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Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Background and Important Terms. Macbeth and Shakespeare Facts. Shakespeare 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.

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Shakespeare’s Macbeth

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  1. Shakespeare’s Macbeth Background and Important Terms

  2. Macbeth and Shakespeare Facts • Shakespeare 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).

  3. Macbeth’s Context • Renaissance: 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. Macbeth Literary Terms • Paradox: 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

  7. 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

  8. Macbeth Characters • Macbeth • Lady Macbeth • King Duncan • Macduff • Banquo • Malcolm • Donalbain • Numerous minor characters (All are listed on page 301 in your textbooks)

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