Macbeth: Exploring the Role of the Witches and Revising Metre, Exams of Poetry

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Macbeth:

The Witches

Monday 1

st

November 2021

Learning purposes

• To revise our knowledge of metre and apply this to Macbeth
• To explore the role of the Witches in Macbeth
• To develop our extract analysis skills Recap of previous learning ➢ What characters can you remember from Macbeth last year? Why were they significant? ➢ What key themes can you remember from Macbeth? Future lessons ➢ Development of extract analysis skills ➢ Explore significant characters, themes, settings and events in the play.

Starter - Complete the plot summary

1. While returning from a battle victory, Macbeth, a powerful lord, meets three Witches who predict that he will become King of Scotland.
2. Macbeth tells his wife of the Witches' predictions and she encourages him to murder the current king, Duncan, who is staying with them as a guest.
3. After Macduff discovers the murder of Duncan, Duncan's sons flee the country, leaving the way clear for Macbeth to become king.
4. Banquo, Macbeth's best friend, becomes suspicious of what his friend has done so Macbeth has him murdered too.
5. Macbeth pays a second visit to the Witches and receives more predictions.
6. In England, Malcolm (Duncan's elder son) and his chief supporter, Macduff, plan to invade Scotland to win back the throne. An enraged Macbeth has Macduff's wife and children killed; Macduff swears revenge.
7. Lady Macbeth suffers from guilt for what she has done and eventually commits suicide.
8. Malcolm's invasion is successful and Macduff kills Macbeth. Malcolm becomes the new King of Scotland and the country counts the cost of Macbeth's short but bloody reign

Key word Equivocation (noun) The use of ambiguous or unclear language with the intention to deceive the listener or to avoid answering a question directly. It can lead to false conclusions being drawn. Equivocal (adj) The witches use of equivocal language…

Recap - metre In English verse and poetry, metre is a recurring rhythmic pattern of syllables in lines of a set length. What metres can you remember from either poetry or Shakespeare last year?

Metre - feet A foot is a pair of syllables. Iamb (Iambic): Unstressed + Stressed (da DUM) Trochee (Trochaic): Stressed + Unstressed (DUM da) Metre – length of line The length of lines—can also vary. The following are the types of meter and the line length that are relevant for Macbeth: Tetrameter : Four Feet Pentameter : Five Feet

Reading Macbeth

• Nobles tend to speak in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) which shows their status.
• Lower status characters tend to speak in prose. Visual clue: a long passage in prose is typically printed in your text like an ordinary paragraph with left and right justification, eg the Porter)
• The witches tend to speak in trochaic tetrameter which is very sing- songy.
• Often if something significant is going to happen/is happening, nobles may speak in prose and lower status characters may speak in blank verse.

Analysing structure ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (Act 1 Scene 3) The stresses can also highlight the key words in a line (foul, fair, day, have, seen) TASK : Using this quotation – Write a response analysing how the structure of the quotation is effective.

Character focus – The Witches What can you remember from last year about The Witches and their role in the play? Mind map your ideas.

The Witches

• The three witches’ prophecies help push Macbeth’s ambition over the edge , and convince him to murder Duncan in order to become King.
• The witches' knowledge of future events clearly indicates that they have supernatural powers , and they also clearly enjoy using those powers to cause havoc and mayhem among mankind.
• However, the witches never compel anyone to do anything. Instead, they tell half-truths (they use equivocal language) to lure men into giving into their own dark desires.
• It's left vague in Macbeth whether Macbeth would have become King of Scotland if he just sat back and did nothing. This vagueness seems to suggest that while the broad outlines of a person's fate might be predetermined, how the fate plays out is up to him.

Extract question (pages 6-7) Explore how Shakespeare presents the witches in the extract.

Answering the extract question How does Shakespeare present the witches here? TASK 1 : Write three topic sentences in response to the question. TASK 2: Now write down a quotation to support each topic sentence. TASK: 3: Now think how this presents the witches and try to apply subject terminology. Shakespeare presents the witches as being wild and unnatural creatures, deliberately attempting to highlight the stark difference between them and the noble characters of Macbeth and Banquo. ‘what are ‘what are these, so these, so wither’dwither’d and so wildand so wild…’…’ By using the pronoun ‘these’ Shakespeare strips the witches of their identities, dehumanising them further. Additionally, the intensifier ‘so’ before ‘withered’ and ‘wild’ exaggerates how strange they are.

Points to consider

• The witches use of equivocal language (‘lesser than Macbeth, and greater’).
• The witches use of trochaic tetrameter and their choral way of speaking.
• The witches’ ability to invoke Macbeth’s ambition, leading to Macbeth’s use of imperatives etc.
• The physical description that Banquo provides at the beginning of the extract (‘her choppy finger laying upon her skinny lips’, ‘you should be women and yet your beards forbid me…’)

Sentence starters Shakespeare constructs the Witches as prominent characters who fuel Macbeth’s ambitious nature. Shakespeare illuminates the Witches’ abnormality through his use of metre. Whereas the noble characters of Macbeth and Banquo speak in blank verse, the witches… Shakespeare utilises bizarre and unexpected imagery through his physical description of the Witches which highlights their strangeness to the reader.