The Porter

Question 1

When does the porter appear?

Answer 1

Act 2 Scene 3

Question 2

What does he provide for the audience?

Answer 2

• light and comic relief from the darker and more tragic parts of the play
• “Knock, knock, knock. Who’s there

Question 3

What does the porter delay?

What does this do?

Answer 3

• discovery of Duncan’s dead body

- increases tension

Question 4

How does the porter describe Macbeth’s castle?

Answer 4

“hell-gate” and makes a joke about a man who “committed treason”

Question 5

What does equivocation mean?

Answer 5

telling the truth in a misleading way

Question 6

What’s the quote about a farmer hanging himself?

What does it forshadow?

Answer 6

• “Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on th’expectation of plenty”
• forshadows Lady Macbeth killing herself because she expected to take the crown and it would be okay

Question 7

What is the quote about the equivocator who could not equivocate to heaven?
What contextual links could you make?

Answer 7

• “yet could not equivocate to heaven”
• a Jesuit Priest who was involved in the gunpowder plot tried to equivocate to avoid being hanged but was executed anyway

Question 8

What does the porter says drinking “provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance”?
What could this be linking to in terms of Macbeth?

Answer 8

• “lechery”

- his constant fear of masculinity