Violence

Question 1

How’s violence used

Answer 1

Shakespeare uses Macbeth to make us question the nature of violence and whether any kind of violent behaviour is ever appropriate

Question 2

Macbeths enjoyment of violence

Answer 2

-“he unseam’d from the nave to th’chops”
= verb ‘unseam’d’ suggests the skill with which Macbeth is able to kill — he does not simply stab the traitor, he delicately and expertly destroys him, almost as if he’s a butcher who takes pleasure in his profession
= foreshadowing to when Macduff does call him by this same term: ‘the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen
-“fixed his head upon the battlements”
-“smoked with bloody execution”
= dynamic verb ‘smoked’ suggests intense action of scene and the amount of fresh blood that had stained Macbeth’s sword

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

• audience hear about the violence rather than experiencing it directly
  = suggests that for a Jacobean audience at a time of political instability, Shakespeare wanted to discourage the idea or enjoyment of violence whilst still exploring the idea of it in human nature and psychology

Question 4

Witches perception of violence

Answer 4

-“fair is foul and foul is fair”
= reveals more about Shakespeare’s opinions on the inherent nature of violence
= language is equivocal and can be interpreted in many ways
= can assume witches are implying that the world has become inverted, that ugliness and evil are now ‘fair’, what is seen as right or normal in Macbeth’s violent world

Question 5

Macbeths excuse of violence

Answer 5

“so foul and fair a day I have not seen”
= he’s never seen a day so ‘foul’, so full of gore and death, that was at the same time so ‘fair’,
= Shakespeare is exposing an inherent paradox in violence here, that war and murder is thought by many to be noble if it leads to a positive political outcome

Question 6

Lady Macbeths view of violence

Answer 6

• encourages and appeals to Macbeth’s sense for violence by directly associating it with masculinity and male traits that were considered noble or desirable in the Jacobean era
• she questions him prior to Duncan’s death
  = ‘I fear thy nature is too full o’th’milk of human kindness”
  = ‘milk’ as a symbol of femininity to imply his womanly and cowardly nature
  = Shakespeare is commenting on the connections between nature and violence
  = Jacobean audience would have understood that Macbeth fighting for the king was an acceptable outlet for his violence, whereas Macbeth using violence for personal gain and Lady Macbeth’s wish to become more masculine, and therefore more violent, are all against the perceived view of natural gender and social roles of the time

Question 7

Reasons of Macbeths violence

Answer 7

• Shakespeare uses Macbeth’s success through violence to criticise the nature of the Early Modern world, and so it is not Macbeth’s violence itself which is at fault, but the world which embraces and encourages this in him
  -“well he deserves that name”
  =the general structure of the world supports violent and potentially unstable characters such as Macbeth, enabling them to rise to power beyond their means