44
votes
How did Shakespeare get away with staging witchcraft in his plays such as Othello, Macbeth, or The Tempest?
The public saw the plays were fiction, perhaps even a warning against witchcraft, and the magic in them is divorced of religious overtones.
It is noteworthy that the two Shakespeare plays which deal ...
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35
votes
Accepted
Since when has Shakespeare's "Scottish play" been considered unlucky?
tl;dr
The superstition that Macbeth is unlucky and must not be named is often supposed to date from the very first performance, or very shortly thereafter. However, a documented belief in this alleged ...
- 31.5k
29
votes
Why does Macbeth well deserve his name?
"Name" is here not used in the sense of "proper name" but in the sense of "distinguished or honourable repute, honour" (C. T. Onions: A Shakespeare Glossary).
In other ...
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25
votes
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Why does the prophecy imply Macbeth has to murder the king?
You are quite right that the witches did not prophecy that Macbeth would murder Duncan, and so the option was available to him to “play it safe”: that is, to wait and see how the prophecy transpired, ...
- 63.9k
23
votes
Accepted
What reference is Shakespeare making in Act 2 Scene 2 of Macbeth?
It's a Biblical reference.
Noting that Macbeth is speaking of his own hands, and his own fears,
How is ’t with me when every noise appals me?
it is clear that this is an allusion to Matthew ...
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20
votes
Why does the murderer call Macduff's son "egg"?
A. R. Braunmuller (Macbeth, New Cambridge Shakespeare, 1997) provides the following gloss:
Contemptuous epithet for a young person (OED Egg sb 2b, citing only this line and another from 1835); (...)
...
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19
votes
Why does Shakespeare sometimes use "do" with the verbs in his plays?
Rhythm
The word ‘do’ fills what would otherwise be a gap in the rhythm. With ‘do’ you can scan the line as regular iambic pentameter:
x / x / x / x / x / x
As two ...
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18
votes
Accepted
Did Lady Macbeth communicate signs of her instability prior to the blood scene?
Oh, yeah, she's clearly unstable from the moment we meet her. Even better, she chooses to be unstable. In her very first appearance, she calls on supernatural forces to remove all traces of compassion:...
- 5,128
17
votes
Accepted
Is Macbeth or Lady Macbeth the real villain in Shakespeare's play?
Lady Macbeth is the villain. Macbeth is, in fact, a tragic hero.
The first time I ever read Macbeth I was struck by the feeling of sympathy I had for the eponymous character at the end of the play. He ...
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15
votes
What reference is Shakespeare making in Act 2 Scene 2 of Macbeth?
Possibly the Bible? From Matthew 18:9:
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be ...
15
votes
Accepted
In Macbeth, why is Fleance 'scaped?
The murderer’s choice of words here is an attempt to deflect or minimize his responsibility for the failure to kill Fleance. He knows that he and his fellows failed Macbeth (“We have lost best half of ...
- 63.9k
14
votes
Accepted
What does Lady Macbeth mean by "what thou art promised"?
The other answers have explained the meaning of the line—that Macbeth shall be king, as he was promised by the witches—but there is more to say about the choice of wording.
The difficulty here arises ...
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13
votes
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Do we have any solid evidence for how much material Middleton contributed to Macbeth?
The composition of Macbeth is usually dated to 1606, i.e. some time after the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, to which it contains an allusion (see e.g. Braunmuller, page 6). (Arguments for an ...
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12
votes
Why do the witches in Macbeth rarely speak in iambic pentameter?
The metre in Macbeth is already fairly irregular but the lines spoken by the Witches or "Weird Sisters" still stand out.
In Act 1, scene 3, Banquo describes the witches as follows (quoted from Open ...
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12
votes
Accepted
How many children had Lady Macbeth?
Shakespeare's play differs very substantially from actual events (the historical Macbeth reigned for about 17 years). However, according to Wikipedia the historical Lady Macbeth had a son Lulach ...
- 2,583
11
votes
What's the meaning of "give someone the lie" in Macbeth?
To "give the lie" is an English expression meaning to expose a lie, or show a thing is not true. It is still in use today.
to show that something is not at all true
These figures give the lie to ...
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11
votes
Why does the prophecy imply Macbeth has to murder the king?
It is indeed true that the prophecy of the three Weyard Sisters does not imply that Macbeth would need to murder king Duncan. In fact, in Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare's source for the play, ...
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10
votes
What reference is Shakespeare making in Act 2 Scene 2 of Macbeth?
The OP states that the source is hard to spell. That can't apply to the Bible.
A classical character who actually blinds himself is Oedipus. His crime is the same as the one Macbeth contemplates--...
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10
votes
Why does the murderer call Macduff's son "egg"?
When Shakespeare uses an unfamiliar or idiomatic word or phrase, he quite often doubles it with a more conventional one, with the effect of explaining it "in place." There's a good example ...
- 2,436
10
votes
Do we have any solid evidence for how much material Middleton contributed to Macbeth?
Introduction
The accepted date for Macbeth is 1606. This date, first proposed by the 18th C scholar and editor Edmund Malone, has never been seriously challenged. Yet the earliest surviving text of ...
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9
votes
What does "master o' the Tiger" mean?
G. K. Hunter's edition of Macbeth for the New Penguin Shakespeare (Penguin, 1967, page 141) points out that this is a reference to an actual ship (whose name is not mentioned) that sailed to Aleppo (...
- 51.1k
9
votes
What does "I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do" mean?
Not all editors explain "I'll do" and the explanations aren't always the same.
The edition by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (Folger Shakespeare Library, 2003, page 14) has a gloss ...
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8
votes
Why do the witches in Macbeth rarely speak in iambic pentameter?
Trochaic meter (consisting of singular trochees) is the exact opposite of iambic meter: trochaic meter a metrical foot made up of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. Conversely, ...
- 2,176
8
votes
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When did Macbeth kill Duncan's chamberlains?
Option 2 is correct: Macbeth killed the chamberlains during act II scene 3, where the sequence of events is as follows:
Macduff goes to visit Duncan in his chamber.
Macduff. I’ll make so bold to ...
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7
votes
Accepted
Was Shakespeare inspired by Olaus Magnus when writing Macbeth?
TL;DR: No.
It is generally believed that Shakespeare based Macbeth on Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, Volume 5 (1587). This is not just because Shakespeare's version ...
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7
votes
Accepted
Why did the Witches give the prophecy in the first place?
The Witches are supernatural in character and Satanic. They delivered a self-fulfilling prophecy to tempt Macbeth into willingly committing evil deeds to secure his soul.
A common motif in mythology ...
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7
votes
What does Lady Macbeth mean by "what thou art promised"?
What Lady Macbeth means with "what thou art promised" is the kingdom that Macbeth was supposedly "promised" in the witches' prophecy.
All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!
All hail, ...
7
votes
Accepted
Why is Macbeth's "vaulting ambition" so important and famous?
This is a passage that has puzzled many readers!
“Vault” means “jump or leap, especially over or onto something”. The word is still used for various kinds of gymnastic feat, whether over equipment, or ...
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6
votes
Why does Macbeth say ‘throw physic to the dogs’?
Since MacBeth continues to talk to the doctor afterwards, and specifically asks him to heal his country, it doesn't sound like he's objecting to the doctor or the practice of healing overall. "For the ...
6
votes
Any textual evidence from Shakespeare's Macbeth regarding Macbeth's oath to kill the king?
I think we are to understand that he made his oath to Lady Macbeth between the end of Act I Scene V and the start of Act I Scene VI
MACBETH: We will speak further.
LADY MACBETH: Only look up ...
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