Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Background and Important Terms

Macbeth and Shakespeare FactsShakespeare wrote 36 plays and 154 sonnets.

Shakespeare wrote to satisfy his patrons, not as a means of personal expression.

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays.

Macbeth is considered a play that brings “bad luck.”Macbeth is based on a real Scottish king and Shakespeare got the historical information from Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577).

Macbeth’s ContextRenaissance: 1485-1660; began in Italy

Renaissance means rebirth, as Europe was recovering from the Black Death and the Middle Ages.

During the Renaissance, people became curious about themselves and human nature and lost faith in the church.

People turned to Latin and Greek classics to discover new answers to life’s big questions, leading to an intellectual movement called humanism.

Macbeth’s Context In 1455, Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press.

Queen Elizabeth I greatly encouraged the creative arts, so a great deal of literature emerged and she inspired many writers.

Shakespeare wrote Macbeth during King James I’s reign, who was originally from Scotland.

During the Renaissance, women were not permitted to perform on stage, so boys or effeminate men played the female roles.

Macbeth = Tragedy Tragedy: a literary work depicting serious events in which the main character, who is often high-ranking and dignified, comes to an unhappy end

Tragic hero: protagonist of a tragedy who usually wins some self-knowledge and wisdom, even though he or she suffers defeat, possibly even death.

Tragic flaw: an error in judgment or character weakness which usually causes the tragic hero’s downfall

Macbeth Literary TermsParadox: an apparent contradiction that is actually true

Aside: private words that a character in a play speaks to the audience or to another character, which are not supposed to be overheard by others

Soliloquy: a long speech in which a character who is usually alone onstage expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings

Macbeth Literary Terms

Motif: a word, character, object, image, metaphor, or idea that recurs in a work or in several works

Iambic pentameter: a line of poetry made up of five iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Blank verse: poetry written in unrhyming iambic pentameter

Macbeth Characters

MacbethLady MacbethKing DuncanMacduffBanquoMalcolmDonalbainNumerous minor

characters (All are listed on page 301 in your textbooks)