What is your personal response to the literature you have studied? In your
answer you must explore the links between the poetry and the
Shakespeare text you have studied.
Linking the poems to Macbeth
Introduction
- explain in the very broadest terms that there is some common
ground between Macbeth and the poems that we have studied. All
three texts explore the idea of love and the dynamics of a
relationship. While Macbeth is not simply a play about a relationship,
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are clearly at the heart of the play and it
is crucial to understand this relationship if we are to understand the
play as a whole.
What is similar?
All text explore the darker side of love.
- ‘Valentine’ attempts to offer a truthful representation of love. To be
truthful about love is to acknowledge the bitterness and insecurity at
love’s heart. Love can be ‘Lethal’.
- Macbeth explores the way in which love can poison minds, distort
perceptions and blind us from the truth. There is a sense that this
love too is ‘lethal’.
- In ‘A Woman to Her Lover’, Walsh explores the different roles a
woman can play in a relationship. Most of the accepted roles are
distasteful and unattractive in her eyes. The only thing that is
acceptable to her is a love where she is a partner, a friend and a
comrade. Even in this love, however, there is a recognition that they
will know the ‘purity and height’ of not just ‘joy’ but also ‘sorrow’.
All three texts are, at times, positive about love.
- In Macbeth there is genuine warmth and affection. Macbeth respects
his wife and treats her as his equal (or even looks up to her).
What evidence can you find in the play to suggest that the relationship
between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth is very similar to the ideal
relationship that Walsh identifies. Is Lady Macbeth his ‘comrade, friend
and mate’? Is there love ‘co-equal’? Do they ‘together…know the purity
and height / of passion, and of joy and sorrow’?
- ‘Valentine’ allows at least for ‘the promise of light’.
- ‘A Woman to Her Lover’, enthuses about a ‘co-equal love’ which will
make ‘the stars to laugh with joy’
The texts explore the ways in which a relationship can become a
battle of wills. One person attempts to assert authority and
control.
- ‘A Woman to Her Lover’ Walsh the lover refuses the attempts ‘to
bend me to your will’.
Does Lady Macbeth try to ‘bend’ Macbeth to her will?
Does Lady Macbeth refuse to bend to his will?
Does Macbeth try to bend Lady Macbeth to his will?
Is it true to suggest that Lady Macbeth has already won the battle to
assert herself. Would you agree that she is not his ‘bondslave’ and not his
‘servant’. It certainly seems that she would not argue that she is ‘wearing
out my life / in drudgery and silence’.
-
Do you think that some of the violent undertones in ‘Valentine’
suggest that the love here a struggle too? In what ways is it ‘fierce’
and ‘lethal’.
The lovers in all three texts be brutal and blunt with each other.
‘Valentine’ is full of hesitations and pauses. There is no fluency or
confidence in addressing the loved one. The speaker breaks off to
defend herself by suggesting ‘I am trying to be truthful.’ ‘Here’ and
‘Take It’ form short, blunt and abrupt sentences.
- In ‘A Woman to Her Lover’, Walsh insists that if she is treated as a
doll to dress and sit for feeble worship’ …..’O fool, I refuse you.’
Christina Walsh’s tone here is very dismissive. Do you think there is any
evidence that Lady Macbeth treats Macbeth as if he were a ‘fool’?
-
It is also interesting to compare the different ways in which the texts
reflect on love’s ability to last.
- In ‘‘Valentine’’, there is something ominous about the lines:
‘possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.’
In what ways does the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
testify to the fact that love does not last forever? They are only
‘possessive and faithful’ for as long as they are.
- By contrast, ‘‘A Woman to Her Lover’’ seems to have total confidence
that if the love is ‘co-equal’ it can last throughout life and beyond, ‘until
we reach the very heart of god’.