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Schule > Englisch > William Shakespeare - Macbeth > Analyse Macbeth III/4

Analyse III/4

The fourth Scene of the third act of Shakespeare`s Drama Macbeth is about Macbeth giving a Banquet as new King of Scotland.
The Scene can be subdivided into four parts. In the first section (ll.1-31) Macbeth and Lady Macbeth greet their guests Rosse, Lenox, lords and some attendants. The murder appears and Macbeth talks to him about Banquo's dead and Fleancé's escape. The second part (ll.32-72) is about Macbeth seeing Banquo's ghost when he wants to start the banquet and says: ”Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present”. No one else can see the ghost, so no one knows what is going on with Macbeth. He talks to the ghost and want him to go away while Lady Macbeth tries to call Macbeth to concentration and she tries to give a reason for her husbands behaviour. She says that he has got an illness since he was a young man. The ghost disappears and Macbeth is normal again. In the third section(ll.73-120) he wants to drink to Banquo's health and the ghost re-enters, so Macbeth start to talk to him by forgetting everything else around. He wants the ghost going, because he shows him what he has done. The ghost disappears again but Macbeth doesn’t find back to reality at once, so Lady Macbeth tells her guests to go at once without standing “upon the order of your going”. The last part(ll.120-143) is a dialogue between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and a short monologue of Macbeth. They are talking about Macduff who denies his person on Macbeth's Banquet, so Macbeth wants to send to him. Then Macbeth is talking about going to the witches and that his own good is the most important thing for him now.
In the first part the murder gives a verbal scenery to Macbeth by talking about Banquo's dead. Always before the ghost appears Macbeth says that he wishes Banquo would be there. That is poetic irony, because then Banquo's ghost comes and Macbeth wants him to go.
In ll.121-124 (blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Argues, and understood relations, have by maggot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth the secret’s man of blood) Macbeth is afraid of nature telling the world what he has done which could be meant as an objective correlative.
The audience can guess who will be killed next, because Macduff denies his person and Macbeth wants to send to him.
Macbeth is directly characterized in ll.32/33 “ My royal Lord you do not give the cheer” and indirectly in his conversation with the murder, his wife and to the ghost as an hypocrite , an egoist and as am man who does everything for his own good. Lady Macbeth is indirectly characterized as a liar, because she says Macbeth is ill, but everyone knows him that good to know he is not. She also is indirectly characterized as an hypocrite, because she seems friendly to everyone but she only wants her own good, so she is an egoist a well. She has no scruple and tries to call her husband to concentration, because she needs him to be queen. So she just makes him doing what she wants (l.182: “Did you send to him, Sir”).
The scene is important and because of the poetic irony a bit funny, though Banquo was murdered and only his ghost appears.
20/09/2004 Eva-Maria Obermann

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