Act 5 Journal
The play Macbeth by William Shakespeare is a violent thriller full of death and betrayal. In the play all of Scotland is resorting to death get what they want and the great chain of being was completely broken, then later restored. Act five brought everything to a conclusion and ended up to be a violent yet happy ending.
In act five of Macbeth the tempo of the play begins to quicken and the scenes because shorter and more fast paced. The audience also can predict a violent end and gets to see all the different elements of the story and the solutions to them. For example the audience gets to see Macduff and Malcolm planning a war, the witches and the prophecies and how they play out, lady Macbeth and the physiological torture
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she is going through and finally Macbeth and how everything has driven him mad also. Act five concludes all of the situations that happened during the play. Act five also make ironic connections to the beginning of the play. An example of this is Lady Macbeth is driven crazy from the guilt of the murders she helped commit and says “what, will these hands ne’er be clean” (5.1.40). Lady Macbeth is talking about the imaginary blood stain on her hands she got from murdering Duncan, the stains represent the guilt. The ironic connection that fits with this quote is when Lady Macbeth is telling Macbeth that it's okay if he kills Duncan and that great things will come if he does it, she says “A little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.85). This is ironic because Lady Macbeth ends up committing suicide because of the guilt even though she previously said that a little water will wash it away. Throughout the whole play the great change of being is being teared down and people who were originally at the bottom moved up to the top with unnatural reasons.
For example Macbeth becoming king one of the top rankings on the great chain of being even though he did not belong there. Also the witches who are usually at the bottom of the chain are talking to Macbeth the king and giving him advice. An outcome of the unnatural movement is the world going dark, and horses eating each other and overall the universe getting mad and Scotland becoming chaotic. Even if Macbeth wasn't crazy and made Scotland chaotic Scotland still wouldn't be a good place because the great chain of being was broken and that was not how God wanted it to be. In act five of the play the great chain of being gets restored to what it originally was. The real heir of the throne Malcolm becomes king. Malcolm says in the ending paragraph “the first that ever Scotland/in such an honoured named, what's more to do/which would be planted newly with time” (5.9.35-37). This meaning that Scotland will be given a new beginning in the new age, a better more improved beginning. Scotland can come out of the darkness and go back to the way it originally was since the order in the great change of being was …show more content…
restored. A literary theory for the play Macbeth is psychological.
Throughout the play almost every character starts going mad, some more then others but everyone is affected psychologically by the events in the play. For example everyone has a motive they are dwelling on, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's is power and their motive is so strong they are willing to kill the king, Macduff's motive is revenge on Macduff for killing his family, Malcolm's motive is taking back Scotland which is rightfully his and getting revenge on Macbeth for killing his father. Anyone who is dwelling on a motive is not completely sane. The events that happen in the play affect Lady Macbeth and Macbeth the most. Lady Macbeth affected so badly she ends up committing suicide and going crazy to a point where she starts sleep walking and talking about the blood on her hands from murdering Duncan. Macbeth ends up going so insane to the point where murder becomes an addiction and a way to solve his problems. Macbeth becomes so used to people dying that when his wife dies he feels numb and it doesn't have an effect like it would to the average
person.
The Dramatic Effect of Act 5 Scene 1 on the Play Macbeth In this scene the doctor and the gentlewoman wait for Lady Macbeth as it was reported to the doctor that she had been sleepwalking on previous occasions - "since her majesty returned from the field, I have seen her rise from her bed". It is reported by the gentlewoman that every time Lady Macbeth sleepwalks she writes something on paper and she had also seen Lady Macbeth continuously perform an action of washing her hands vigorously. Lady Macbeth enters holding a candle.
Macbeth turns on the King and becomes a very insane and disloyal man as the witches prophecies began to come true.
Macbeth begins on a bloody note: a battle rages from which Banquo and Macbeth survive bloodied, but heroes. They are the generals of Scotland; the country’s future is in their hands and in their blades. However, when one clutches once to such power, it is hard to let go. Macbeth cannot let go. Macbeth also ends on a bloody note: Macbeth’s head is cut off and presented to Malcolm, his replacement. Peace is restored through war; bloody injustice is righted finally with bloody justice. What falls between these two notes—the beginning and end of the tragedy—is a symphony of treachery, deceit, and murder. The images of nature gone awry spread all through the play—from the gardens that have turned to weeds to the horses that have turned to cannibalizing each other—for murder of one’s king is so unnatural that the entire landscape, all that is natural, is affected. Macbeth, by killing Duncan, is himself made an enemy of nature. Macbeth murders sleep, the ultimate embodiment of peace and nature, when he murders Duncan. However, the title character is not as evil as is first suggested; Macbeth is only led to his evil deeds by those who surround him. Macbeth’s only crime may be that he is weak minded and afraid. Macbeth was lured and cajoled into his mistakes by his wife and the weird sisters.
After Macbeth committed a dreadful crime at the start of the play, he realizes that by killing even more people he can get what he wants whenever he wants. Macbeth reaches a point where he is too busy fulfilling his own ambitions that he was not fulfilling his obligations as king. “Those he command move only in command, / Nothing in love…” (5.2.22-23). His obsession with power caused him to murder his good friend Banquo, and Banquo’s son. Macbeth’s out of control ambition has caused him to lose his emotion. He progressively sta...
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play centred around opposing forces trying to gain power in the succession for the throne of Scotland. Macbeth, in the beginning, is known to be a noble and strong willed man, who is ready to fight for his country. However, one may see that Macbeth has a darker side to him, he is power hungry and blood thirsty, and will not stop until he has secured his spot as King of Scotland. Though Macbeth may be a tyrant, he is very nave, gullible, and vulnerable.
`Act 1- The three weird witches meet and they are planning on when they are going to meet again to talk to Macbeth. In the next scene King Duncan talks to the injured captain about the battle against the invaders, who are under the command of Macdonwald. The captain tell King Duncan how he saved Malcolm and Macbeth was very violent and fought with great force. Then the Captain is taken away by the servants then Ross enters and he tells Duncan that Cawdor has been beaten and the Norway army retreated. Then King Duncan comes to the decision to kill Cawdor and then Macbeth will "become Cawdor". Then Duncan sends out Ross to go tell Macbeth about what had happened at this time. In scene three the witches approach Banquo and Macbeth when they were on their way to Forres. The witches inform Macbeth and Banquo about what had happened in the kings court and they tell him he is the Thane of Cawdor and Glamis and that Macbeth will eventually become king. Then Banquo is told riddles that his children will be royal and he will not. After the witches disappear then Ross and Angus come up to them and Ross informs Macbeth the news which he just heard. Then Macbeth contemplates whether he will have to spill blood to become king, then when he is done they all continue to Forres. Then Duncan finds out that Cawdor dies because his son killed him. Then Ross, Angus, Banquo and Macbeth arrive. Then Malcolm becomes the heir to Duncans throne and Macbeth has Duncan dine at his castle that night so he rides to tell his wife. When Macbeth gets home he tells his wife the news and she starts to plot the murder of Duncan and Macbeth fallows. Then Duncan and the Scottish lords arrive and they are tak...
When the play first opens we hear 3 strange witches standing in a field while it is thunder and lightening. They begin to chant spells and talk about their meeting with Macbeth as they vanish into thin air.
Macbeth started off as a noble, virtuous man, he was loyal to the king and was well respected by the other noblemen. The prophecies and hallucinations corrupted Macbeth’s intentions and as a result, Macbeth became power
Macbeth rejects conformation to traditional gender roles in its portrayal of Lady Macbeth’s relationship with her husband, her morals and their effect on her actions, and her hunger for power. Her regard for Macbeth is one of low respect and beratement, an uncommon and most likely socially unacceptable attitude for a wife to have towards her spouse at the time. She often ignores morality and acts for the benefit of her husband, and subsequently herself. She is also very power-hungry and lets nothing stand in the way of her success. Lady Macbeth was a character which challenged expectations of women and feminism when it was written in the seventeenth century.
Macbeth starts out with good intentions but later on he ends up with evil ambition. There are people who will do anything to keep the power they have like Macbeth. Though people saw Macbeth to be an honorable person, he turned out to be a perfidious, disloyal killer who would do whatever it took to remain as king. The good versus evil theme was a theme that involved much conflict. There are many current events where good must go up against evil, and more of these events will occur.
Many things are affected in “Macbeth” because of hierarchy, a man’s wife and child are killed, and people descend into madness; if the system was something like a democracy, the whole situation would have
The scene I chose was act 2 scene 2 of Macbeth written by Shakespeare. It was between two characters, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. I played the role of Macbeth. In the scene, Lady Macbeth celebrates her plan being a success. Lady Macbeth waits for Macbeth to come with news that he has killed Duncan. Macbeth announces that he has committed the murder but he is so afraid that he brings the bloody daggers with him and Lady Macbeth takes them from him, to place them with the sleeping guards. Macbeth hears knocking sounds which frightens him so his wife comes to lead him away, they then wash the blood from their hands before they get caught. My character was challenging because I had to understand his emotions and find ways of interpreting that on stage. I chose to perform this act because Shakespeare was able to create tension, build the right atmosphere to show them Macbeth’s reaction to Duncan’s murder but also show the relationship between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. Shakespeare’s use of imagery, dramatic irony, rhetorical questions helped emphasise the guilt Macbeth felt after the murder.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare, is a play that exhibits fighting and bloodshed. Regardless of social views, there are instances where violence is considered an honorable deed. However, some characters in the play blur the lines between right and wrong and their actions make blood shedding a point of discussion. Through the course of the play violence is the most prominent theme.
Towards the end of the play, Macbeth becomes ruthless and completely dependent upon the prophesies of the witches. He feels invincible while he is under their influence. People begin to speculate about what really happened concerning the murders. Macbeth becomes a merciless tyrant who will kill anybody who gets in the way of what he wants.
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's problem plays which have puzzled the critics all over the years. It is compact and full of significant scenes, and it has two important characters, Macbeth and his wife. It is a clear study of human nature, which I personally think Shakespeare had mastered. The final act opens with the sleepwalking scene and this scene is of great significance because it reveals the true nature of lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is one of the enigmatic characters. Once she is a woman made out of steel and suddenly she collapses; she returns to be a gentle wife. The sleepwalking scene also shows lady Macbeth as a complementary character to her husband.