, Ross wonders “Is’t night’s _____, or the day’s
shame, / That darkness does the face of earth entomb…”
6. Macbeth is said to walk with a “_____ pace” towards Duncan’s door.
7. Macduff compares King Duncan’s body to an “_____ temple” that was broken into and had
the life stolen from it.
Macbeth
Reading Log
Plot Summary
Scene 1
Scene 2
Quests, Preds, & Comms__
Macbeth
Reading Log
Plot Summary
Scene 3
Scene 4
Quests, Preds, & Comms__
Recognizing Personification
Endowing inanimate objects with human traits is called ___________________. In the hands of
a skillful writer, personification can be used to achieve humorous or startlingly dramatic effects.
In The Tragedy of Macbeth, Shakespeare uses personification to create a dark and foreboding
world.
…and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.
In this passage, murder is likened to a person who has been awakened by his watchdog and who
now moves like a ghost with a stealthy pace and a tyrant’s strides to his goal.
Explain what is being personified in each of these passages from The Tragedy of Macbeth, and
tell what effect is achieved by the personification.
1. “No o’er the one half-world / Nature seems dead…”
2. “…wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep…”
3. “Thou sure and firm-set earth, / Hear no my steps, which way they walk, for fear / Thy
very stones prate of my whereabout,…”
4. “I go, and it is done: the bell invites me.”
5. “Macbeth does murder sleep – the innocent sleep, / Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave
of care…”
6. “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”
7. “Most sacrilegiousmurder hath broke ope / the Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence /
The life o’ the building.”
8. “Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act, / Threatens his bloody stage.”
9. “By th’ clock ‘tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp…”