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DramaMacbeth: Act Two – part 1

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Extension activities

Icons key: For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation

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Functional skills

Learning objectives

Analyse the development of the main characters

Analyse the development of the relationships between the main characters

Analyse the development of the main themes and ideas of the play

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Another central idea of the play is evil and its powerto corrupt. The crime that Macbeth commits in Act Two, Scene One is the ultimate evil: regicide.

Evil

It is left to the audience to decide whether the evil is precipitated by the prophecies of the witches, or if these simply act as catalysts to wake the evil that was already inside the couple.

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Evil

Do you think the couple are naturally evil or do you think that the witches encourage their dark side to emerge?

Re-read Macbeth’s ‘Is this a dagger?’ soliloquy inAct Two, Scene One. He is yet to commit a crime,

but his mind is already affected by thoughts of evil.

Once evil takes hold, there is no turning back for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. They commit further murders, including that of Macbeth’s best friend, Banquo, and Lady Macduff and her children. Eventually, the evil that they have done returns to haunt them, both literally, in the form of Banquo’s ghost, and metaphorically, in the blood that stains Lady Macbeth’s hands.

Who do you think is more evil – Macbeth or Lady Macbeth? Or are they equal partners in crime?

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Is this a dagger?

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Shakespeare devotes all of Act Two, Scenes Two and Three to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s responses to their crime and the reactions of the other characters to the murder of Duncan.

Look carefully at different ways in which Macbeth and Lady Macbeth respond to their crime. Are there any hints in their reactions about what might develop in the rest of the play?

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth react

At the end of Scene Three, Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, decide to flee Scotland as they fear

they will be blamed for their father’s murder. Why is it important for the plot that they leave at this point?

In Act Two, Scene Three, how do they behave once Duncan’s murder has been discovered by Macduff?

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Act Two, Scene Two, lines 1–13

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Act Two, Scene Two, lines 32–48

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Act Two, Scene Two, lines 57–68