The Tragedy of Macbeth
Act I Notes
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Tips for Struggling Readers
 Retell each scene. Make sure your summaries include the main events and
characters. Events should be presented in chronological order.
 For help, read Shakespeare’s English on pages 399-402.
 Use the words in the sentence to guess at the meanings of any unknown words.
You can always check your guess with the dictionary.
 Make sure you can answer the questions on page 318.
 To help you understand the meaning of the archaic language used in the
passage 89-97, make a chart listing each archaic word and its modern
translation. See the following chart for an example:
Advanced Learners
 As we read the play, compare it to other plays, stories, or movies in which
ambition leads a character astray. Consider the following:
 the nature of the ambition
 the actions taken by the character to satisfy this ambition
 the influence of other characters
 the outcome
 the underlying theme
Elements of Literature—Imagery
 Blood is mentioned more than one hundred times in the play. As we read, think
about its significance as an image, and consider whether it has different
meanings as different points in the drama.
Elements of Literature—Paradox
 As you have learned, a paradox is an apparent contradiction that on closer
inspection is actually true. How does the paradox relate to the witches’
statement “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”? (lines 27-28).
 Prophecies from Greek mythology were often cloaked in paradox in order to
subtly foreshadow dramatic events in the story. The witches’ puzzling paradoxes
on lines 65-67 come out of a long soothsaying tradition. How could these
paradoxes be true?
Historical Connections—Witchcraft
 In the seventeenth century, many European Christians believed in witchcraft.
James I of England became convinced of the existence of witches when the
allege North Berwick witches claimed responsibility for a storm that nearly sank
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his honeymoon ship. He executed hundreds of accused witches in his native
Scotland for actions similar to those described by the witches in Act I, Scene 3.
According to superstition, the body parts of people who had suffered violent
deaths were very powerful in working dark magic. In this case, in Act I, Scene 3,
the ship’s pilot died when he was “wracked,” or shipwrecked, on his way home.
In his book Daemonologie, published in 1597, James I asserts that witches are
“agents of the devil.” Here, on line 108, Banquo echoes James’s belief.
Shakespeare was writing about witches for an audience obsessed by witchcraft.
People of the time believed that witches were linked to the devil, and they preyed
not only on people’s souls but also on dead bodies not buried in consecrated
ground. Today, certain cultures still believe in beings that use supernatural
powers for wicked ends. In 1957, during a virus epidemic in Alaska, the
authorities had a difficult time preventing an Eskimo community from destroying
the “witches” they held responsible.
Reading Skills and Strategies—Connecting with the Text
 Lines 19-25 introduce the theme of sleeplessness in the play. What can cause
sleeplessness?
Motifs of the Play
 Here they are:
 blood
 clothing
 light and darkness
 sickness and health
 unnatural events that mirror human evil
Critical Comment—Macbeth’s Temptation
 Alfred Harbage of Harvard University comments on the weird sisters: “In the
play, they are Elizabethan witches, their prescriptive powers subtly curtailed; they
predict, abet, and symbolize damnation but do not determine it. Any sense that
Macbeth is a helpless victim, his crime predestined, his will bound, is canceled as
the play proceeds. We may seem to see in the encounter on the heath the very
inception of his lethal designed, but we should ask with Banquo,
Good Sir, why do you start and seem to fear
Things that sound so fair?
Nothing in the witches’ prophecies would have suggested to an untainted mind
that to ‘be king hereafter’ meant to be a murderer first.” Do you agree with this
statement? Was Macbeth entertaining treasonous thoughts before he saw the
witches?
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