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William Shakespeare

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Critical Essays Major Symbols and Motifs

Explore the different symbols within William Shakespeare's tragic play, Macbeth . Symbols are central to understanding Macbeth as a play and identifying Shakespeare's social and political commentary.

Throughout Shakespeare's Macbeth , the weather plays an important role. The rebelling nature of wind and lightning indicates the disruption within the natural order of society. It makes it seem as if the weather is upset with Macbeth 's actions. In many Shakespearean plays — including this one — rebelling nature shows a departure from accepted political and moral order.

Blood itself — the color, the smell, and importance — is vital to life and shocking to see. The constant presence of blood in Macbeth repeatedly reminds the audience about how serious the consequences of the characters actions are. But almost surpassing the importance of physical blood is the imagined blood found throughout the play. Imaginary blood represents guilt for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth . It's not until after the murder of Duncan that their guilt begins to manifest. As their guilt grows, so does the importance of the blood.

What's more, the imaginary blood also shows how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both lose a grasp on reality. Often quoted is the fact that Lady Macbeth cannot get the imagined blood off her hands nor can her husband. Their guilt is all consuming and inescapable. The imagined blood haunts both characters, following them until their death.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

Macbeth . . . is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shakespear’s genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion.

—William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

Macbeth completes William Shakespeare’s great tragic quartet while expanding, echoing, and altering key elements of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear into one of the most terrifying stage experiences. Like Hamlet, Macbeth treats the  consequences  of  regicide,  but  from  the  perspective  of  the  usurpers,  not  the  dispossessed.  Like  Othello,  Macbeth   centers  its  intrigue  on  the  intimate  relations  of  husband  and  wife.  Like  Lear,  Macbeth   explores  female  villainy,  creating in Lady Macbeth one of Shakespeare’s most complex, powerful, and frightening woman characters. Different from Hamlet and Othello, in which the tragic action is reserved for their climaxes and an emphasis on cause over effect, Macbeth, like Lear, locates the tragic tipping point at the play’s outset to concentrate on inexorable consequences. Like Othello, Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, achieves an almost unbearable intensity by eliminating subplots, inessential characters, and tonal shifts to focus almost exclusively on the crime’s devastating impact on husband and wife.

What is singular about Macbeth, compared to the other three great Shakespearean tragedies, is its villain-hero. If Hamlet mainly executes rather than murders,  if  Othello  is  “more  sinned  against  than  sinning,”  and  if  Lear  is  “a  very foolish fond old man” buffeted by surrounding evil, Macbeth knowingly chooses  evil  and  becomes  the  bloodiest  and  most  dehumanized  of  Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists. Macbeth treats coldblooded, premeditated murder from the killer’s perspective, anticipating the psychological dissection and guilt-ridden expressionism that Feodor Dostoevsky will employ in Crime and Punishment . Critic Harold Bloom groups the protagonist as “the culminating figure  in  the  sequence  of  what  might  be  called  Shakespeare’s  Grand  Negations: Richard III, Iago, Edmund, Macbeth.” With Macbeth, however, Shakespeare takes us further inside a villain’s mind and imagination, while daringly engaging  our  sympathy  and  identification  with  a  murderer.  “The  problem  Shakespeare  gave  himself  in  Macbeth  was  a  tremendous  one,”  Critic  Wayne  C. Booth has stated.

Take a good man, a noble man, a man admired by all who know him—and  destroy  him,  not  only  physically  and  emotionally,  as  the  Greeks  destroyed their heroes, but also morally and intellectually. As if this were not difficult enough as a dramatic hurdle, while transforming him into one of the most despicable mortals conceivable, maintain him as a tragic hero—that is, keep him so sympathetic that, when he comes to his death, the audience will pity rather than detest him and will be relieved to see him out of his misery rather than pleased to see him destroyed.

Unlike Richard III, Iago, or Edmund, Macbeth is less a virtuoso of villainy or an amoral nihilist than a man with a conscience who succumbs to evil and obliterates the humanity that he is compelled to suppress. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s  greatest  psychological  portrait  of  self-destruction  and  the  human  capacity for evil seen from inside with an intimacy that horrifies because of our forced identification with Macbeth.

Although  there  is  no  certainty  in  dating  the  composition  or  the  first performance  of  Macbeth,   allusions  in  the  play  to  contemporary  events  fix the  likely  date  of  both  as  1606,  shortly  after  the  completion  and  debut  of  King Lear. Scholars have suggested that Macbeth was acted before James I at Hampton  Court  on  August  7,  1606,  during  the  royal  visit  of  King  Christian IV of Denmark and that it may have been especially written for a royal performance. Its subject, as well as its version of Scottish history, suggest an effort both to flatter and to avoid offending the Scottish king James. Macbeth is a chronicle play in which Shakespeare took his major plot elements from Raphael  Holinshed’s  Chronicles  of  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland  (1587),  but  with  significant  modifications.  The  usurping  Macbeth’s  decade-long  (and  largely  successful)  reign  is  abbreviated  with  an  emphasis  on  the  internal  and external destruction caused by Macbeth’s seizing the throne and trying to hold onto it. For the details of King Duncan’s death, Shakespeare used Holinshed’s  account  of  the  murder  of  an  earlier  king  Duff  by  Donwald,  who cast suspicion on drunken servants and whose ambitious wife played a significant role in the crime. Shakespeare also eliminated Banquo as the historical Macbeth’s co-conspirator in the murder to promote Banquo’s innocence and nobility in originating a kingly line from which James traced his legitimacy. Additional prominence is also given to the Weird Sisters, whom Holinshed only mentions in their initial meeting of Macbeth on the heath. The prophetic warning “beware Macduff” is attributed to “certain wizards in whose words Macbeth put great confidence.” The importance of the witches and  the  occult  in  Macbeth   must  have  been  meant  to  appeal  to  a  king  who  produced a treatise, Daemonologie (1597), on witch-craft.

The uncanny sets the tone of moral ambiguity from the play’s outset as the three witches gather to encounter Macbeth “When the battle’s lost and won” in an inverted world in which “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Nothing in the play will be what it seems, and the tragedy results from the confusion and  conflict  between  the  fair—honor,  nobility,  duty—and  the  foul—rank  ambition and bloody murder. Throughout the play nature reflects the disorder and violence of the action. Opening with thunder and lightning, the drama is set in a Scotland contending with the rebellion of the thane (feudal lord) of Cawdor, whom the fearless and courageous Macbeth has vanquished on the battlefield. The play, therefore, initially establishes Macbeth as a dutiful and trusted vassal of the king, Duncan of Scotland, deserving to be rewarded with the rebel’s title for restoring peace and order in the realm. “What he hath lost,” Duncan declares, “noble Macbeth hath won.” News of this honor reaches Macbeth through the witches, who greet him both as the thane of Cawdor and “king hereafter” and his comrade-in-arms Banquo as one who “shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Like the ghost in Hamlet , the  Weird  Sisters  are  left  purposefully  ambiguous  and  problematic.  Are  they  agents  of  fate  that  determine  Macbeth’s  doom,  predicting  and  even  dictating  the  inevitable,  or  do  they  merely  signal  a  latency  in  Macbeth’s  ambitious character?

When he is greeted by the king’s emissaries as thane of Cawdor, Macbeth begins to wonder if the first predictions of the witches came true and what will come of the second of “king hereafter”:

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.

Macbeth  will  be  defined  by  his  “horrible  imaginings,”  by  his  considerable  intellectual and imaginative capacity both to understand what he knows to be true and right and his opposed desires and their frightful consequences. Only Hamlet has as fully a developed interior life and dramatized mental processes as  Macbeth  in  Shakespeare’s  plays.  Macbeth’s  ambition  is  initially  checked  by his conscience and by his fear of the unforeseen consequence of violating moral  laws.  Shakespeare  brilliantly  dramatizes  Macbeth’s  mental  conflict in near stream of consciousness, associational fashion:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success: that but this blow Might be the be all and the end all, here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th’inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ingredients of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against The deep damnation of his taking-off, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on the other.

Macbeth’s “spur” comes in the form of Lady Macbeth, who plays on her husband’s selfimage of courage and virility to commit to the murder. She also reveals her own shocking cancellation of gender imperatives in shaming her husband into action, in one of the most shocking passages of the play:

. . . I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this.

Horrified  at  his  wife’s  resolve  and  cold-blooded  calculation  in  devising  the  plot,  Macbeth  urges  his  wife  to  “Bring  forth  menchildren  only,  /  For  thy  undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males,” but commits “Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”

With the decision to kill the king taken, the play accelerates unrelentingly through a succession of powerful scenes: Duncan’s and Banquo’s murders, the banquet scene in which Banquo’s ghost appears, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, and Macbeth’s final battle with Macduff, Thane of Fife. Duncan’s offstage murder  contrasts  Macbeth’s  “horrible  imaginings”  concerning  the  implications and Lady Macbeth’s chilling practicality. Macbeth’s question, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” is answered by his wife: “A little water clears us of this deed; / How easy is it then!” The knocking at the door of the castle, ominously signaling the revelation of the crime, prompts the play’s one comic respite in the Porter’s drunken foolery that he is at the door of “Hell’s Gate” controlling the entrance of the damned. With the fl ight of Duncan’s sons, who fear for their lives, causing them to be suspected as murderers, Macbeth is named king, and the play’s focus shifts to Macbeth’s keeping and consolidating the power he has seized. Having gained what the witches prophesied, Macbeth next tries to prevent their prediction that Banquo’s descendants will reign by setting assassins to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. The plan goes awry, and Fleance escapes, leaving Macbeth again at the mercy of the witches’ prophecy. His psychic breakdown is dramatized by his seeing Banquo’s ghost occupying Macbeth’s place at the banquet. Pushed to  the  edge  of  mental  collapse,  Macbeth  steels  himself  to  meet  the  witches  again to learn what is in store for him: “Iam in blood,” he declares, “Stepp’d in so far that, should Iwade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

The witches reassure him that “none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” and that he will never be vanquished until “Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.” Confident that he is invulnerable, Macbeth  responds  to  the  rebellion  mounted  by  Duncan’s  son  Malcolm  and  Macduff, who has joined him in England, by ordering the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children. Macbeth has progressed from a murderer in fulfillment of the witches predictions to a murderer (of Banquo) in order to subvert their predictions and then to pointless butchery that serves no other purpose than as an exercise in willful destruction. Ironically, Macbeth, whom his wife feared  was  “too  full  o’  the  milk  of  human  kindness  /  To  catch  the  nearest  way” to serve his ambition, displays the same cold calculation that frightened him  about  his  wife,  while  Lady  Macbeth  succumbs  psychically  to  her  own  “horrible  imaginings.”  Lady  Macbeth  relives  the  murder  as  she  sleepwalks,  Shakespeare’s version of the workings of the unconscious. The blood in her tormented  conscience  that  formerly  could  be  removed  with  a  little  water  is  now a permanent noxious stain in which “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.” Women’s cries announcing her offstage death are greeted by Macbeth with detached indifference:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d To hear a nightshriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in’t. Ihave supp’d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

Macbeth reveals himself here as an emotional and moral void. Confirmation that “The Queen, my lord, is dead” prompts only the bitter comment, “She should have died hereafter.” For Macbeth, life has lost all meaning, refl ected in the bleakest lines Shakespeare ever composed:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 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.

Time and the world that Macbeth had sought to rule are revealed to him as empty and futile, embodied in a metaphor from the theater with life as a histrionic, talentless actor in a tedious, pointless play.

Macbeth’s final testing comes when Malcolm orders his troops to camoufl  age  their  movement  by  carrying  boughs  from  Birnam  Woods  in  their march toward Dunsinane and from Macduff, whom he faces in combat and reveals that he was “from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d,” that is, born by cesarean section and therefore not “of woman born.” This revelation, the final fulfillment of the witches’ prophecies, causes Macbeth to fl ee, but he is prompted  by  Macduff’s  taunt  of  cowardice  and  order  to  surrender  to  meet  Macduff’s challenge, despite knowing the deadly outcome:

Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

Macbeth  returns  to  the  world  of  combat  where  his  initial  distinctions  were  honorably earned and tragically lost.

The play concludes with order restored to Scotland, as Macduff presents Macbeth’s severed head to Malcolm, who is hailed as king. Malcolm may assert his control and diminish Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as “this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,” but the audience knows more than that. We know what  Malcolm  does  not,  that  it  will  not  be  his  royal  line  but  Banquo’s  that  will eventually rule Scotland, and inevitably another round of rebellion and murder is to come. We also know in horrifying human terms the making of a butcher and a fiend who refuse to be so easily dismissed as aberrations.

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Macbeth William Shakespeare

Macbeth essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.

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Macbeth Essays

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Gender Transition in Macbeth Anonymous

Come you spirit,

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.

--Lady Macbeth

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The Appearance of Fairness Michael Wainwright

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Ambiguity Leads the Way Jean-Francois Carrier

Dramatic tragedies are by definition plays that enact the struggle and downfall of their main character or characters. "The Tragedy of Macbeth", by William Shakespeare, is a perfect example of this; the entire play portrays the fatalistic...

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by, Barret Buchholz

April 15, 2005

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The tragedy in both Othello and Macbeth is found not so much in the scattering of bodies covering the stage at the end of each play, but instead in the degeneration of the plays' respective protagonists. Men championed by Shakespeare at the...

Character Juxtaposition: The Twoness of Macbeth Anonymous

Character Juxtaposition: The Twoness of Macbeth

Shakespeare's Macbeth relays the tale of a Scottish general, at first presenting a seemingly brave and noble warrior. Macbeth is eventually prompted by ambition to seek the throne upon hearing a...

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An Analysis of Lady Macbeth's Gender Role throughout Macbeth Aline Tran

Shakespeare's Macbeth is a male dominated play. Most of the noticeable characters in Macbeth are male, including Macbeth, Macduff, Banquo, King Duncan, and Malcolm. Despite the lack of female power by numbers, Lady Macbeth proves to be a...

Macbeth's Tragic Flaw: The Collapse of Emotion August Trevor Sutton

Shakespeare frequently makes use of the adjective ‘weird’ in his tragedy Macbeth. Along with bringing to mind the supernatural and unearthly, the word also forces one to consider the nature of the word’s antonym – what is normal? Macbeth’s...

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In the play Macbeth, some of the most significant characters rely upon their ability to equivocate, in order to hide their treacherously covetous, or purely malicious intentions. Most characters take part in these acts of subterfuge, but the three...

The Role of Intimacy in the Macbeths’ Marriage Anonymous College

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Regicide in Macbeth Anonymous 12th Grade

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A Modern Perspective: Macbeth

By Susan Snyder

Coleridge pronounced Macbeth to be “wholly tragic.” Rejecting the drunken Porter of Act 2, scene 3 as “an interpolation of the actors,” and perceiving no wordplay in the rest of the text (he was wrong on both counts), he declared that the play had no comic admixture at all. More acutely, though still in support of this sense of the play as unadulterated tragedy, he noted the absence in Macbeth of a process characteristic of other Shakespearean tragedies, the “reasonings of equivocal morality.” 1

Indeed, as Macbeth ponders his decisive tragic act of killing the king, he is not deceived about its moral nature. To kill anyone to whom he is tied by obligations of social and political loyalty as well as kinship is, he knows, deeply wrong:

         He’s here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself.                  ( 1.7.12 –16)

And to kill Duncan, who has been “so clear in his great office” (that is, so free from corruption as a ruler), is to compound the iniquity. In adapting the story of Macbeth from Holinshed’s Chronicles of Scotland, Shakespeare created a stark black-white moral opposition by omitting from his story Duncan’s weakness as a monarch while retaining his gentle, virtuous nature. Unlike his prototype in Holinshed’s history, Macbeth kills not an ineffective leader but a saint whose benevolent presence blesses Scotland. In the same vein of polarized morality, Shakespeare departs from the Holinshed account in which Macbeth is joined in regicide by Banquo and others; instead, he has Macbeth act alone against Duncan. While it might be good politics to distance Banquo from guilt (he was an ancestor of James I, the current king of England and patron of Shakespeare’s acting company), excluding the other thanes as well suggests that the playwright had decided to focus on private, purely moral issues uncomplicated by the gray shades of political expediency.

Duncan has done nothing, then, to deserve violent death. Unlike such tragic heroes as Brutus and Othello, who are enmeshed in “equivocal morality,” Macbeth cannot justify his actions by the perceived misdeeds of his victim. “I have no spur,” he admits, “To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition” ( 1.7.25 –27). This ambition is portrayed indirectly rather than directly. But it is surely no accident that the Weïrd Sisters accost him and crystallize his secret thoughts of the crown into objective possibility just when he has hit new heights of success captaining Duncan’s armies and defeating Duncan’s enemies. The element of displacement and substitution here—Macbeth leading the fight for Scotland while the titular leader waits behind the lines for the outcome—reinforces our sense that, whatever mysterious timetable the Sisters work by, this is the psychologically right moment to confront Macbeth with their predictions of greatness. Hailed as thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and king, he is initially curious and disbelieving. Though his first fearful reaction ( 1.3.54 ) is left unexplained, for us to fill in as we will, surely one way to read his fear is that the word “king” touches a buried nerve of desire. When Ross and Angus immediately arrive to announce that Macbeth is now Cawdor as well as Glamis, the balance of skepticism tilts precipitously toward belief. The nerve vibrates intensely. Two-thirds of the prophecy is already accomplished. The remaining prediction, “king hereafter,” is suddenly isolated and highlighted; and because of the Sisters’ now proven powers of foreknowledge, it seems to call out for its parallel, inevitable fulfillment.

The Weïrd Sisters present nouns rather than verbs. They put titles on Macbeth without telling what actions he must carry out to attain those titles. It is Lady Macbeth who supplies the verbs. Understanding that her husband is torn between the now-articulated object of desire and the fearful deed that must achieve it (“wouldst not play false / And yet wouldst wrongly win,” 1.5.22 –23), she persuades him by harping relentlessly on manly action. That very gap between noun and verb, the desired prize and the doing necessary to win it, becomes a way of taunting him as a coward: “Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?” ( 1.7.43 –45). A man is one who closes this gap by strong action, by taking what he wants; whatever inhibits that action is unmanly fear. And a man is one who does what he has sworn to do, no matter what. We never see Macbeth vow to kill Duncan, but in Lady Macbeth’s mind just his broaching the subject has become a commitment. With graphic horror she fantasizes how she would tear her nursing baby from her breast and dash its brains out if she had sworn as she says her husband did. She would, that is, violate her deepest nature as a woman and sever violently the closest tie of kinship and dependence. Till now, Macbeth has resisted such violation, clinging to a more humane definition of “man” that accepts fidelity and obligation as necessary limits on his prowess. Now, in danger of being bested by his wife in this contest of fierce determinations, he accepts her simpler, more primitive equation of manhood with killing: he commits himself to destroying Duncan. It is significant for the lack of “equivocal morality” that even Lady Macbeth in this crucial scene of persuasion doesn’t try to manipulate or blur the polarized moral scheme. Adopting instead a warrior ethic apart from social morality, she presents the murder not as good but as heroic.

Moral clarity informs not only the decisions and actions of Macbeth but the stage of nature on which they are played out. The natural universe revealed in the play is essentially attuned to the good, so that it reacts to the unambiguously evil act of killing Duncan with disruptions that are equally easy to read. There are wild winds, an earthquake, “strange screams of death” ( 2.3.61 –69). And beyond such general upheaval there is a series of unnatural acts that distortedly mirror Macbeth’s. Duncan’s horses overthrow natural order and devour each other, like Macbeth turning on his king and cousin. “A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place”—the monarch of birds at its highest pitch—is killed by a mousing owl, a lesser bird who ordinarily preys on insignificant creatures ( 2.4.15 –16). Most ominous of all, on the morning following the king’s death, is the absence of the sun: like the falcon a symbol of monarchy, but expanding that to suggest the source of all life. In a general sense, the sunless day shows the heavens “troubled with man’s act” ( 2.4.7 ), but the following grim metaphor points to a closer and more sinister connection: “dark night strangles the traveling lamp” ( 2.4.9 ). The daylight has been murdered like Duncan. Scotland’s moral darkness lasts till the end of Macbeth’s reign. The major scenes take place at night or in the atmosphere of the “black, and midnight hags” ( 4.1.48 ), and there is no mention of light or sunshine except in England ( 4.3.1 ).

Later in the play, nature finds equally fitting forms for its revenge against Macbeth. Despite his violations of the natural order, he nevertheless expects the laws of nature to work for him in the usual way. But the next victim, Banquo, though his murderer has left him “safe in a ditch” ( 3.4.28 ), refuses to stay safely still and out of sight. In Macbeth’s horrified response to this restless corpse, we may hear not only panic but outrage at the breakdown of the laws of motion:

                           The time has been

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end. But now they rise again

With twenty mortal murders on their crowns

And push us from our stools. This is more strange

Than such a murder is.                           ( 3.4.94 –99)

His word choice is odd: “ they rise,” a plural where we would expect “he rises,” and the loaded word “crowns” for heads. Macbeth seems to be haunted by his last victim, King Duncan, as well as the present one. And by his outraged comparison at the end—the violent death and the ghostly appearance compete in strangeness—Macbeth suggests, without consciously intending to, that Banquo’s walking in death answers to, or even is caused by, the murder that cut him off so prematurely. The unnatural murder generates unnatural movement in the dead. Lady Macbeth, too, walks when she should be immobile in sleep, “a great perturbation in nature” ( 5.1.10 ).

It is through this same ironic trust in natural law that Macbeth draws strength from the Sisters’ later prophecy: if he is safe until Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, he must be safe forever:

Who can impress the forest, bid the tree

Unfix his earthbound root? Sweet bodements, good!

Rebellious dead, rise never till the Wood

Of Birnam rise . . .                  ( 4.1.109 –12)

His security is ironic because for Macbeth, of all people, there can be no dependence on predictable natural processes. The “rebellious dead” have already unnaturally risen once; fixed trees can move against him as well. And so, in time, they do. Outraged nature keeps matching the Macbeths’ transgressions, undoing and expelling their perversities with its own.

In tragedies where right and wrong are rendered problematic, the dramatic focus is likely to be on the complications of choice. Macbeth, on the contrary, is preoccupied less with the protagonist’s initial choice of a relatively unambiguous wrong action than with the moral decline that follows. H. B. Charlton noted that one could see in Richard III as well as Macbeth the biblical axiom that “the wages of sin is death”; but where the history play assumes the principle, Macbeth demonstrates why it has to be that way. 2 The necessity is not so much theological as psychological: we watch in Macbeth the hardening and distortion that follows on self-violation. The need to suppress part of himself in order to kill Duncan becomes a refusal to acknowledge his deed (“I am afraid to think what I have done. / Look on ’t again I dare not”: 2.2.66 –67). His later murders are all done by proxy, in an attempt to create still more distance between the destruction he wills and full psychic awareness of his responsibility. At the same time, murder becomes a necessary activity, the verb now a compulsion almost without regard to the object: plotted after he has seen the Weïrd Sisters’ apparitions, Macbeth’s attack on Macduff’s “line” ( 4.1.174 ) is an insane double displacement, of fear of Macduff himself and fury at the vision of the line of kings fathered by Banquo.

Yet the moral universe of Macbeth is not as uncomplicated as some critics have imagined. To see in the play’s human and physical nature only a straightforward pattern of sin and punishment is to gloss over the questions it raises obliquely, the moral complexities and mysteries it opens up. The Weïrd Sisters, for example, remain undefined. Where do they come from? Where do they go when they disappear from the action in Act 4? What is their place in a moral universe that ostensibly recoils against sin and punishes it? Are they human witches, or supernatural beings? Labeling them “evil” seems not so much incorrect as inadequate. Do they cause men to commit crimes, or do they only present the possibility to them? Macbeth responds to his prophecy by killing his king, but Banquo after hearing the one directed at him is not impelled to act at all. Do we take this difference as demonstrating that the Sisters have in themselves no power beyond suggestion? Or should we rather find it somewhat sinister later on when Banquo, ancestor of James I or not, sees reason in Macbeth’s success to look forward to his own—yet feels it necessary to conceal his hopes ( 3.1.1 –10)?

Even what we most take for granted becomes problematic when scrutinized. Does Macbeth really desire to be king? Lady Macbeth says he does, but what comes through in 1.5 and 1.7 is more her desire than his. Apart from one brief reference to ambition when he is ruling out other motives to kill Duncan, Macbeth himself is strangely silent about any longing for royal power and position. Instead of an obsession that fills his personal horizon, we find in Macbeth something of a motivational void. Why does he feel obligated, or compelled, to bring about an advance in station that the prophecy seems to render inevitable anyway? A. C. Bradley put his finger on this absence of positive desire when he observed that Macbeth commits his crime as if it were “an appalling duty.” 3

Recent lines of critical inquiry also call old certainties into question. Duncan’s saintly status would seem assured, yet sociological critics are disquieted by the way we are introduced to him, as he receives news of the battle in 1.2. On the one hand we hear reports of horrifying savagery in the fighting, savagery in which the loyal thanes participate as much as the rebels and invaders—more so, in fact, when Macbeth and Banquo are likened to the crucifiers of Christ (“or memorize another Golgotha,” 1.2.44 ). In response we see Duncan exulting not only in the victory but in the bloodshed, equating honor with wounds. It is not that he bears any particular guilt. Yet the mild paternal king is nevertheless implicated here in his society’s violent warrior ethic, its predicating of manly worth on prowess in killing. 4 But isn’t this just what we condemn in Lady Macbeth? Cultural analysis tends to blur the sharp demarcations, even between two such figures apparently totally opposed, and to draw them together as participants in and products of the same constellation of social values.

Lady Macbeth and Duncan meet in a more particular way, positioned as they are on the same side of Scotland’s basic division between warriors and those protected by warriors. The king is too old and fragile to fight; the lady is neither, but she is barred from battle by traditional gender conventions that assign her instead the functions of following her husband’s commands and nurturing her young. In fact, of course, Lady Macbeth’s actions and outlook thoroughly subvert this ideology, as she forcefully takes the lead in planning the murder and shames her husband into joining in by her willingness to slaughter her own nurseling. It is easy to call Lady Macbeth “evil,” but the label tends to close down analysis exactly where we ought to probe more deeply. Macbeth’s wife is restless in a social role that in spite of her formidable courage and energy offers no chance of independent action and heroic achievement. It is almost inevitable that she turn to achievement at second hand, through and for her husband. Standing perforce on the sidelines, like Duncan once again, she promotes and cheers the killing.

Other situations, too, may be more complex than at first they seem. Lady Macduff, unlike Lady Macbeth, accepts her womanly function of caring for her children and her nonwarrior status of being protected. But she is not protected. The ideology of gender seems just as destructive from the submissive side as from the rebellious, when Macduff deserts her in order to pursue his political cause against Macbeth in England and there is no husband to stand in the way of the murderers sent by Macbeth. The obedient wife dies, with her cherished son, just as the rebellious, murderous lady will die who consigned her own nursing baby to death. The moral universe of Macbeth has room for massive injustice. Traditional critics find Lady Macbeth “unnatural,” and even those who do not accept the equation of gender ideology with nature can agree with the condemnation in view of her determined suppression of all bonds of human sympathy. Clear enough. But we get more blurring and crossovers when Macduff’s wife calls him unnatural. In leaving his family defenseless in Macbeth’s dangerous Scotland, he too seems to discount human bonds. His own wife complains bitterly that “he wants the natural touch”; where even the tiny wren will fight for her young against the owl, his flight seems to signify fear rather than natural love ( 4.2.8 –16). Ross’s reply, “cruel are the times,” while it doesn’t console Lady Macduff and certainly doesn’t save her, strives to relocate the moral ambiguity of Macduff’s conduct in the situation created by Macbeth’s tyrannical rule. The very political crisis that pulls Macduff away from his family on public business puts his private life in jeopardy through the same act of desertion. But while acknowledging the peculiar tensions raised by a tyrant-king, we may also see in the Macduff family’s disaster a tragic version of a more familiar conflict: the contest between public and private commitments that can rack conventional marriages, with the wife confined to a private role while the husband is supposed to balance obligations in both spheres.

Malcolm is allied with Duncan by lineage and with Macduff by their shared role of redemptive champion in the final movement of the play. He, too, is not allowed to travel through the action unsullied. After a long absence from the scene following the murder of Duncan, he reappears in England to be sought by Macduff in the crusade against Macbeth. Malcolm is cautious and reserved, and when he does start speaking more freely, what we hear is an astonishing catalogue of self-accusations. He calls himself lustful, avaricious, guilty of every crime and totally lacking in kingly virtues:

                Nay, had I power, I should

Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.                  ( 4.3.113 –16)

Before people became so familiar with Shakespeare’s play, I suspect many audiences believed what Malcolm says of himself. Students on first reading still do. Why shouldn’t they? He has been absent from the stage for some time, and his only significant action in the early part of the play was to run away after his father’s murder. When this essentially unknown prince lists his vices in lengthy speeches of self-loathing, there is no indication—except an exaggeration easily ascribable to his youth—that he is not sincere. And if we do believe, we cannot help joining in Macduff’s distress. Malcolm, the last hope for redeeming Scotland from the tyrant, has let us down. Duncan’s son is more corrupt than Macbeth. He even sounds like Macbeth, whose own milk of human kindness ( 1.5.17 ) was curdled by his wife; who threatened to destroy the whole natural order, “though the treasure / Of nature’s germens tumble all together / Even till destruction sicken” ( 4.1.60 –63). In due course, Malcolm takes it all back; but his words once spoken cannot simply be canceled, erased as if they were on paper. We have already, on hearing them, mentally and emotionally processed the false “facts,” absorbed them experientially. Perhaps they continue to color indirectly our sense of the next king of Scotland.

Viewed through various lenses, then, the black and white of Macbeth may fade toward shades of gray. The play is an open system, offering some fixed markers with which to take one’s basic bearings but also, in closer scrutiny, offering provocative questions and moral ambiguities.

• “Notes for a Lecture on Macbeth ” [c. 1813], in Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare , ed. Terence Hawkes (New York: Capricorn, 1959), p. 188.
• H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), p. 141.
• A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1904), p. 358.
• James L. Calderwood, If It Were Done: “Macbeth” and Tragic Action (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 77–89.

Macbeth and Gender

Read this extract from act 1 scene 7 of the play. in this scene, macbeth has just said that he doesn’t want to kill duncan and lady macbeth begins to talk him around., lady macbeth, was the hope drunk, wherein you dressed yourself hath it slept since, and wakes it now, to look so green and pale, at what it did so freely from this time, such i account thy love. art thou afeard, to be the same in thine own act and valour, as thou art in desire wouldst thou have that, which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,, and live a coward in thine own esteem,, letting 'i dare not' wait upon 'i would,', like the poor cat i' the adage, prithee, peace:, i dare do all that may become a man;, who dares do more is none., what beast was't, then,, that made you break this enterprise to me, when you durst do it, then you were a man;, and, to be more than what you were, you would, be so much more the man., starting with this extract, how does shakespeare present gender in macbeth, in your answer you should:, · look at gender in the extract above and, · look at gender in the play as a whole, p1: introduction about gender and outline brief argument, p2: focus on lady macbeth and her deceptive ways, p3: focus on macbeth and his role as victim, p4: conclusion of argument, and modern vs jacobean context, throughout the play shakespeare toys with the stereotypical roles of each gender in jacobean england and most noticeably seems to reverse these roles at several key points in the play. while the traditional roles are seemingly apparent at the beginning, with macbeth being a valiant soldier and lady macbeth being a ‘lady’, the gender roles of both become increasingly ambiguous and indistinct as the plot develops. this fact is somewhat subtly highlighted in the witches’ iconic opening line “fair is foul and foul is fair” which establishes a setting where nothing is as it seems, including the typical roles of each gender. the decisions made by macbeth, which were undoubtedly under the powerful influence of women, and the damaging consequences to these actions are central to this tale of a tragic, ‘brave’ hero and the message shakespeare was trying to get across. he seems to argue that women should not be given too much power as that power can have a detrimental impact on a man’s life, especially a well-respected soldier like macbeth was., in this extract, lady macbeth is berating macbeth, insulting his masculinity as she labels him a “coward” and asks if he is “afeard” of killing the king. this is like a personal attack on macbeth, who at the beginning of the play is established as a ‘brave’ soldier whose sword ‘smoked with bloody execution’, yet lady macbeth is accusing him of being a weakling and a ‘coward’ and therefore questioning his entire ego. her aggressive tone, which is evident by her use of multiple rhetorical questions, makes it clear she is the more powerful person in this relationship. this verbal attack incidentally comes soon after she says, “such i account thy love” which is her way of saying that macbeth doesn’t “love” her if he doesn’t kill the king. this use of emotional blackmail is especially effective as it is clear that macbeth is very much in love with his wife, shown in act 1 scene 5 when he addresses her as “my dearest.” and while the pronoun ‘dearest’ shows that lady macbeth was precious to macbeth, it also has the connotations of expensive, which lady macbeth certainly was to macbeth in the play, costing him his sanity and ultimately his life it is clear in the play that lady macbeth exerts her power through lies and manipulation. by asking macbeth, “ what beast was't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me” she is clearly gaslighting him in a bid to convince him to kill duncan, and we know this because in act 1 scene 5, she asked when duncan would be leaving the castle, macbeth said “in the morning, as he purposes” and then she said “never shall the sun that morrow see.” so she was the one who suggested the murder, yet her deceptive ways manage to convince macbeth that he had suggested it. lady macbeth even encourages macbeth to lie and manipulate when she says “look like th’ innocent flower but be the serpent under it.” but it would seem as though to macbeth, his wife is actually the serpent, tempting him to do the evil deed, just like in the bible with adam. in the play however, macbeth seems oblivious to his wife’s true feelings about him, and his subservience to her is what leads to his downfall. lady macbeth has an influence on macbeth that no one else in the play, apart from the witches, had on him. the way she ridicules him and humiliates him to his face is almost unexplainable to the jacobean audience, given the status of macbeth in society at the time. she even directly questions his manliness when she says, “when you durst do it, then you were a man” even though macbeth had more than proven himself as a worthy man, when he killed the norwegian king by “unseaming him from the nave to th’ chaps,” his wife still questions his willingness to kill, which no one else would have dared done ., macbeth responds to this by saying, “i dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none” this is his way of saying that he has already done what he needs to do to become a man: he has served loyally to the king and killed many in his name. his reference to those doing more as being ‘none’ is him sticking to his masculinity and implying that a true man is loyal to the king. earlier in this scene, he says that he has bought “golden opinions from people.” the adjective ‘golden’ clearly shows that macbeth values those opinions and he is effectively treasured by those in the society. he is as high as he can be in the great chain of being and he has come to accept that, but his wife’s ambition forces him to do the terrible deed, something he clearly didn’t want to do. he repeatedly references that killing duncan is “against nature” which is quite telling, as while nature refers to the natural order in which he shouldn’t have tampered with, it also symbolises his own nature, which lady macbeth describes ‘as being too full of the milk o’ human kindness. the use of the word ‘milk’ has strong connotations to femininity and it essentially portrays macbeth as being too soft, completely disregarding his ruthlessness in the battlefield at the start. his decision to go against his nature (and his masculinity) is what leads him to killing the king. the witches also have a massive impact on macbeth throughout the play, and they were arguably controlling him. after seeing the witches, macbeth says that the thought of murder “shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered.” this means that his masculinity is so shocked by the idea of betraying his king that he doesn’t think he can act on it. so here we know that macbeth is trying to stick to his manly nature, yet the influence of these powerful women effectively forces him to do something against his will. in fact, it could be argued macbeth was under the influence of the witches from the very beginning, as his first line in the play is ‘so fair and foul a day i have not seen’ which is paraphrasing what the witches said at the beginning of the play. also, after he kills duncan, macbeth anxiously tells his wife, ‘me thought i heard a voice cry “sleep no more macbeth hath murdered sleep.”’ the use of the third person, with macbeth referencing himself as ‘macbeth’ not ’i’ – and the inclusion of the inverted commas that indicate speech – imply that it was someone else who said that to him. surely this is the witches, casting their spells on the wind, and doing to macbeth exactly what they did to the sailor they referenced in act 1 scene 3. the fact that macbeth spends the rest of the play suffering the fact that “sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his penthouse lid” is another incidence of women (in this case the witches) dominating and controlling macbeth’s actions., shakespeare definitely raised serious questions in this play about the devastating effects of giving women too much power. king james was definitely afraid of this, as at the time society was very much misogynistic under his reign. while the modern audience would probably view lady macbeth as a woman whose power should be admired, the jacobean audience would certainly be worried by the thought of giving women too much power, therefore shakespeare went at lengths to show that this power resulted in the downfall of even the strongest men. the whole play represents the catastrophic consequences of doing the unnatural, whether that is going against the natural order, listening to the supernatural or going against the normal gender roles. all of these lead to this tale of a tragic hero, and shakespeare’s audience would definitely have been reassured by this..

Macbeth – A* / L9 Full Mark Example Essay

This is an A* / L9 full mark example essay on Macbeth completed by a 15-year-old student in timed conditions (50 mins writing, 10 mins planning).

It contained a few minor spelling and grammatical errors – but the quality of analysis overall was very high so this didn’t affect the grade. It is extremely good on form and structure, and perhaps could do with more language analysis of poetic and grammatical devices; as the quality of thought and interpretation is so high this again did not impede the overall mark. 

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MACBETH EXAMPLE ESSAY:

Macbeth’s ambition for status and power grows throughout the play. Shakespeare uses Macbeth as an embodiment of greed and asks the audience to question their own actions through the use of his wrongful deeds.

In the extract, Macbeth is demonstrated to possess some ambition but with overriding morals, when writing to his wife about the prophecies, Lady Macbeth uses metaphors to describe his kind hearted nature: “yet I do fear thy nature, / It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness”. Here, Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a more gentle natured being who is loyal to his king and country. However, the very act of writing the letter demonstrates his inklings of desire, and ambition to take the throne. Perhaps, Shakespeare is aiming to ask the audience about their own thoughts, and whether they would be willing to commit heinous deeds for power and control. 

Furthermore, the extract presents Macbeth’s indecisive tone when thinking of the murder – he doesn’t want to kill Duncan but knows it’s the only way to the throne. Lady Macbeth says she might need to interfere in order to persuade him; his ambition isn’t strong enough yet: “That I may pour my spirits in  thine ear / And chastise with the valour of my tongue”. Here, Shakespeare portrays Lady Macbeth as a manipulative character, conveying she will seduce him in order to “sway “ his mind into killing Duncan. The very need for her persuasion insinuates Macbeth is still weighing up the consequences in his head, his ambition equal with his morality. It would be shocking for the audience to see a female character act in this authoritative way. Lady Macbeth not only holds control of her husband in a patriarchal society but the stage too, speaking in iambic pentameter to portray her status: “To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great”. It is interesting that Shakespeare uses Lady Macbeth in this way; she has more ambition for power than her husband at this part of play. 

As the play progresses, in Act 3, Macbeth’s ambition has grown and now kills with ease. He sends three murders to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance, as the witches predicted that he may have heirs to the throne which could end his reign. Macbeth is suspicious in this act, hiding his true intentions from his dearest companion and his wife: “I wish your horses swift and sure on foot” and “and make our faces vizards to our hearts”. There, we see, as an audience, Macbeth’s longing to remain King much stronger than his initial attitudes towards the throne He was toying with the idea of killing for the throne and now he is killing those that could interfere with his rule without a second thought. It is interesting that Shakespeare presents him this way, as though he is ignoring his morals or that they have been “numbed” by his ambition. Similarly to his wife in the first act, Macbeth also speaks in pentameter to illustrate his increase in power and dominance. 

In Act 4, his ambition and dependence on power has grown even more. When speaking with the witches about the three apparitions, he uses imperatives to portray his newly adopted controlling nature: “I conjure you” and “answer me”. Here, the use of his aggressive demanding demonstrates his reliance on the throne and his need for security. By the Witches showing him the apparitions and predicting his future, he gains a sense of superiority, believing he is safe and protected from everything. Shakespeare also lengthens Macbeth’s speech in front of the Witches in comparison to Act 1 to show his power and ambition has given him confidence, confidence to speak up to the “filthy nags” and expresses his desires. Although it would be easy to infer Macbeth’s greed and ambition has grown from his power-hungry nature, a more compassionate reading of Macbeth demonstrates the pressure he feels as a Jacobean man and soldier. Perhaps he feels he has to constantly strive for more to impress those around him or instead he may want to be king to feel more worthy and possibly less insecure. 

It would be unusual to see a Jacobean citizen approaching an “embodiment” of the supernatural as forming alliance with them was forbidden and frowned upon. Perhaps Shakespeare uses Macbeth to defy these stereotypical views to show that there is a supernatural, a more dark side in us all and it is up to our own decisions whereas we act on these impulses to do what is morally incorrect. 

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Macbeth — Betrayal in Macbeth: Greed’s Tragic Grip

Betrayal in Macbeth: Greed's Tragic Grip

• Categories: Macbeth William Shakespeare

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Published: Aug 31, 2023

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Introduction, macbeth's peripeteia: greed and betrayal, consequences of macbeth's ambition, works cited.

• Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2011.

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Use Your Allusion: See How Many Literary References You Recognize

By J. D. Biersdorfer March 28, 2024

• Share full article

Lines from poems and plays frequently serve as inspiration for later literary allusions. This 12-question quiz is crafted from a running list created by the Book Review’s staff to test your knowledge on a wide variety of referenced works. The source material spans thousands of years and includes ancient Greek history and modern pop songs.

The quiz is in the multiple-choice format, so just tap or click your answers. After you finish, you’ll get your score and a list of links to the original works. (And yes, the headline above does allude to a pair of 1991 albums from the rock band Guns N’ Roses. Give yourself extra credit if you spotted it.)

Video illustration by Erik Carter

Over the years, “I Sing the Body Electric” has been used repeatedly, including as the title for a Ray Bradbury short story (and his “Twilight Zone” script), as a musical anthem to creativity in the 1980 film “Fame” and in the lyrics of a 2012 Lana Del Rey song. But who said it first?

Benjamin Franklin

Mary Shelley

Walt Whitman

Paule Marshall

Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel “Things Fall Apart,” Joan Didion’s 1968 essay collection “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and Robert B. Parker’s 1983 thriller “The Widening Gyre” all take their titles from the same poem. What is the original poem — and who is its author?

“The Second Coming,” by William Butler Yeats

“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost

“‘Hope’ Is the Thing With Feathers,” by Emily Dickinson

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by Alfred Tennyson

“Band of Brothers,” the 2001 World War II television drama, is based on a 1992 book by Stephen E. Ambrose. But which previous work used the phrase “band of brothers” quite notably?

“All Quiet on the Western Front,” by Erich Maria Remarque

“Henry V,” by William Shakespeare

“Richard III,” by William Shakespeare

“The Red Badge of Courage,” by Stephen Crane

Wait! “Band of Brothers” was decades ago and I just finished watching the new “Masters of the Air” series. Is that show’s title an allusion as well? If so, quiz me!

George Orwell

Winston S. Churchill

John Maynard Keynes

Moving on from land and air to water now: The title of “The Sea, the Sea,” Iris Murdoch’s 1978 novel, is also a famous line (“Θάλαττα! θάλαττα!” in the original language) shouted by Greek warriors when they reached the top of a mountain and could see a nearby body of water. What is the name of the Greek work?

“Odyssey,” by Homer

“Lysistrata,” by Aristophanes

“The Persians,” by Aeschylus

“Anabasis,” by Xenophon

Which 1951 poem by Langston Hughes gave the playwright Lorraine Hansberry the title for her 1959 stage play, “A Raisin in the Sun”?

“Let America Be America Again”

“The Weary Blues”

OK, back to Shakespeare, because that guy had a serious literary output that is still influential centuries later: Which one of the following books does NOT take its title from “Macbeth”?

“The Sound and the Fury,” by William Faulkner

“Let It Come Down,” by Paul Bowles

“For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Ernest Hemingway

“Something Wicked This Way Comes,” by Ray Bradbury

“The Moon Is Down,” by John Steinbeck

The last line of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1899 poem “Sympathy” gave Maya Angelou the title for her first autobiography in 1969. What is that title?

“Little Brown Baby”

“Invitation to Love”

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

Elif Batuman has named both a novel and a nonfiction book after works by a certain 19th-century Russian author who wrote, among other things, “The Brothers Karamazov.” Who is this writer?

Alexander Pushkin

Leo Tolstoy

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nikolai Gogol

Which novelist is renowned for his allusions to popular music and literature in his work — and named his 1987 novel after a Beatles song on the band’s 1965 “Rubber Soul” album?

Bret Easton Ellis

Haruki Murakami

Paul Beatty

Hanif Kureishi

In the epigraph of his 2015 book, “Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes a passage of a poem with the same title that influenced him. Who wrote that poem?

Gwendolyn Brooks

James Baldwin

Toni Morrison

Richard Wright

Which Scotsman’s work inspired the titles of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”?

Sir Walter Scott

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Burns

James Boswell

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