macbeth overview

acronym for context

King Duncan’s Grim Death Sparks Paranoia

key context

• king james 1

• Divine Right of Kings

• Great Chain of Being

• Daemonologie

• Seven deadly sins

• Patriarchy

King James 1st

• was Shakepeares’s royal patron so Shakespeare aimed to appease him

• to do this he wrote against regicide

Divine Right of Kings

• kings were believed to be gods representative on earth

• disrupting this was seen as an assault against God himself

• Macbeth violates this by committing regicide

Great Chain of Being

• god created the world with a hierarchal order- men above women, rich above poor etc

• Macbeths bloodthirsty rampage violates the great chain of being

• Lady Macbeth tries to alter her position in the GCB through power over her husband (through manipulation- flattery, emasculation, emotional blackmail and in other ways )

Daemonologie

• book written by James 1st in 1597 which describes the supernatural and how to punish witchcraft.

• after this, cases of witchcraft skyrocketed by 53%

• 1604- act against witchcraft

• supernatural description in Macbeth matches daemonologie exactly

• this was another way for Shakespeare to appease the King

Seven deadly sins + religion

• 7 deadly sins should be avoided within Christianity to abstain from being influenced by the devil

• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth embody:

  • greed

  • pride

  • envy

  • wrath

• Macbeth is driven by his pride and is greedy for more power- he is envious of Duncan’s power which results in his violent wrath as he commits regicide.

Patriarchy

• Macbeth was set and performed to a patriarchal Jacobean society- where women were seen as inferior to men

• Lady Macbeth consistently subverts traditional Jacobean expectations of a woman as she manipulates and emasculates Macbeth

other relevant context

• gunpowder plot- November 5th 1605

• failed plot to commit regicide of James 1st

  - medallion with snakes and flowers in remembrance

key themes

• Violence

• Ambition

• Guilt

• Gender

• Appearence vs reality

• Supernatural

• VAGGAS

KEY WORDS

• genre= dramatic tragedy

• hamartia= fatal flaw (Macbeth’s unchecked ambition + lust for power)

• catharsis= ‘purging‘ or ‘cleansing of emotions‘- Macbeth’s self-destructive actions climax in act 5, when he is stripped of his majesty, loses his wife and then his own life. This leads the audience to pity Macbeth and as such, the audience experiences catharsis