Macbeth

Macbeth
Duncan: king of Scotland

Malcolm: his elder son

Donaldbain: his younger son

Malcolm and Donaldbain escape

Macbeth: thane of Glamis, later thane of Cawdor and later king of Scotland

Seyton: Macbeth’s armour bearer

Captain: wounded in battle

Banquo: had the right to be king

Fleance: Banquo’s son

Macduff: thane of Fife

Ross, Lennox, Menteith, Angus, Cithnessare the other thanes

Graymalkin: first witch’s cat

Paddock: second witch’s toad

Third witch: spirit

It takes place in Scotland and England

• Act 1, scene 1

The witches get together upon the heath (desolated place) where nobody can see them, thunder and lightning are characteristics. Witches had to do with controversy and hell. They show they are not in one side because they say“When the battle’s lost and won”.

“Fair is foul and foul is fair” means that what is bad for us is good for the rest and what is good for the rest is bad for us.

• Act 2, scene 2

Captain is the brave sergeant who fought to keep Malcolm from being captured. For a while you couldn’t tell who would win at the battle. The armies were like two exhausted swimmers clinging to each other andstruggling in the water, unable to move (this is a similie, meaning that they are tired). The villainous rebel Macdonald (enemy) was supported by foot soldiers and horsemen from Ireland and the Hebrides, and Lady Luck was with him, smiling cruelly at his enemies as if she were his whore. But Luck and Macdonald together weren’t strong enough. Brave Macbeth, laughing at Luck, chopped his way through toMacdonald, who didn’t even have time to say good-bye or shake hands before Macbeth split him open from his navel to his jawbone and stuck his head on our castle walls.

Duncan says that Macbeth is a brave relative (cousin) and worthy gentleman. Captain thinks that success against Macdonald created new problems and that as soon as they sent those Irish soldiers running for cover, the Norwegian kingsaw his chance to attack them with fresh troops and shiny weapons.

Beginning of the 2nd world war, Macbeth and Banquo were very frightened, but they fought the new enemy with twice as much force as before (the enemy is the Norwagain king)

There is a conversation between Duncan (king of Scotland) and Ross (who comes from Fife). Leading an enormous army and assisted by that disloyal traitor, thethane of Cawdor, the king of Norway began a bloody battle. But outfitted in his battle-weathered armor, Macbeth met the Norwegian attacks shot for shot, as if he were the goddess of war’s husband. Finally he broke the enemy’s spirit, and we were victorious (said Ross). Now Sweno, the Norwegian king, wants a treaty.

Duncan designates Macbeth as the Thane of Cawdor.

• Act 1, scene 3Witches cannot kill but they have “powers”. The three witches met again. The second witch had been killing pigs and the first witch had met a fat woman (a sailor’s wife) who didn’t want to give her some chestnuts that the woman had. Her husband has sailed off to Aleppo as master of a ship called the Tiger. So she sail there in a kitchen strainer, turn herself into a tailless rat, and do things to him.The second and third witch’s offered her some wind to sail there. The first witch already has control of all the other winds, along with the ports from which they blow and every direction on the sailor’s compass in which they can go. She’ll drain the life out of him. He won’t catch a wink of sleep, either at night or during the day. He will live as a cursed man. For eighty-one weeks he will wasteaway in agony. Although she can’t make the ship disappear, she can still make his journey miserable because she has the thumb of a pilot who was drowned while trying to return home.

When Macbeth and Banquo are talking, they see the witches. Banquo is an eyewitness; he doesn’t believe that the witches are part of this planet although they are standing on Earth.

The witches can see...