Introduction: Thesis

• What is Shakespeare's Intention?
• How do you plan to prove that is so?
  

Macbeth and Machiavelli:

• Machiavelli, from The Prince (1513), Intro, chapters 14-19, 26:
• Notes on Machiavelli: Virtue vs. Vertu
• Isaiah Berlin on Machiavelli (NYRB 1971) (Machiavelli Defended)
  
• Roman Morality
• The Patria
• His Most Objectionable Means
• raison d'état
• The End of Monism
• Pluralism
  

How effective has Duncan been as king? Why?

• Duncan: "Is execution done on Cawdor?" (I iv)
• Macbeth's Loyalty: "The service and the loyalty I owe,/ In doing it, pays itself." (I iv)
• Duncan: "My plenteous joys,/ Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves/ In drops of sorrow." (I iv)
• Duncan: Primogeniture: "The Prince of Cumberland" (I iv)
• Macbeth: "Stars hide thy fires!" (I iv)

• The Prophecy: "All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee..." (I iii)
  
• Macbeth: "Two truths are told ..." (I iv)
• Macbeth: "If it were done when 'tis done" (I vii)
• Lady Macbeth: "I have given suck" (I vii)
• Macbeth: "Is this a dagger I see before me" (II i) 

Crossing the Threshold:  

• Lady Macbeth: "Had he not resembled/ My father as he slept,
  I had done't." (II ii)
• Macbeth: "Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!'" (II ii)
• Macbeth: "What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes." (II ii)
• Porter: "Knock, Knock, Knock... Who's there?" (II iii)
• Lady Macbeth's Faint "Help me hence, ho!" (II iii)

Part Two:

Holding the Throne:

• Banquo: Thou hast it now (III i)
• Macbeth: To be thus is nothing (III i)
• Lady Macbeth: Nought's had, all's spent (III ii)
• Macbeth: "We have scotch'd the snake not kill'd it." (III ii)

The Climax of the Action: The Banquet Scene (III iv)

• The Murderer's Report: "There's blood on thy face." (III iv)
• The Ghost's First Entrance: "Prithee, see there! behold! look! lo!” (III iv)
• The Ghost's Second Entrance: "Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!" (III iv)
• Macbeth and Lady Macbeth Alone: "It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:" (III iv)

Part Three:

The Second Visit to the Witches:

• The Cauldron: "Finger of birth-strangled babe/ Ditch-deliver'd by a drab" (IV i)
• Macbeth's Entrance: "How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!" (IV i)
• 1st Vision: The Armed Head: "Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff" (IV i)
• 2nd Vision: The Bloody Child: "none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth." (IV i)
• 3rd Vision: A Child crowned, with a tree in his hand: "Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill" (IV i)
• 4th Vision: The Masque: "Show his eyes, and grieve his heart"

The Murder of Lady Macduff and her Children:

• Macduff fled: "from this moment/ The very firstlings of my heart shall be/ The firstlings of my hand" (IV i)
• Lady MacDuff: "What are these faces?" (IV ii)

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at the End of the Action:

• The Sleepwalking Scene: Lady Macbeth: "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" (V i)
• Birnam Wood Moves: Malcolm: "Let every soldier hew him down a bough/ And bear't before him..." (V iv)
• Macbeth's Final Soliloquy: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." (V v) vs.
• MacDuff's Response to News of his Family's Murder: "I must also feel it as a man" (V iii)
• Macbeth Cornered: "They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,/ But, bear-like, I must fight the course..." (V vii)
• The Final Fight: MacDuff: "Turn, hell-hound, turn!"