Critical Notes on Macbeth

Ч sleep: most vulnerable, innocent and yet prone to nightmare and hidden desires and fears; the dark, unconscious, unknown, uncontrolled and yet necessary realm of experience

Ч struggle between conscious and unconscious; controlled and uncontrolled behavior

Ч equivocation--the porter; fair is foul; confusion; dreams equivocate; ghosts; witches; prophcies; bubbles in the earth; equivocation of the fiend V.vi. 43

Ч tyranny and tyrannicide...problem of evil; integrity, saving faith; mistrust--Noriega, Cieaucescu

Ч nature, kindness, growth, fertility, chain of generations, love, beauty vs. unnatural, monstruousity

Ч as much of heaven as of hell--anti atheism V.i. 41: "What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to accompt." didacticism; contra tamburlaine and mach.; cf. Faustus

Ч extremes of sanctity and unholiness; dantesque; manifestation of god's order in world

Ч Closeness to PL: Witches as serpent; AE in Garden; temptation, evil, guilt; Man and Women; milton planned tyrannicide story

Ч rashness and hesitation; contrast to Hamlet

Ч doubling: Macduff and Macbeth; two ladies; Banquo and Duncan;

Ч blood and blood--spilling of blood; bloodiness of the play and importance of blood as the continuity dynasty

Ч Cleanth Brooks

Ч apply New Crit--study of metaphysical use of metaphor-- to Sh.

Ч analysis of clothing imagery in one specific line--"daggers unmannnerly breech'd with gore--and throughout the play

Ч very concentrated and apparently incoherent metaphor that opens when unpacked, (esp. p. 210-11)

Ч symbol of babe--most powerful [prospero, lear, HIV]

Ч issue of fertility; growth; potential and future lineage; seed of Banquo--cf. babe Elizabeth in HVIII= tomorrow and tomorrow; the issue of futures; this is what M. learns is futile; his struggle doesn't give him tomorrow

Ч contrast HV's future; Macbeth not looking to the long term and neither is Henry

Ч Macbeth is trying to conquer the future--"war with the future"; found a dynasty; this is why he is so involved with LM

Ч If it were done when tis done

Ч wants to jump the life to come

Ч duties to Duncan are called "children"