Violence Flashcards
TS1
TS1: At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is presented as a violent but brave warrior.
TS2
TS2: Lady Macbeth calls upon evil spirits to enable her to become a violent murderess.
TS3
TS3: Macbeth realises that his violent acts must lead to more violence.
TS4
TS4: At the end of the play, Macbeth has resigned himself to a violent death and is denounced as a violent ‘butcher’.
‘Bellona’s bridegroom…unseamed him from the nave to the chaps’.
L= Metaphor. MB is compared to the husband of the Goddess of War. However, his brutal violence is seen as noble and brave because he is a loyal subject fighting for his king on the battlefield.
‘Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers’.
L- alliteration emphasizes LMB desire to replace her feminine, nurturing qualities with violent, murderous ones. She even tells MB if she had a baby she’d rather smash its brains than not go ahead with the murder.
C = LMB subverts Jacobean ideals of women as gentle and maternal. R = Shocking to both Jacobean and modern audiences.
‘I am in blood stepped in so far… returning were as tedious as go o’er’
L = metaphor of a river of blood. Macbeth realises he cannot undo the murders he has committed, so he may as well continue to destroy his enemies and maintain his position on the throne.
‘give to the edge of the sword his wife, his babes’
L = emotive language. MB punishes Macduff’s family because Macduff has fled to England to raise an army with Malcolm. R = the audience despise him for murdering innocents who do not threaten him.
‘Our country sinks beneath the yoke…it weeps, it bleeds’
L = personification. Scotland is represented as a suffering slave or beast of burden under MB’s violent dictatorship. People are regularly dying as MB becomes more paranoid.
R =audience realise MB must be stopped; his reign is violently destroying the whole country.
‘I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked’
L = violent verbs. MB dies as he began the play – fighting. R = creates pathos for the audience - pity as he was once a great man but catharsis – relief as we know he must die. C = message of warning – violent murderers will be punished (Gunpowder Plot).
