Macbeth

• The heroic beginning
• The question of agency
  • The three Witches
    • Macbeth's initial response (1.3.51-52)
    • His later visit to them (4.1.48ff)
  • The influence on him of Lady Macbeth (1.5.60ff, 1.7.36ff)
• The question of sympathy
  • His soliloquy debating action (1.7.1-28): many reasons against, only ambition in favour
  • The hallucinatory dagger (2.1.34ff)
  • His botching of the murder of Duncan (2.2.51)
  • The "terrible dreams" that "shake [him] nightly" (3.2.18-19)

  • Come seeling night,
    Scarf up the eye of pitiful day,
    And with thy bloody and invisible hand,
    Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
    Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
    Makes wing to the rooky wood.
    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
    Whiles the night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
            (3.2.46-53)

  • The banquet scene and Banquo's ghost (3.4)
  • His awareness of isolation

    • My way of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf,
      And that which should accompany old age,
      As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
      I must not look to have . . .
              (5.3.22-26)

    • Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
      That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
      And then is heard no more: it is a tale
      Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
      Signifying nothing.
              (5.5.24-28)

• But -- his mounting aggression
  • The plot against Banquo, ignoring his wife (3.2.48-9)
  • Then against MacDuff (3.4.129)
  • Increasing reliance on the Witches (4.1)
• Macbeth's end in "valiant fury" (5.2.14)